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10,025 | Flag of Europe | The flag of Europe or European flag consists of twelve golden stars forming a circle on a blue field. It was designed and adopted in 1955 by the Council of Europe (CoE) as a symbol for the whole of Europe.
Since 1985, the flag has also been a symbol of the European Union (EU), whose 27 member states are all also CoE members, although in that year the EU had not yet assumed its present name or constitutional form (which came in steps in 1993 and 2009). Adoption by the EU, or EC as it then was, reflected long-standing CoE desire to see the flag used by other European organisations. Official EU use widened greatly in the 1990s. Nevertheless the flag has to date received no status in any of the EU's treaties. Its adoption as an official symbol was planned as part of the 2004 European Constitution but this failed to be ratified. Mention of the flag was removed in 2007 from the text of the Treaty of Lisbon, which was ratified. On the other hand, 16 EU members that year, plus France in 2017, have officially affirmed (by Declaration No. 5224) their attachment to the flag as an EU symbol.
The flag is used by other European entities, such as unified sport teams under the rubric Team Europe.
The blazon given by the EU in 1996 describe the design as: "On an azure field a circle of twelve golden mullets, their points not touching."
The flag used is the Flag of Europe, which consists of a circle of twelve golden stars on a blue background. Originally designed in 1955 for the Council of Europe, the flag was adopted by the European Communities, the predecessors of the present European Union, in 1986. The Council of Europe gave the flag a symbolic description in the following terms, though the official symbolic description adopted by the EU omits the reference to the "Western world":
Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars symbolise the peoples of Europe in a form of a circle, a sign of union. Their number is invariably twelve, the figure twelve being the symbol of perfection and entirety.
Other symbolic interpretations have been offered based on the account of its design by Paul M. Levy. The five-pointed star is used on many national flags and represents aspiration and education. Their golden colour is that of the sun, which is said to symbolise glory and enlightenment.
Their arrangement in a circle represents the constellation of Corona Borealis and can be seen as a crown and the stability of government. The blue background resembles the sky and symbolises truth and the intellect. It is also the colour traditionally used to represent the Virgin Mary. In many paintings of the Virgin Mary as Stella Maris she is crowned with a circle of twelve stars.
In 1987, following the adoption of the flag by the EC, Arsène Heitz (1908–1989), one of the designers who had submitted proposals for the flag's design, suggested a religious inspiration for it. He claimed that the circle of stars was based on the iconographic tradition of showing the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Woman of the Apocalypse, wearing a "crown of twelve stars".
Heitz also made a connection to the date of the flag's adoption, 8 December 1955, coinciding with the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Paul M. G. Lévy, then Director of Information at the Council of Europe responsible for designing the flag, in a 1989 statement maintained that he had not been aware of any religious connotations.
In an interview given 26 February 1998, Lévy denied not only awareness of the "Marian" connection, but also denied that the final design of a circle of twelve stars was Heitz's. To the question "Who really designed the flag?" Lévy replied:
I did, and I calculated the proportions to be used for the geometric design. Arsène Heitz, who was an employee in the mail service, put in all sorts of proposals, including the 15-star design. But he submitted too many designs. He wanted to do the European currencies with 15 stars in the corner. He wanted to do national flags incorporating the Council of Europe flag.
Carlo Curti Gialdino (2005) has reconstructed the design process to the effect that Heitz's proposal contained varying numbers of stars, from which the version with twelve stars was chosen by the Committee of Ministers meeting at Deputy level in January 1955 as one out of two remaining candidate designs.
Lévy's 1998 interview apparently gave rise to a new variant of the "Marian" anecdote. An article published in Die Welt in August 1998 alleged that it was Lévy himself who was inspired to introduce a "Marian" element as he walked past a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
An article posted in La Raison in February 2000 further connected the donation of a stained glass window for Strasbourg Cathedral by the Council of Europe on 21 October 1956. This window, a work by Parisian master Max Ingrand, shows a blessing Madonna underneath a circle of 12 stars on dark blue ground. The overall design of the Madonna is inspired by the banner of the cathedral's Congrégation Mariale des Hommes, and the twelve stars are found on the statue venerated by this congregation inside the cathedral (twelve is also the number of members of the congregation's council). The Regional Office for Cultural Affairs describe this stained glass window called "Le vitrail de l'Europe de Max Ingrand" (The Glass Window of Europe of Max Ingrand).
According to graphical specifications published online by the Council of Europe in 2004, the flag is rectangular with 2:3 proportions: its fly (width) is one and a half times the length of its hoist (height). Twelve yellow stars are centred in a circle (the radius of which is a third of the length of the hoist) upon a blue background. All the stars are upright (one point straight up), have five points and are spaced equally, like the hour positions on the face of a clock. The diameter of each star is equal to one-ninth of the height of the hoist.
The colours are regulated in the 1996 guide by the EC, and equivalently in the 2004 guide by the Council of Europe. The base colour of the flag is defined as Pantone "Reflex Blue", while the golden stars are portrayed in Pantone "Yellow":
The 2013 logo of the Council of Europe has the colours:
The twelve-star "flag of Europe" was designed in 1950 and officially adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955. The same flag was adopted by the European Parliament in 1983. The European Council adopted it as an "emblem" for the European Communities in 1985. Its status in the European Communities was inherited by the European Union upon its formation in 1993. The proposal to adopt it as official flag of the European Union failed with the ratification of the European Constitution in 2005, and mention of all emblems suggesting statehood was removed from the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007, although sixteen member states signed a declaration supporting the continued use of the flag. In 2007, the European Parliament officially adopted the flag for its own use.
The Council of Europe in 1950 appointed a committee to study the question of adopting a symbol. Numerous proposals were looked into.
Among the unsuccessful proposals was the flag of Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi's International Paneuropean Union, which he had himself recently adopted for the European Parliamentary Union. The design was a blue field with a red cross inside an orange circle at the centre. Kalergi was very committed to defending the cross as "the great symbol of Europe's moral unity", the Red Cross in particular being "recognized by the whole world, by Christian and non-Christian nations[,] as a symbol of international charity and of the brotherhood of man", but the proposal was rejected by Turkey (a member of the Council of Europe since 1949) on grounds of its religious associations in spite of Kalergi's suggestion of adding a crescent alongside the cross to overcome the Muslim objections.
Other proposals included the flag was the European Movement, which had a large green E on a white background, a design was based on the Olympic rings, eight golden rings on a blue background, rejected due to the rings' similarity with "dial", "chain" and "zeros", or a large yellow star on a blue background, rejected due to its equality with the flag of the Belgian Congo.
The Consultative Assembly narrowed their choice to two designs. One was by Salvador de Madariaga, the founder of the College of Europe, who suggested a constellation of stars on a blue background (positioned according to capital cities, with a large star for Strasbourg, the seat of the council). He had circulated his flag round many European capitals and the concept had found favour. The second was a variant by Arsène Heitz, who worked for the council's postal service and had submitted dozens of designs, one of which was accepted by the Assembly. The design was similar to Salvador de Madariaga's, but rather than a constellation, the stars were arranged in a circle. Arsène Heitz was one of several people who proposed a circle of gold stars on a blue background. None of his proposals perfectly match the design that was adopted. Paul Levy claims that he was the one who designed the template for the flag, not Arsène Heitz. In 1987, Heitz would claim that his inspiration had been the crown of twelve stars of the Woman of the Apocalypse, often found in Marian iconography (see below).
On 25 September 1953, the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe recommended that a blue flag with fifteen gold stars be adopted as an emblem for the organisation, the number fifteen reflecting the number of states of the Council of Europe. West Germany objected to the fifteen-star design, as one of the members was Saar Protectorate, and to have its own star would imply sovereignty for the region. The Committee of Ministers (the council's main decision making body) agreed with the Assembly that the flag should be a circle of stars, but opted for a fixed number of twelve stars, "representing perfection and entirety". The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 25 October 1955 agreed to this. Paul M. G. Lévy drew up the exact design of the new flag. Officially adopted on 8 December 1955, the flag was unveiled at the Château de la Muette in Paris on 13 December 1955.
For the flag of the Council of Europe, many stylistic proposals were made in regards to colours and symbolism. These first proposals were made 19 January 1950 by Paul Levy in a letter to the Secretary-General. He proposed that the flag should contain a cross for several reasons. Firstly, the cross symbolizes roads crossing, and also represents the east, the west, the north, and the south with its arms. Furthermore, the cross appears in most of the European Council members' flags, and it is the oldest and most noble symbol in Europe. Moreover, the cross depicted Christianity. As far as the colours are concerned, he proposed them to be white and green, colours of the European Movement, which was of great significance since 1947. Green also depicted hope, and the green cross over a white background was a design that had not been used yet. Finally, Levy proposed that the arms of Strasbourg was an important element to be added as it represented where the council would be, and being located in the heart of the cross meant that the council was the point where the European roads met.
Shortly after this design considerations by Paul Levy, on 27 July 1950, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, president of the Pan-European movement wrote a memorandum which contained some rules that a flag for such union should follow. The rules he stated where:
After these statements, Coudenhove-Kalergi proposed that the Pan-European movement flag would be the perfect one to fit these criteria
15 July 1951, the consultative assembly put forward a final memorandum on the European flag. The symbols proposed where the following
Furthermore, several colours were also proposed:
In the end, the flag of Europe was chosen to have 12 five-pointed golden stars in a circle over a blue background, probably inspired by the Pan-European flag and other designs such as Salvador de Madariaga's and Arsène Heitz's proposals.
Following Expo 58 in Brussels, the flag caught on and the Council of Europe lobbied for other European organisations to adopt the flag as a sign of European unity. The European Parliament took the initiative in seeking a flag to be adopted by the European Communities. Shortly after the first direct elections in 1979 a draft resolution was put forward on the issue. The resolution proposed that the Communities' flag should be that of the Council of Europe and it was adopted by the Parliament on 11 April 1983.
The June 1984 European Council (the Communities' leaders) summit in Fontainebleau stressed the importance of promoting a European image and identity to citizens and the world. The European Council appointed an ad hoc committee, named "Committee for 'a People's Europe'" (Adonnino Committee).
This committee submitted a substantial report, including wide-ranging suggestions, from organising a "European lottery" to campaigning for the introduction of local voting rights for foreign nationals throughout Europe. Under the header of "strengthening of the Community's image and identity", the Committee suggested the introduction of "a flag and an emblem", recommending a design based on the Council of Europe flag, but with the addition of "a gold letter E" in the center of the circle of stars. The European Council held in Milan on 28/29 June 1985 largely followed the recommendations of the Adonnino Committee. But as the adoption of a flag was strongly reminiscent of a national flag representing statehood and was extremely controversial with some member states (in particular the United Kingdom, as the proposed flag closely resembled the Queen's personal standard), the Council of Europe's "flag of Europe" design was adopted, without the letter E, only with the official status of a "logo". This compromise was widely disregarded from the beginning, and the "European logo", in spite of the explicit language of giving it the status of a "logo", was referred to as the "Community flag" or even "European flag" from the outset.
The Communities began to use the "emblem" as its de facto flag from 1986, raising it outside the Berlaymont building (the seat of the European Commission) for the first time on 29 May 1986.
The European Union, which was established by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 to replace the European Communities and encompass its functions, has retained de facto use of the "Community logo" of the EC. Technically and officially, the "European flag" as used by the European Union remains not a "flag" but "a Community 'logo' — or 'emblem' — [...] eligible to be reproduced on rectangular pieces of fabric".
In 1997, the "Central and Eastern Eurobarometer" poll included a section intending to "discover the level of public awareness of the European Union" in what were then candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Interviewees were shown "a sticker of the European flag" and asked to identify it. Responses considered correct were: the European Union, the European Community, the Common Market, and "Europe in general". 52% of those interviewed gave one of the correct answers, 15% gave a wrong answer (naming another institution, such as NATO or the United Nations), and 35% could or would not identify it.
In 2002, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas designed a symbol, dubbed the "barcode", which displayed the colours of the national flags of the EU member states in vertical stripes. It was reported as a replacement for the European flag, which was not the intention. It was not adopted by the EU or any other organisation at the time, but an updated version was used in the visual identity of the Austrian EU Presidency in 2006.
The official status of the emblem as the flag of the European Union was to be formalised as part of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. However, as the proposed treaty failed ratification, the mention of all state-like emblems, including the flag, were not included in the replacement Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force in 2009.
Instead, a separate declaration by sixteen Member States was included in the final act of the Treaty of Lisbon stating that the flag, the anthem, the motto and the currency and Europe Day "will for them continue as symbols to express the sense of community of the people in the European Union and their allegiance to it."
In reaction to the removal of the flag from the treaty, the European Parliament, which had supported the inclusion of such symbols, backed a proposal to use these symbols "more often" on behalf of the Parliament itself; Jo Leinen, MEP for Germany, suggested that the Parliament should take "an avant-garde role" in their use.
In September 2008, the Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs proposed a formal change in the institution's rules of procedure to make "better use of the symbols". Specifically, the flag would be present in all meeting rooms (not just the hemicycle) and at all official events. The proposal was passed on 8 October 2008 by 503 votes to 96 (15 abstentions).
In 2015, a set of commemorative Euro coins was issued on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the emblem by the European Communities.
In April 2004, the European flag was flown on behalf of the European Space Agency, by Dutch astronaut André Kuipers while on board the International Space Station, in reference to the Framework Agreement establishing the legal basis for co-operation between the European Space Agency and the European Union.
Following the 2004 Summer Olympics, President Romano Prodi expressed his hope "to see the EU Member State teams in Beijing [viz., the 2008 games] carry the flag of the European Union alongside their own national flag as a symbol of our unity". Use of the flag has also been reported as representing the European team at the Ryder Cup golf competition in the early 2000s, although most European participants preferred to use their own national flags.
The flag has been widely used by advocates of European integration since the late 1990s or early 2000s. It is often displayed in the context of Europe Day, on 9 May. Outside the EU, it was used in the context of several of the "colour revolutions" during the 2000s. In Belarus, it was used on protest marches alongside the white-red-white flag and other flags of opposition movements, such as Zubr, during the protests of 2004–2006. The flag was used widely in a 2007 pro-EU march in Minsk. Similar uses were reported from Moldova in 2009.
In Georgia, the flag has been on most government buildings since the coming to power of Mikheil Saakashvili (2007), who used it during his inauguration, stating: "[the European] flag is Georgia's flag as well, as far as it embodies our civilisation, our culture, the essence of our history and perspective, and our vision for the future of Georgia."
It was used in 2008 by pro-western Serbian voters ahead of an election.
The flag became a symbol of European integration of Ukraine in the 2010s, particularly after Euromaidan. Ukraine is not a part of the EU but is a member of the Council of Europe. The flag is used by the Cabinet of Ukraine, Prime Minister of Ukraine, and MFA UA during official meetings. It was flown during the 2013 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and in 2016 by the pro-EU faction in the EU membership referendum campaigns in the United Kingdom.
The flag has also been adopted as a symbol for EU policies and expansionism by EU-sceptics. In an early instance, Macedonian protesters burned "the flag of the EU" in the context of EU involvement in the 2001 insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia. In the 2005 Islamic protests against the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, the Danish flag was most frequently burned, but (as the cartoons were reprinted in many European countries), some protesters opted for burning "the EU flag" instead. Protesters during the Greek government-debt crisis of 2012 "burned the EU flag and shouted 'EU out' ". Burning of the EU flag has been reported from other anti-EU rallies since.
By the 2010s, the association of the emblem with the EU had become so strong that the Council of Europe saw it necessary to design a new logo, to "avoid confusion", officially adopted in 2013.
The EU emblem ("EU flag") is depicted on the euro banknotes. Euro coins also display a circle of twelve stars on both the national and common sides.
It is also depicted on many driving licences and vehicle registration plates issued in the Union. Diplomatic missions of EU member states fly the EU flag alongside their national flag. In October 2000, the then-new British Embassy in Berlin sparked controversy between the UK and Germany and the EU when the embassy did not have a second external flagpole for the EU flag. After diplomatic negotiations, it was agreed that the outside flagpole would have the diplomatic Union Flag while inside the embassy, the EU flag would accompany the UK flag. Some member states' national airlines such as Lufthansa have the EU flag alongside their national flags on aircraft as part of their aircraft registration codes, but this is not an EU-mandated directive.
A number of logos used by EU institutions, bodies and agencies are derived from the design and colours of the EU emblem.
Other emblems make reference to the European flag, such as the EU organic food label that uses the twelve stars but reorders them into the shape of a leaf on a green background. The original logo of the European Broadcasting Union used the twelve stars on a blue background adding ray beams to connect the countries.
There was a proposal in 2003 to deface national civil ensigns with the EU emblem. The proposal was rejected by Parliament in 2004.
The flag is usually flown by the government of the country holding the rotating presidency Council of Ministers. In 2009, Czech President Václav Klaus, a eurosceptic, refused to fly the flag from his castle. In response, Greenpeace projected an image of the flag onto the castle and attempted to fly the flag from the building themselves.
Extraordinary flying of the flag is common on Europe Day, celebrated annually on 9 May. On Europe Day 2008, the flag was flown for the first time above the German Reichstag.
The flag has also been displayed in the context of EU military operations (EUFOR Althea).
Sixteen out of twenty-seven member states in 2007 signed the declaration recognising "the flag with a circle of twelve golden stars on a blue background" as representing "the sense of community of the people in the European Union and their allegiance to it." In 2017, president of France Emmanuel Macron signed a declaration endorsing the 2007 statement, so that, as of 2018, 17 out of 27 member states have recognised the emblem as a flag representing "allegiance to the EU": Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
Italy has incorporated the EU flag into its flag code. According to an Italian law passed in 2000, it is mandatory for most public offices and buildings to hoist the European Flag alongside the Italian national flag (Law 22/1998 and Presidential Decree 121/2000). Outside official use, the flag may not be used for "aims incompatible with European values". The 2000 Italian flag code expressly replaces the Italian flag with the European flag in precedence when dignitaries from other EU countries visit – for example the EU flag would be in the middle of a group of three flags rather than the Italian flag. In Germany, the federal flag code of 1996 is only concerned with the German flag, but some of the states have legislated additional provisions for the European flag, such as Bavaria in its flag regulation of 2001, which mandates that the European flag take the third order of precedence, after the federal and state flags, except on Europe Day, where it is to take the first order of precedence.
In Ireland on occasions of "European Union Events" (for example, at a European Council meeting), where the European flag is flown alongside all national flags of member states, the national flags are placed in alphabetical order (according to their name in the main language of that state) with the European flag either at the head, or the far-right, of the order of flags.
In most member states, use of the EU flag is only de facto and not regulated by legislation, and as such subject to ad hoc revision. In national usage, national protocol usually demands the national flag takes precedence over the European flag (which is usually displayed to the right of the national flag from the observer's perspective). In November 2014, the speaker of the Hungarian Parliament László Kövér ordered the removal of the EU flag from the parliament building, following an incident in which a member of parliament had "defenestrated" two EU flags from a fourth story window. In November 2015, the newly elected Polish government under Beata Szydło removed the EU flag from government press conferences.
The design of the European flag has been used in a variation, such as that of the Council of Europe mentioned above, and also to a greater extent such as the flag of the Western European Union (WEU; now defunct), which uses the same colours and the stars but has a number of stars based on membership and in a semicircle rather than a circle. It is also defaced with the initials of the former Western European Union in two languages.
The European Parliament used its own flag from 1973, but never formally adopted it. It fell out of use with the adoption of the twelve-star flag by the Parliament in 1983. The flag followed the yellow and blue colour scheme however instead of twelve stars there were the letters EP and PE (initials of the European Parliament in the six community languages at the time) surrounded by a wreath. Sometime later, the Parliament chose to use a logo consisting of a stylised hemicycle and the EU flag at the bottom right.
The flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina, imposed by High Representative Carlos Westendorp, after the country's parliament failed to agree on a design, is reminiscent of the symbolism of the EU flag, using the same blue and yellow colours, and the stars, although of a different number and colour, are a direct reference to those of the European flag.
Likewise, Kosovo uses blue, yellow and stars in its flag, which has been mocked as a "none too subtle nod to the flag of the European Union, which is about to become Kosovo's new best friend as it takes over protector status from the United Nations".
The flag of the Brussels-Capital Region (introduced in 2016) consists of a yellow iris with a white outline upon a blue background. Its colours are based on the colours of the Flag of Europe, because Brussels is considered the unofficial capital of the EU.
The coat of arms of the chairman of the European Union Military Committee (CEUMC), the highest-ranking officer within the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), depicts the European emblem as a coat of arms, i.e. emblazoned on an escutcheon. In heraldic terms, this makes the European flag is the banner of arms, i.e. the flag form of this coat of arms. In English blazon, the arms is On an azure field a circle of 12 golden mullets, their points not touching.
Several EU publications related to the CSDP generally, and its prospective development as a defence arm, have also displayed the European emblem in this manner, albeit as a graphical design element rather than an official symbol. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The flag of Europe or European flag consists of twelve golden stars forming a circle on a blue field. It was designed and adopted in 1955 by the Council of Europe (CoE) as a symbol for the whole of Europe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Since 1985, the flag has also been a symbol of the European Union (EU), whose 27 member states are all also CoE members, although in that year the EU had not yet assumed its present name or constitutional form (which came in steps in 1993 and 2009). Adoption by the EU, or EC as it then was, reflected long-standing CoE desire to see the flag used by other European organisations. Official EU use widened greatly in the 1990s. Nevertheless the flag has to date received no status in any of the EU's treaties. Its adoption as an official symbol was planned as part of the 2004 European Constitution but this failed to be ratified. Mention of the flag was removed in 2007 from the text of the Treaty of Lisbon, which was ratified. On the other hand, 16 EU members that year, plus France in 2017, have officially affirmed (by Declaration No. 5224) their attachment to the flag as an EU symbol.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The flag is used by other European entities, such as unified sport teams under the rubric Team Europe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The blazon given by the EU in 1996 describe the design as: \"On an azure field a circle of twelve golden mullets, their points not touching.\"",
"title": "Blazon"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The flag used is the Flag of Europe, which consists of a circle of twelve golden stars on a blue background. Originally designed in 1955 for the Council of Europe, the flag was adopted by the European Communities, the predecessors of the present European Union, in 1986. The Council of Europe gave the flag a symbolic description in the following terms, though the official symbolic description adopted by the EU omits the reference to the \"Western world\":",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars symbolise the peoples of Europe in a form of a circle, a sign of union. Their number is invariably twelve, the figure twelve being the symbol of perfection and entirety.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Other symbolic interpretations have been offered based on the account of its design by Paul M. Levy. The five-pointed star is used on many national flags and represents aspiration and education. Their golden colour is that of the sun, which is said to symbolise glory and enlightenment.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Their arrangement in a circle represents the constellation of Corona Borealis and can be seen as a crown and the stability of government. The blue background resembles the sky and symbolises truth and the intellect. It is also the colour traditionally used to represent the Virgin Mary. In many paintings of the Virgin Mary as Stella Maris she is crowned with a circle of twelve stars.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1987, following the adoption of the flag by the EC, Arsène Heitz (1908–1989), one of the designers who had submitted proposals for the flag's design, suggested a religious inspiration for it. He claimed that the circle of stars was based on the iconographic tradition of showing the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Woman of the Apocalypse, wearing a \"crown of twelve stars\".",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Heitz also made a connection to the date of the flag's adoption, 8 December 1955, coinciding with the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Paul M. G. Lévy, then Director of Information at the Council of Europe responsible for designing the flag, in a 1989 statement maintained that he had not been aware of any religious connotations.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In an interview given 26 February 1998, Lévy denied not only awareness of the \"Marian\" connection, but also denied that the final design of a circle of twelve stars was Heitz's. To the question \"Who really designed the flag?\" Lévy replied:",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "I did, and I calculated the proportions to be used for the geometric design. Arsène Heitz, who was an employee in the mail service, put in all sorts of proposals, including the 15-star design. But he submitted too many designs. He wanted to do the European currencies with 15 stars in the corner. He wanted to do national flags incorporating the Council of Europe flag.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Carlo Curti Gialdino (2005) has reconstructed the design process to the effect that Heitz's proposal contained varying numbers of stars, from which the version with twelve stars was chosen by the Committee of Ministers meeting at Deputy level in January 1955 as one out of two remaining candidate designs.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Lévy's 1998 interview apparently gave rise to a new variant of the \"Marian\" anecdote. An article published in Die Welt in August 1998 alleged that it was Lévy himself who was inspired to introduce a \"Marian\" element as he walked past a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "An article posted in La Raison in February 2000 further connected the donation of a stained glass window for Strasbourg Cathedral by the Council of Europe on 21 October 1956. This window, a work by Parisian master Max Ingrand, shows a blessing Madonna underneath a circle of 12 stars on dark blue ground. The overall design of the Madonna is inspired by the banner of the cathedral's Congrégation Mariale des Hommes, and the twelve stars are found on the statue venerated by this congregation inside the cathedral (twelve is also the number of members of the congregation's council). The Regional Office for Cultural Affairs describe this stained glass window called \"Le vitrail de l'Europe de Max Ingrand\" (The Glass Window of Europe of Max Ingrand).",
"title": "Symbolism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "According to graphical specifications published online by the Council of Europe in 2004, the flag is rectangular with 2:3 proportions: its fly (width) is one and a half times the length of its hoist (height). Twelve yellow stars are centred in a circle (the radius of which is a third of the length of the hoist) upon a blue background. All the stars are upright (one point straight up), have five points and are spaced equally, like the hour positions on the face of a clock. The diameter of each star is equal to one-ninth of the height of the hoist.",
"title": "Specifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The colours are regulated in the 1996 guide by the EC, and equivalently in the 2004 guide by the Council of Europe. The base colour of the flag is defined as Pantone \"Reflex Blue\", while the golden stars are portrayed in Pantone \"Yellow\":",
"title": "Specifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The 2013 logo of the Council of Europe has the colours:",
"title": "Specifications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The twelve-star \"flag of Europe\" was designed in 1950 and officially adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955. The same flag was adopted by the European Parliament in 1983. The European Council adopted it as an \"emblem\" for the European Communities in 1985. Its status in the European Communities was inherited by the European Union upon its formation in 1993. The proposal to adopt it as official flag of the European Union failed with the ratification of the European Constitution in 2005, and mention of all emblems suggesting statehood was removed from the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007, although sixteen member states signed a declaration supporting the continued use of the flag. In 2007, the European Parliament officially adopted the flag for its own use.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Council of Europe in 1950 appointed a committee to study the question of adopting a symbol. Numerous proposals were looked into.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Among the unsuccessful proposals was the flag of Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi's International Paneuropean Union, which he had himself recently adopted for the European Parliamentary Union. The design was a blue field with a red cross inside an orange circle at the centre. Kalergi was very committed to defending the cross as \"the great symbol of Europe's moral unity\", the Red Cross in particular being \"recognized by the whole world, by Christian and non-Christian nations[,] as a symbol of international charity and of the brotherhood of man\", but the proposal was rejected by Turkey (a member of the Council of Europe since 1949) on grounds of its religious associations in spite of Kalergi's suggestion of adding a crescent alongside the cross to overcome the Muslim objections.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Other proposals included the flag was the European Movement, which had a large green E on a white background, a design was based on the Olympic rings, eight golden rings on a blue background, rejected due to the rings' similarity with \"dial\", \"chain\" and \"zeros\", or a large yellow star on a blue background, rejected due to its equality with the flag of the Belgian Congo.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Consultative Assembly narrowed their choice to two designs. One was by Salvador de Madariaga, the founder of the College of Europe, who suggested a constellation of stars on a blue background (positioned according to capital cities, with a large star for Strasbourg, the seat of the council). He had circulated his flag round many European capitals and the concept had found favour. The second was a variant by Arsène Heitz, who worked for the council's postal service and had submitted dozens of designs, one of which was accepted by the Assembly. The design was similar to Salvador de Madariaga's, but rather than a constellation, the stars were arranged in a circle. Arsène Heitz was one of several people who proposed a circle of gold stars on a blue background. None of his proposals perfectly match the design that was adopted. Paul Levy claims that he was the one who designed the template for the flag, not Arsène Heitz. In 1987, Heitz would claim that his inspiration had been the crown of twelve stars of the Woman of the Apocalypse, often found in Marian iconography (see below).",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "On 25 September 1953, the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe recommended that a blue flag with fifteen gold stars be adopted as an emblem for the organisation, the number fifteen reflecting the number of states of the Council of Europe. West Germany objected to the fifteen-star design, as one of the members was Saar Protectorate, and to have its own star would imply sovereignty for the region. The Committee of Ministers (the council's main decision making body) agreed with the Assembly that the flag should be a circle of stars, but opted for a fixed number of twelve stars, \"representing perfection and entirety\". The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 25 October 1955 agreed to this. Paul M. G. Lévy drew up the exact design of the new flag. Officially adopted on 8 December 1955, the flag was unveiled at the Château de la Muette in Paris on 13 December 1955.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "For the flag of the Council of Europe, many stylistic proposals were made in regards to colours and symbolism. These first proposals were made 19 January 1950 by Paul Levy in a letter to the Secretary-General. He proposed that the flag should contain a cross for several reasons. Firstly, the cross symbolizes roads crossing, and also represents the east, the west, the north, and the south with its arms. Furthermore, the cross appears in most of the European Council members' flags, and it is the oldest and most noble symbol in Europe. Moreover, the cross depicted Christianity. As far as the colours are concerned, he proposed them to be white and green, colours of the European Movement, which was of great significance since 1947. Green also depicted hope, and the green cross over a white background was a design that had not been used yet. Finally, Levy proposed that the arms of Strasbourg was an important element to be added as it represented where the council would be, and being located in the heart of the cross meant that the council was the point where the European roads met.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Shortly after this design considerations by Paul Levy, on 27 July 1950, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, president of the Pan-European movement wrote a memorandum which contained some rules that a flag for such union should follow. The rules he stated where:",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "After these statements, Coudenhove-Kalergi proposed that the Pan-European movement flag would be the perfect one to fit these criteria",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "15 July 1951, the consultative assembly put forward a final memorandum on the European flag. The symbols proposed where the following",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Furthermore, several colours were also proposed:",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In the end, the flag of Europe was chosen to have 12 five-pointed golden stars in a circle over a blue background, probably inspired by the Pan-European flag and other designs such as Salvador de Madariaga's and Arsène Heitz's proposals.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Following Expo 58 in Brussels, the flag caught on and the Council of Europe lobbied for other European organisations to adopt the flag as a sign of European unity. The European Parliament took the initiative in seeking a flag to be adopted by the European Communities. Shortly after the first direct elections in 1979 a draft resolution was put forward on the issue. The resolution proposed that the Communities' flag should be that of the Council of Europe and it was adopted by the Parliament on 11 April 1983.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The June 1984 European Council (the Communities' leaders) summit in Fontainebleau stressed the importance of promoting a European image and identity to citizens and the world. The European Council appointed an ad hoc committee, named \"Committee for 'a People's Europe'\" (Adonnino Committee).",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "This committee submitted a substantial report, including wide-ranging suggestions, from organising a \"European lottery\" to campaigning for the introduction of local voting rights for foreign nationals throughout Europe. Under the header of \"strengthening of the Community's image and identity\", the Committee suggested the introduction of \"a flag and an emblem\", recommending a design based on the Council of Europe flag, but with the addition of \"a gold letter E\" in the center of the circle of stars. The European Council held in Milan on 28/29 June 1985 largely followed the recommendations of the Adonnino Committee. But as the adoption of a flag was strongly reminiscent of a national flag representing statehood and was extremely controversial with some member states (in particular the United Kingdom, as the proposed flag closely resembled the Queen's personal standard), the Council of Europe's \"flag of Europe\" design was adopted, without the letter E, only with the official status of a \"logo\". This compromise was widely disregarded from the beginning, and the \"European logo\", in spite of the explicit language of giving it the status of a \"logo\", was referred to as the \"Community flag\" or even \"European flag\" from the outset.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The Communities began to use the \"emblem\" as its de facto flag from 1986, raising it outside the Berlaymont building (the seat of the European Commission) for the first time on 29 May 1986.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The European Union, which was established by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 to replace the European Communities and encompass its functions, has retained de facto use of the \"Community logo\" of the EC. Technically and officially, the \"European flag\" as used by the European Union remains not a \"flag\" but \"a Community 'logo' — or 'emblem' — [...] eligible to be reproduced on rectangular pieces of fabric\".",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 1997, the \"Central and Eastern Eurobarometer\" poll included a section intending to \"discover the level of public awareness of the European Union\" in what were then candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Interviewees were shown \"a sticker of the European flag\" and asked to identify it. Responses considered correct were: the European Union, the European Community, the Common Market, and \"Europe in general\". 52% of those interviewed gave one of the correct answers, 15% gave a wrong answer (naming another institution, such as NATO or the United Nations), and 35% could or would not identify it.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In 2002, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas designed a symbol, dubbed the \"barcode\", which displayed the colours of the national flags of the EU member states in vertical stripes. It was reported as a replacement for the European flag, which was not the intention. It was not adopted by the EU or any other organisation at the time, but an updated version was used in the visual identity of the Austrian EU Presidency in 2006.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The official status of the emblem as the flag of the European Union was to be formalised as part of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. However, as the proposed treaty failed ratification, the mention of all state-like emblems, including the flag, were not included in the replacement Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force in 2009.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Instead, a separate declaration by sixteen Member States was included in the final act of the Treaty of Lisbon stating that the flag, the anthem, the motto and the currency and Europe Day \"will for them continue as symbols to express the sense of community of the people in the European Union and their allegiance to it.\"",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In reaction to the removal of the flag from the treaty, the European Parliament, which had supported the inclusion of such symbols, backed a proposal to use these symbols \"more often\" on behalf of the Parliament itself; Jo Leinen, MEP for Germany, suggested that the Parliament should take \"an avant-garde role\" in their use.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In September 2008, the Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs proposed a formal change in the institution's rules of procedure to make \"better use of the symbols\". Specifically, the flag would be present in all meeting rooms (not just the hemicycle) and at all official events. The proposal was passed on 8 October 2008 by 503 votes to 96 (15 abstentions).",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 2015, a set of commemorative Euro coins was issued on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the emblem by the European Communities.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In April 2004, the European flag was flown on behalf of the European Space Agency, by Dutch astronaut André Kuipers while on board the International Space Station, in reference to the Framework Agreement establishing the legal basis for co-operation between the European Space Agency and the European Union.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Following the 2004 Summer Olympics, President Romano Prodi expressed his hope \"to see the EU Member State teams in Beijing [viz., the 2008 games] carry the flag of the European Union alongside their own national flag as a symbol of our unity\". Use of the flag has also been reported as representing the European team at the Ryder Cup golf competition in the early 2000s, although most European participants preferred to use their own national flags.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The flag has been widely used by advocates of European integration since the late 1990s or early 2000s. It is often displayed in the context of Europe Day, on 9 May. Outside the EU, it was used in the context of several of the \"colour revolutions\" during the 2000s. In Belarus, it was used on protest marches alongside the white-red-white flag and other flags of opposition movements, such as Zubr, during the protests of 2004–2006. The flag was used widely in a 2007 pro-EU march in Minsk. Similar uses were reported from Moldova in 2009.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In Georgia, the flag has been on most government buildings since the coming to power of Mikheil Saakashvili (2007), who used it during his inauguration, stating: \"[the European] flag is Georgia's flag as well, as far as it embodies our civilisation, our culture, the essence of our history and perspective, and our vision for the future of Georgia.\"",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "It was used in 2008 by pro-western Serbian voters ahead of an election.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The flag became a symbol of European integration of Ukraine in the 2010s, particularly after Euromaidan. Ukraine is not a part of the EU but is a member of the Council of Europe. The flag is used by the Cabinet of Ukraine, Prime Minister of Ukraine, and MFA UA during official meetings. It was flown during the 2013 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and in 2016 by the pro-EU faction in the EU membership referendum campaigns in the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The flag has also been adopted as a symbol for EU policies and expansionism by EU-sceptics. In an early instance, Macedonian protesters burned \"the flag of the EU\" in the context of EU involvement in the 2001 insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia. In the 2005 Islamic protests against the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, the Danish flag was most frequently burned, but (as the cartoons were reprinted in many European countries), some protesters opted for burning \"the EU flag\" instead. Protesters during the Greek government-debt crisis of 2012 \"burned the EU flag and shouted 'EU out' \". Burning of the EU flag has been reported from other anti-EU rallies since.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "By the 2010s, the association of the emblem with the EU had become so strong that the Council of Europe saw it necessary to design a new logo, to \"avoid confusion\", officially adopted in 2013.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The EU emblem (\"EU flag\") is depicted on the euro banknotes. Euro coins also display a circle of twelve stars on both the national and common sides.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "It is also depicted on many driving licences and vehicle registration plates issued in the Union. Diplomatic missions of EU member states fly the EU flag alongside their national flag. In October 2000, the then-new British Embassy in Berlin sparked controversy between the UK and Germany and the EU when the embassy did not have a second external flagpole for the EU flag. After diplomatic negotiations, it was agreed that the outside flagpole would have the diplomatic Union Flag while inside the embassy, the EU flag would accompany the UK flag. Some member states' national airlines such as Lufthansa have the EU flag alongside their national flags on aircraft as part of their aircraft registration codes, but this is not an EU-mandated directive.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "A number of logos used by EU institutions, bodies and agencies are derived from the design and colours of the EU emblem.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Other emblems make reference to the European flag, such as the EU organic food label that uses the twelve stars but reorders them into the shape of a leaf on a green background. The original logo of the European Broadcasting Union used the twelve stars on a blue background adding ray beams to connect the countries.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "There was a proposal in 2003 to deface national civil ensigns with the EU emblem. The proposal was rejected by Parliament in 2004.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The flag is usually flown by the government of the country holding the rotating presidency Council of Ministers. In 2009, Czech President Václav Klaus, a eurosceptic, refused to fly the flag from his castle. In response, Greenpeace projected an image of the flag onto the castle and attempted to fly the flag from the building themselves.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Extraordinary flying of the flag is common on Europe Day, celebrated annually on 9 May. On Europe Day 2008, the flag was flown for the first time above the German Reichstag.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The flag has also been displayed in the context of EU military operations (EUFOR Althea).",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Sixteen out of twenty-seven member states in 2007 signed the declaration recognising \"the flag with a circle of twelve golden stars on a blue background\" as representing \"the sense of community of the people in the European Union and their allegiance to it.\" In 2017, president of France Emmanuel Macron signed a declaration endorsing the 2007 statement, so that, as of 2018, 17 out of 27 member states have recognised the emblem as a flag representing \"allegiance to the EU\": Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Italy has incorporated the EU flag into its flag code. According to an Italian law passed in 2000, it is mandatory for most public offices and buildings to hoist the European Flag alongside the Italian national flag (Law 22/1998 and Presidential Decree 121/2000). Outside official use, the flag may not be used for \"aims incompatible with European values\". The 2000 Italian flag code expressly replaces the Italian flag with the European flag in precedence when dignitaries from other EU countries visit – for example the EU flag would be in the middle of a group of three flags rather than the Italian flag. In Germany, the federal flag code of 1996 is only concerned with the German flag, but some of the states have legislated additional provisions for the European flag, such as Bavaria in its flag regulation of 2001, which mandates that the European flag take the third order of precedence, after the federal and state flags, except on Europe Day, where it is to take the first order of precedence.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In Ireland on occasions of \"European Union Events\" (for example, at a European Council meeting), where the European flag is flown alongside all national flags of member states, the national flags are placed in alphabetical order (according to their name in the main language of that state) with the European flag either at the head, or the far-right, of the order of flags.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In most member states, use of the EU flag is only de facto and not regulated by legislation, and as such subject to ad hoc revision. In national usage, national protocol usually demands the national flag takes precedence over the European flag (which is usually displayed to the right of the national flag from the observer's perspective). In November 2014, the speaker of the Hungarian Parliament László Kövér ordered the removal of the EU flag from the parliament building, following an incident in which a member of parliament had \"defenestrated\" two EU flags from a fourth story window. In November 2015, the newly elected Polish government under Beata Szydło removed the EU flag from government press conferences.",
"title": "Adoption and usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The design of the European flag has been used in a variation, such as that of the Council of Europe mentioned above, and also to a greater extent such as the flag of the Western European Union (WEU; now defunct), which uses the same colours and the stars but has a number of stars based on membership and in a semicircle rather than a circle. It is also defaced with the initials of the former Western European Union in two languages.",
"title": "Derivative designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "The European Parliament used its own flag from 1973, but never formally adopted it. It fell out of use with the adoption of the twelve-star flag by the Parliament in 1983. The flag followed the yellow and blue colour scheme however instead of twelve stars there were the letters EP and PE (initials of the European Parliament in the six community languages at the time) surrounded by a wreath. Sometime later, the Parliament chose to use a logo consisting of a stylised hemicycle and the EU flag at the bottom right.",
"title": "Derivative designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina, imposed by High Representative Carlos Westendorp, after the country's parliament failed to agree on a design, is reminiscent of the symbolism of the EU flag, using the same blue and yellow colours, and the stars, although of a different number and colour, are a direct reference to those of the European flag.",
"title": "Derivative designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Likewise, Kosovo uses blue, yellow and stars in its flag, which has been mocked as a \"none too subtle nod to the flag of the European Union, which is about to become Kosovo's new best friend as it takes over protector status from the United Nations\".",
"title": "Derivative designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The flag of the Brussels-Capital Region (introduced in 2016) consists of a yellow iris with a white outline upon a blue background. Its colours are based on the colours of the Flag of Europe, because Brussels is considered the unofficial capital of the EU.",
"title": "Derivative designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The coat of arms of the chairman of the European Union Military Committee (CEUMC), the highest-ranking officer within the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), depicts the European emblem as a coat of arms, i.e. emblazoned on an escutcheon. In heraldic terms, this makes the European flag is the banner of arms, i.e. the flag form of this coat of arms. In English blazon, the arms is On an azure field a circle of 12 golden mullets, their points not touching.",
"title": "Derivative designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Several EU publications related to the CSDP generally, and its prospective development as a defence arm, have also displayed the European emblem in this manner, albeit as a graphical design element rather than an official symbol.",
"title": "Derivative designs"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "",
"title": "Incorrect versions"
}
]
| The flag of Europe or European flag consists of twelve golden stars forming a circle on a blue field. It was designed and adopted in 1955 by the Council of Europe (CoE) as a symbol for the whole of Europe. Since 1985, the flag has also been a symbol of the European Union (EU), whose 27 member states are all also CoE members, although in that year the EU had not yet assumed its present name or constitutional form. Adoption by the EU, or EC as it then was, reflected long-standing CoE desire to see the flag used by other European organisations. Official EU use widened greatly in the 1990s. Nevertheless the flag has to date received no status in any of the EU's treaties. Its adoption as an official symbol was planned as part of the 2004 European Constitution but this failed to be ratified. Mention of the flag was removed in 2007 from the text of the Treaty of Lisbon, which was ratified. On the other hand, 16 EU members that year, plus France in 2017, have officially affirmed their attachment to the flag as an EU symbol. The flag is used by other European entities, such as unified sport teams under the rubric Team Europe. | 2001-11-02T00:08:55Z | 2023-12-04T01:11:08Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Europe |
10,026 | Anthem of Europe | The Anthem of Europe or European Anthem is a piece of instrumental music from the prelude of "Ode to Joy", the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony composed in 1823. In 1972, the Council of Europe adopted it as an anthem to represent Europe, and later in 1985 it was also adopted by the European Union.
Its purpose is to honour shared European values. The EU describes it as expressing the ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity. The anthem is played on official occasions such as political or civil events.
Friedrich Schiller wrote the poem "An die Freude" ("To Joy") in 1785 as a "celebration of the brotherhood of man". In later life, the poet was contemptuous of this popularity and dismissed the poem as typical of "the bad taste of the age" in which it had been written. After Schiller's death, the poem provided the words for the choral movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
In 1971 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided to propose adopting the prelude to the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony as the anthem, taking up a suggestion made by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1955. Beethoven was generally seen as the natural choice for a European anthem. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe officially announced the European Anthem on 19 January 1972 at Strasbourg: the prelude to "Ode to Joy", 4th movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th symphony.
Conductor Herbert von Karajan was asked to write three instrumental arrangements – for solo piano, for wind instruments and for symphony orchestra and he conducted the performance used to make the official recording. Karajan decided on a decidedly slower tempo, using crotchet (quarter note) = 120 whereas Beethoven had written minim (half note) = 80.
The anthem was launched via a major information campaign on Europe Day in 1972, without a public holiday, since it is close to May Day. In 1985, it was adopted by EU heads of state and government as the official anthem of the then European Community – since 1993 the European Union. It is not intended to replace the national anthems of the member states but rather to celebrate the values they all share and their unity in diversity. It expresses the ideals of a united Europe: freedom, peace, and solidarity. A connection to the Constitution of the European Union is eagerly awaited.
It was to have been included in the European Constitution along with the other European symbols; however, the treaty failed ratification and was replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon, which does not include any symbols. A declaration was attached to the treaty, in which sixteen member states formally recognised the proposed symbols. In response, the European Parliament decided that it would make greater use of the anthem, for example at official occasions. In October 2008, the Parliament changed its rules of procedure to have the anthem played at the opening of Parliament after elections and at formal sittings.
"Ode to Joy" is the anthem of the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Union (EU). In the context of the CoE, the anthem is used to represent all of Europe. In the context of the EU, the anthem is used to represent the union and its people. It is used on occasions such as Europe Day and formal events such as the signing of treaties. The European Parliament seeks to make greater use of the music; then-Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering stated he was moved when the anthem was played for him on his visit to Israel and ought to be used in Europe more often.
The German public radio station Deutschlandfunk has broadcast the anthem together with the Deutschlandlied shortly before midnight since New Year's Eve 2006. The two anthems were specially recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in versions characterized by "modesty and intensity".
At the 2007 signing ceremony for the Treaty of Lisbon, the plenipotentiaries of the European Union's twenty-seven member states stood in attendance while the "Ode to Joy" was played and a choir of 26 Portuguese children sang the original German lyrics.
In 2008 it was used by Kosovo as its national anthem until it adopted its own, and it was played at its declaration of independence, as a nod to the EU's role in its independence from Serbia.
"Ode to Joy", automatically orchestrated in seven different styles, was used on 18 June 2015 during the ceremony celebrating the 5000th ERC grantee as anthem of the European Research Council to represent achievements of European research.
"Ode to Joy" is used as the theme song to the 2016 UEFA Euro qualifying and the European qualifying of the 2018 FIFA World Cup football competition at the introduction of every match.
In 2017, members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from the Scottish National Party first whistled and then sang "Ode to Joy" during a vote at the House of Commons to protest against Brexit.
In 2018, the anthem of Japan and the anthem of the EU were performed in Tokyo during the official signing of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. The European anthem is often played at the signing of official economic or political agreements with foreign governments. In 2023, it was played after the anthem of Ukraine during President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to the EU parliament. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Anthem of Europe or European Anthem is a piece of instrumental music from the prelude of \"Ode to Joy\", the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony composed in 1823. In 1972, the Council of Europe adopted it as an anthem to represent Europe, and later in 1985 it was also adopted by the European Union.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Its purpose is to honour shared European values. The EU describes it as expressing the ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity. The anthem is played on official occasions such as political or civil events.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Friedrich Schiller wrote the poem \"An die Freude\" (\"To Joy\") in 1785 as a \"celebration of the brotherhood of man\". In later life, the poet was contemptuous of this popularity and dismissed the poem as typical of \"the bad taste of the age\" in which it had been written. After Schiller's death, the poem provided the words for the choral movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1971 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided to propose adopting the prelude to the \"Ode to Joy\" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony as the anthem, taking up a suggestion made by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1955. Beethoven was generally seen as the natural choice for a European anthem. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe officially announced the European Anthem on 19 January 1972 at Strasbourg: the prelude to \"Ode to Joy\", 4th movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th symphony.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Conductor Herbert von Karajan was asked to write three instrumental arrangements – for solo piano, for wind instruments and for symphony orchestra and he conducted the performance used to make the official recording. Karajan decided on a decidedly slower tempo, using crotchet (quarter note) = 120 whereas Beethoven had written minim (half note) = 80.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The anthem was launched via a major information campaign on Europe Day in 1972, without a public holiday, since it is close to May Day. In 1985, it was adopted by EU heads of state and government as the official anthem of the then European Community – since 1993 the European Union. It is not intended to replace the national anthems of the member states but rather to celebrate the values they all share and their unity in diversity. It expresses the ideals of a united Europe: freedom, peace, and solidarity. A connection to the Constitution of the European Union is eagerly awaited.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "It was to have been included in the European Constitution along with the other European symbols; however, the treaty failed ratification and was replaced by the Treaty of Lisbon, which does not include any symbols. A declaration was attached to the treaty, in which sixteen member states formally recognised the proposed symbols. In response, the European Parliament decided that it would make greater use of the anthem, for example at official occasions. In October 2008, the Parliament changed its rules of procedure to have the anthem played at the opening of Parliament after elections and at formal sittings.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "\"Ode to Joy\" is the anthem of the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Union (EU). In the context of the CoE, the anthem is used to represent all of Europe. In the context of the EU, the anthem is used to represent the union and its people. It is used on occasions such as Europe Day and formal events such as the signing of treaties. The European Parliament seeks to make greater use of the music; then-Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering stated he was moved when the anthem was played for him on his visit to Israel and ought to be used in Europe more often.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The German public radio station Deutschlandfunk has broadcast the anthem together with the Deutschlandlied shortly before midnight since New Year's Eve 2006. The two anthems were specially recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in versions characterized by \"modesty and intensity\".",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "At the 2007 signing ceremony for the Treaty of Lisbon, the plenipotentiaries of the European Union's twenty-seven member states stood in attendance while the \"Ode to Joy\" was played and a choir of 26 Portuguese children sang the original German lyrics.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 2008 it was used by Kosovo as its national anthem until it adopted its own, and it was played at its declaration of independence, as a nod to the EU's role in its independence from Serbia.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "\"Ode to Joy\", automatically orchestrated in seven different styles, was used on 18 June 2015 during the ceremony celebrating the 5000th ERC grantee as anthem of the European Research Council to represent achievements of European research.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "\"Ode to Joy\" is used as the theme song to the 2016 UEFA Euro qualifying and the European qualifying of the 2018 FIFA World Cup football competition at the introduction of every match.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 2017, members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from the Scottish National Party first whistled and then sang \"Ode to Joy\" during a vote at the House of Commons to protest against Brexit.",
"title": "Usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2018, the anthem of Japan and the anthem of the EU were performed in Tokyo during the official signing of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. The European anthem is often played at the signing of official economic or political agreements with foreign governments. In 2023, it was played after the anthem of Ukraine during President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy's visit to the EU parliament.",
"title": "Usage"
}
]
| The Anthem of Europe or European Anthem is a piece of instrumental music from the prelude of "Ode to Joy", the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony composed in 1823. In 1972, the Council of Europe adopted it as an anthem to represent Europe, and later in 1985 it was also adopted by the European Union. Its purpose is to honour shared European values. The EU describes it as expressing the ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity. The anthem is played on official occasions such as political or civil events. | 2001-11-02T00:04:25Z | 2023-11-20T15:50:02Z | [
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10,029 | Timeline of the evolutionary history of life | The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, mainly fossils.
In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, from kingdoms to species, and individual organisms and molecules, such as DNA and proteins. The similarities between all present day organisms imply a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged. More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived (over five billion) are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, with about 1.2 million or 14% documented, the rest not yet described. However, a 2016 report estimates an additional 1 trillion microbial species, with only 0.001% described.
There has been controversy between more traditional views of steadily increasing biodiversity, and a newer view of cycles of annihilation and diversification, so that certain past times, such as the Cambrian explosion, experienced maximums of diversity followed by sharp winnowing.
Species go extinct constantly as environments change, as organisms compete for environmental niches, and as genetic mutation leads to the rise of new species from older ones. At long irregular intervals, Earth's biosphere suffers a catastrophic die-off, a mass extinction, often comprising an accumulation of smaller extinction events over a relatively brief period.
The first known mass extinction was the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago, which killed most of the planet's obligate anaerobes. Researchers have identified five other major extinction events in Earth's history, with estimated losses below:
Smaller extinction events have occurred in the periods between, with some dividing geologic time periods and epochs. The Holocene extinction event is currently under way.
Factors in mass extinctions include continental drift, changes in atmospheric and marine chemistry, volcanism and other aspects of mountain formation, changes in glaciation, changes in sea level, and impact events.
In this timeline, Ma (for megaannum) means "million years ago," ka (for kiloannum) means "thousand years ago," and ya means "years ago."
4540 Ma – 4000 Ma
4000 Ma – 2500 Ma
2500 Ma – 539 Ma. Contains the Palaeoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic eras.
539 Ma – present
The Phanerozoic Eon (Greek: period of well-displayed life) marks the appearance in the fossil record of abundant, shell-forming and/or trace-making organisms. It is subdivided into three eras, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, with major mass extinctions at division points.
538.8 Ma – 251.9 Ma and contains the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods.
From 251.9 Ma to 66 Ma and containing the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
66 Ma – present | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, mainly fossils.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, from kingdoms to species, and individual organisms and molecules, such as DNA and proteins. The similarities between all present day organisms imply a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged. More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived (over five billion) are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, with about 1.2 million or 14% documented, the rest not yet described. However, a 2016 report estimates an additional 1 trillion microbial species, with only 0.001% described.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "There has been controversy between more traditional views of steadily increasing biodiversity, and a newer view of cycles of annihilation and diversification, so that certain past times, such as the Cambrian explosion, experienced maximums of diversity followed by sharp winnowing.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Species go extinct constantly as environments change, as organisms compete for environmental niches, and as genetic mutation leads to the rise of new species from older ones. At long irregular intervals, Earth's biosphere suffers a catastrophic die-off, a mass extinction, often comprising an accumulation of smaller extinction events over a relatively brief period.",
"title": "Extinction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The first known mass extinction was the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago, which killed most of the planet's obligate anaerobes. Researchers have identified five other major extinction events in Earth's history, with estimated losses below:",
"title": "Extinction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Smaller extinction events have occurred in the periods between, with some dividing geologic time periods and epochs. The Holocene extinction event is currently under way.",
"title": "Extinction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Factors in mass extinctions include continental drift, changes in atmospheric and marine chemistry, volcanism and other aspects of mountain formation, changes in glaciation, changes in sea level, and impact events.",
"title": "Extinction"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In this timeline, Ma (for megaannum) means \"million years ago,\" ka (for kiloannum) means \"thousand years ago,\" and ya means \"years ago.\"",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "4540 Ma – 4000 Ma",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "4000 Ma – 2500 Ma",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "2500 Ma – 539 Ma. Contains the Palaeoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic eras.",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "539 Ma – present",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Phanerozoic Eon (Greek: period of well-displayed life) marks the appearance in the fossil record of abundant, shell-forming and/or trace-making organisms. It is subdivided into three eras, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, with major mass extinctions at division points.",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "538.8 Ma – 251.9 Ma and contains the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous and Permian periods.",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "From 251.9 Ma to 66 Ma and containing the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "66 Ma – present",
"title": "Detailed timeline"
}
]
| The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence, mainly fossils. In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, from kingdoms to species, and individual organisms and molecules, such as DNA and proteins. The similarities between all present day organisms imply a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged. More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, with about 1.2 million or 14% documented, the rest not yet described. However, a 2016 report estimates an additional 1 trillion microbial species, with only 0.001% described. There has been controversy between more traditional views of steadily increasing biodiversity, and a newer view of cycles of annihilation and diversification, so that certain past times, such as the Cambrian explosion, experienced maximums of diversity followed by sharp winnowing. | 2001-11-13T15:59:17Z | 2023-12-29T21:33:31Z | [
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10,030 | Edmund Burke | Edmund Burke (/ˈbɜːrk/; 12 January [NS] 1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher who spent most of his career in Great Britain. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party.
Burke was a proponent of underpinning virtues with manners in society and of the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state. These views were expressed in his A Vindication of Natural Society (1756). He criticised the actions of the British government towards the American colonies, including its taxation policies. Burke also supported the rights of the colonists to resist metropolitan authority, although he opposed the attempt to achieve independence. He is remembered for his support for Catholic emancipation, the Impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and his staunch opposition to the French Revolution.
In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke asserted that the revolution was destroying the fabric of "good" society and traditional institutions of state and society, and he condemned the persecution of the Catholic Church that resulted from it. This led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig Party which he dubbed the Old Whigs as opposed to the pro–French Revolution New Whigs led by Charles James Fox.
In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals. Subsequently, in the 20th century, he became widely regarded, especially in the United States, as the philosophical founder of conservatism.
Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland. His mother Mary, née Nagle (c. 1702–1770), was a Roman Catholic who hailed from a County Cork family and a cousin of the Catholic educator Nano Nagle, whereas his father Richard (died 1761), a successful solicitor, was a member of the Church of Ireland. It remains unclear whether this is the same Richard Burke who converted from Catholicism. The Burgh (Burke) dynasty descends from the Anglo-Norman knight, William de Burgh (d.1205/6), who arrived in Ireland in 1185 following Henry II of England's 1171 invasion of Ireland and is among the "chief Gall or Old English families that assimilated into Gaelic society" (the surname de Burgh (Latinised as de Burgo) was gaelicised in Irish as de Búrca or Búrc which over the centuries became Burke).
Burke adhered to his father's faith and remained a practising Anglican throughout his life, unlike his sister Juliana who was brought up as and remained a Roman Catholic. Later, his political enemies repeatedly accused him of having been educated at the Jesuit College of St. Omer, near Calais, France; and of harbouring secret Catholic sympathies at a time when membership of the Catholic Church would disqualify him from public office per Penal Laws in Ireland. As Burke told Frances Crewe:
Mr. Burke's Enemies often endeavoured to convince the World that he had been bred up in the Catholic Faith, & that his Family were of it, & that he himself had been educated at St. Omer—but this was false, as his father was a regular practitioner of the Law at Dublin, which he could not be unless of the Established Church: & it so happened that though Mr. B—was twice at Paris, he never happened to go through the Town of St. Omer.
After being elected to the House of Commons, Burke took the required oath of allegiance and abjuration, the oath of supremacy and the declaration against transubstantiation.
As a child, Burke sometimes spent time away from the unhealthy air of Dublin with his mother's family near Killavullen in the Blackwater Valley in County Cork. He received his early education at a Quaker school in Ballitore, County Kildare, some 67 kilometres (42 mi) from Dublin; and possibly like his cousin Nano Nagle at a Hedge school near Killavullen. He remained in correspondence with his schoolmate from there, Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of the school's owner, throughout his life.
In 1744, Burke started at Trinity College Dublin, a Protestant establishment which up until 1793 did not permit Catholics to take degrees. In 1747, he set up a debating society, Edmund Burke's Club, which in 1770 merged with TCD's Historical Club to form the College Historical Society, the oldest undergraduate society in the world. The minutes of the meetings of Burke's Club remain in the collection of the Historical Society. Burke graduated from Trinity in 1748. Burke's father wanted him to read Law and with this in mind, he went to London in 1750, where he entered the Middle Temple, before soon giving up legal study to travel in Continental Europe. After eschewing the Law, he pursued a livelihood through writing.
The late Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History was published in 1752 and his collected works appeared in 1754. This provoked Burke into writing his first published work, A Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind, appearing in Spring 1756. Burke imitated Bolingbroke's style and ideas in a reductio ad absurdum of his arguments for deistic rationalism in order to demonstrate their absurdity.
Burke claimed that Bolingbroke's arguments against revealed religion could apply to all social and civil institutions as well. Lord Chesterfield and Bishop Warburton as well as others initially thought that the work was genuinely by Bolingbroke rather than a satire. All the reviews of the work were positive, with critics especially appreciative of Burke's quality of writing. Some reviewers failed to notice the ironic nature of the book which led to Burke stating in the preface to the second edition (1757) that it was a satire.
Richard Hurd believed that Burke's imitation was near-perfect and that this defeated his purpose, arguing that an ironist "should take care by a constant exaggeration to make the ridicule shine through the Imitation. Whereas this Vindication is everywhere enforc'd, not only in the language, and on the principles of L. Bol., but with so apparent, or rather so real an earnestness, that half his purpose is sacrificed to the other". A minority of scholars have taken the position that in fact Burke did write the Vindication in earnest, later disowning it only for political reasons.
In 1757, Burke published a treatise on aesthetics titled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful that attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant. It was his only purely philosophical work, completed in 1753. When asked by Sir Joshua Reynolds and French Laurence to expand it thirty years later, Burke replied that he was no longer fit for abstract speculation.
On 25 February 1757, Burke signed a contract with Robert Dodsley to write a "history of England from the time of Julius Caesar to the end of the reign of Queen Anne", its length being eighty quarto sheets (640 pages), nearly 400,000 words. It was to be submitted for publication by Christmas 1758. Burke completed the work to the year 1216 and stopped; it was not published until after Burke's death, in an 1812 collection of his works, An Essay Towards an Abridgement of the English History. G. M. Young did not value Burke's history and claimed that it was "demonstrably a translation from the French". On commenting on the story that Burke stopped his history because David Hume published his, Lord Acton said "it is ever to be regretted that the reverse did not occur".
During the year following that contract, Burke founded with Dodsley the influential Annual Register, a publication in which various authors evaluated the international political events of the previous year. The extent to which Burke contributed to the Annual Register is unclear. In his biography of Burke, Robert Murray quotes the Register as evidence of Burke's opinions, yet Philip Magnus in his biography does not cite it directly as a reference. Burke remained the chief editor of the publication until at least 1789 and there is no evidence that any other writer contributed to it before 1766.
On 12 March 1757, Burke married Jane Mary Nugent (1734–1812), daughter of Dr. Christopher Nugent, a Catholic physician who had provided him with medical treatment at Bath. Their son Richard was born on 9 February 1758 while an elder son, Christopher, died in infancy. Burke also helped raise a ward, Edmund Nagle (later Admiral Sir Edmund Nagle), the son of a maternal cousin orphaned in 1763.
At about this same time, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton (known as "Single-speech Hamilton"). When Hamilton was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, Burke accompanied him to Dublin as his private secretary, a position he held for three years. In 1765, Burke became private secretary to the liberal Whig politician Charles, Marquess of Rockingham, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, who remained Burke's close friend and associate until his death in 1782.
In December 1765, Burke entered the House of Commons of the British Parliament as Member for Wendover in Buckinghamshire, a pocket borough in the gift of Lord Fermanagh, later 2nd Earl Verney and a close political ally of Rockingham. After Burke delivered his maiden speech, William Pitt the Elder said he had "spoken in such a manner as to stop the mouths of all Europe" and that the Commons should congratulate itself on acquiring such a Member.
The first great subject Burke addressed was the controversy with the American colonies which soon developed into war and ultimate separation. In reply to the 1769 Grenvillite pamphlet The Present State of the Nation, he published his own pamphlet titled Observations on a Late State of the Nation. Surveying the finances of France, Burke predicts "some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system".
During the same year, with mostly borrowed money, Burke purchased Gregories, a 600-acre (2.4 km) estate near Beaconsfield. Although the estate included saleable assets such as art works by Titian, Gregories proved a heavy financial burden in the following decades and Burke was never able to repay its purchase price in full. His speeches and writings, having made him famous, led to the suggestion that he was the author of the Letters of Junius.
At about this time, Burke joined the circle of leading intellectuals and artists in London of whom Samuel Johnson was the central luminary. This circle also included David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith and Joshua Reynolds. Edward Gibbon described Burke as "the most eloquent and rational madman that I ever knew". Although Johnson admired Burke's brilliance, he found him a dishonest politician.
Burke took a leading role in the debate regarding the constitutional limits to the executive authority of the King. He argued strongly against unrestrained royal power and for the role of political parties in maintaining a principled opposition capable of preventing abuses, either by the monarch or by specific factions within the government. His most important publication in this regard was his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents of 23 April 1770. Burke identified the "discontents" as stemming from the "secret influence" of a neo-Tory group he labelled as the "king's friends", whose system "comprehending the exterior and interior administrations, is commonly called, in the technical language of the Court, Double Cabinet". Britain needed a party with "an unshaken adherence to principle, and attachment to connexion, against every allurement of interest". Party divisions, "whether operating for good or evil, are things inseparable from free government".
During 1771, Burke wrote a bill that would have given juries the right to determine what was libel, if passed. Burke spoke in favour of the bill, but it was opposed by some, including Charles James Fox, not becoming law. When introducing his own bill in 1791 in opposition, Fox repeated almost verbatim the text of Burke's bill without acknowledgement. Burke was prominent in securing the right to publish debates held in Parliament.
Speaking in a Parliamentary debate on the prohibition on the export of grain on 16 November 1770, Burke argued in favour of a free market in corn: "There are no such things as a high, & a low price that is encouraging, & discouraging; there is nothing but a natural price, which grain brings at an universal market". In 1772, Burke was instrumental in the passing of the Repeal of Certain Laws Act 1772 which repealed various old laws against dealers and forestallers in corn.
In the Annual Register for 1772 (published in July 1773), Burke condemned the partition of Poland. He saw it as "the first very great breach in the modern political system of Europe" and as upsetting the balance of power in Europe.
On 3 November 1774, Burke was elected Member for Bristol, at the time "England's second city" and a large constituency with a genuine electoral contest. At the conclusion of the poll, he made his Speech to the Electors of Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll, a remarkable disclaimer of the constituent-imperative form of democracy, for which he substituted his statement of the "representative mandate" form. He failed to win re-election for that seat in the subsequent 1780 general election.
In May 1778, Burke supported a Parliamentary motion revising restrictions on Irish trade. His constituents, citizens of the great trading city of Bristol, urged Burke to oppose free trade with Ireland. Burke resisted their protestations and said: "If, from this conduct, I shall forfeit their suffrages at an ensuing election, it will stand on record an example to future representatives of the Commons of England, that one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents when his judgment assured him they were wrong".
Burke published Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol on the Bills relative to the Trade of Ireland in which he espoused "some of the chief principles of commerce; such as the advantage of free intercourse between all parts of the same kingdom...the evils attending restriction and monopoly...and that the gain of others is not necessarily our loss, but on the contrary an advantage by causing a greater demand for such wares as we have for sale".
Burke also supported the attempts of Sir George Savile to repeal some of the penal laws against Catholics. Burke also called capital punishment "the Butchery which we call justice" in 1776 and in 1780 condemned the use of the pillory for two men convicted for attempting to practice sodomy.
This support for unpopular causes, notably free trade with Ireland and Catholic emancipation, led to Burke losing his seat in 1780. For the remainder of his Parliamentary career, Burke represented Malton, another pocket borough under the Marquess of Rockingham's patronage.
Burke expressed his support for the grievances of the American Thirteen Colonies under the government of King George III and his appointed representatives. On 19 April 1774, Burke made a speech, "On American Taxation" (published in January 1775), on a motion to repeal the tea duty:
Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it...Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it...Do not burthen them with taxes...But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question...If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body of men will be argued into slavery.
On 22 March 1775, Burke delivered in the House of Commons a speech (published in May 1775) on reconciliation with America. Burke appealed for peace as preferable to civil war and reminded the House of Commons of America's growing population, its industry and its wealth. He warned against the notion that the Americans would back down in the face of force since most Americans were of British descent:
[T]he people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen...They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. The people are Protestants...a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it...My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation—the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.
Burke prized peace with America above all else, pleading with the House of Commons to remember that the interest by way of money received from the American colonies was far more attractive than any sense of putting the colonists in their place:
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war, not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations, not peace to arise out of universal discord...[I]t is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.
Burke was not merely presenting a peace agreement to Parliament, but rather he stepped forward with four reasons against using force, carefully reasoned. He laid out his objections in an orderly manner, focusing on one before moving to the next. His first concern was that the use of force would have to be temporary and that the uprisings and objections to British governance in Colonial America would not be. Second, Burke worried about the uncertainty surrounding whether Britain would win a conflict in America. "An armament", Burke said, "is not a victory". Third, Burke brought up the issue of impairment, stating that it would do the British government no good to engage in a scorched earth war and have the object they desired (America) become damaged or even useless. The American colonists could always retreat into the mountains, but the land they left behind would most likely be unusable, whether by accident or design. The fourth and final reason to avoid the use of force was experienced as the British had never attempted to rein in an unruly colony by force and they did not know if it could be done, let alone accomplished thousands of miles away from home. Not only were all of these concerns reasonable, but some turned out to be prophetic—the American colonists did not surrender, even when things looked extremely bleak and the British were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempts to win a war fought on American soil.
It was not temporary force, uncertainty, impairment, or even experience that Burke cited as the primary reason for avoiding war with the American colonies. Rather, it was the character of the American people themselves: "In this character of Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole...[T]his fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth...[The] men [are] acute, inquisitive, dextrous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources". Burke concludes with another plea for peace and a prayer that Britain might avoid actions which in Burke's words "may bring on the destruction of this Empire".
Burke proposed six resolutions to settle the American conflict peacefully:
Had they been passed, the effect of these resolutions can never be known. Unfortunately, Burke delivered this speech just less than a month before the explosive conflict at Concord and Lexington. As these resolutions were not enacted, little was done that would help to dissuade conflict.
Among the reasons this speech was so greatly admired was its passage on Lord Bathurst (1684–1775) in which Burke describes an angel in 1704 prophesying to Bathurst the future greatness of England and also of America: "Young man, There is America—which at this day serves little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, shew itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world". Samuel Johnson was so irritated at hearing it continually praised that he made a parody of it, where the devil appears to a young Whig and predicts that in short time Whiggism will poison even the paradise of America.
The administration of Lord North (1770–1782) tried to defeat the colonist rebellion by military force. British and American forces clashed in 1775 and in 1776 came the American Declaration of Independence. Burke was appalled by celebrations in Britain of the defeat of the Americans in New York and Pennsylvania. He claimed the English national character was being changed by this authoritarianism. Burke wrote: "As to the good people of England, they seem to partake every day more and more of the Character of that administration which they have been induced to tolerate. I am satisfied, that within a few years there has been a great Change in the National Character. We seem no longer that eager, inquisitive, jealous, fiery people, which we have been formerly".
In Burke's view, the British government was fighting "the American English" ("our English Brethren in the Colonies"), with a Germanic king employing "the hireling sword of German boors and vassals" to destroy the English liberties of the colonists. On American independence, Burke wrote: "I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity".
During the Gordon Riots in 1780, Burke became a target of hostility and his home was placed under armed guard by the military.
The fall of North led to Rockingham being recalled to power in March 1782. Burke was appointed Paymaster of the Forces and a Privy Counsellor, but without a seat in Cabinet. Rockingham's unexpected death in July 1782 and replacement with Shelburne as Prime Minister put an end to his administration after only a few months, but Burke did manage to introduce two Acts.
The Paymaster General Act 1782 ended the post as a lucrative sinecure. Previously, Paymasters had been able to draw on money from HM Treasury at their discretion. Instead, now they were required to put the money they had requested to withdraw from the Treasury into the Bank of England, from where it was to be withdrawn for specific purposes. The Treasury would receive monthly statements of the Paymaster's balance at the Bank. This Act was repealed by Shelburne's administration, but the Act that replaced it repeated verbatim almost the whole text of the Burke Act.
The Civil List and Secret Service Money Act 1782 was a watered-down version of Burke's original intentions as outlined in his famous Speech on Economical Reform of 11 February 1780. However, he managed to abolish 134 offices in the royal household and civil administration. The third Secretary of State and the Board of Trade were abolished and pensions were limited and regulated. The Act was anticipated to save £72,368 a year.
In February 1783, Burke resumed the post of Paymaster of the Forces when Shelburne's government fell and was replaced by a coalition headed by North that included Charles James Fox. That coalition fell in 1783 and was succeeded by the long Tory administration of William Pitt the Younger which lasted until 1801. Accordingly, having supported Fox and North, Burke was in opposition for the remainder of his political life.
In 1774, Burke's Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll was noted for its defence of the principles of representative government against the notion that those elected to assemblies like Parliament are, or should be, merely delegates:
Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any sett of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
My worthy Colleague says, his Will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If Government were a matter of Will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But Government and Legislation are matters of reason and judgement, and not of inclination; and, what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one sett of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?
To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenour of our constitution.
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.
It is often forgotten in this connection that Burke, as detailed below, was an opponent of slavery, and therefore his conscience was refusing to support a trade in which many of his Bristol electors were lucratively involved.
Political scientist Hanna Pitkin points out that Burke linked the interest of the district with the proper behaviour of its elected official, explaining: "Burke conceives of broad, relatively fixed interest, few in number and clearly defined, of which any group or locality has just one. These interests are largely economic or associated with particular localities whose livelihood they characterize, in his over-all prosperity they involve".
Burke was a leading sceptic with respect to democracy. While admitting that theoretically in some cases it might be desirable, he insisted a democratic government in Britain in his day would not only be inept, but also oppressive. He opposed democracy for three basic reasons. First, government required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that occurred rarely among the common people. Second, he thought that if they had the vote, common people had dangerous and angry passions that could be aroused easily by demagogues, fearing that the authoritarian impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property. Third, Burke warned that democracy would create a tyranny over unpopular minorities, who needed the protection of the upper classes.
Burke proposed a bill to ban slaveholders from being able to sit in the House of Commons, claiming they were a danger incompatible with traditional notions of British liberty. While Burke did believe that Africans were "barbaric" and needed to be "civilised" by Christianity, Gregory Collins argues that this was not an unusual attitude amongst abolitionists at the time. Furthermore, Burke seemed to believe that Christianity would provide a civilising benefit to any group of people, as he believed Christianity had "tamed" European civilisation and regarded Southern European peoples as equally savage and barbarous. Collins also suggests that Burke viewed the "uncivilised" behaviour of African slaves as being partially caused by slavery itself, as he believed that making someone a slave stripped them of any virtues and rendered them mentally deficient, regardless of race. Burke proposed a gradual program of emancipation called Sketch of a Negro Code, which Collins argues was quite detailed for the time. Collins concludes that Burke's "gradualist" position on the emancipation of slaves, while perhaps seeming ridiculous to some modern-day readers, was nonetheless sincere.
For years, Burke pursued impeachment efforts against Warren Hastings, formerly Governor-General of Bengal, that resulted in the trial during 1786. His interaction with the British dominion of India began well before Hastings' impeachment trial. For two decades prior to the impeachment, Parliament had dealt with the Indian issue. This trial was the pinnacle of years of unrest and deliberation. In 1781, Burke was first able to delve into the issues surrounding the East India Company when he was appointed Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on East Indian Affairs—from that point until the end of the trial, India was Burke's primary concern. This committee was charged "to investigate alleged injustices in Bengal, the war with Hyder Ali, and other Indian difficulties". While Burke and the committee focused their attention on these matters, a second secret committee was formed to assess the same issues. Both committee reports were written by Burke. Among other purposes, the reports conveyed to the Indian princes that Britain would not wage war on them, along with demanding that the East India Company should recall Hastings. This was Burke's first call for substantive change regarding imperial practices. When addressing the whole House of Commons regarding the committee report, Burke described the Indian issue as one that "began 'in commerce' but 'ended in empire'".
On 28 February 1785, Burke delivered a now-famous speech, The Nabob of Arcot's Debts, wherein he condemned the damage to India by the East India Company. In the province of the Carnatic, the Indians had constructed a system of reservoirs to make the soil fertile in a naturally dry region, and centred their society on the husbandry of water:
These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people; testators to a posterity which they embraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition; but by the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of human life, had strained, with all the reachings and graspings of a vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of nature, and to perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians, the protectors, the nourishers of mankind.
Burke claimed that the advent of East India Company domination in India had eroded much that was good in these traditions and that as a consequence of this and the lack of new customs to replace them the Indian populace under Company rule was needlessly suffering. He set about establishing a set of imperial expectations, whose moral foundation would in his opinion warrant an overseas empire.
On 4 April 1786, Burke presented the House of Commons with the Article of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Hastings. The impeachment in Westminster Hall which did not begin until 14 February 1788 would be the "first major public discursive event of its kind in England", bringing the morality of imperialism to the forefront of public perception. Burke was already known for his eloquent rhetorical skills and his involvement in the trial only enhanced its popularity and significance. Burke's indictment, fuelled by emotional indignation, branded Hastings a "captain-general of iniquity" who never dined without "creating a famine", whose heart was "gangrened to the core" and who resembled both a "spider of Hell" and a "ravenous vulture devouring the carcasses of the dead". The House of Commons eventually impeached Hastings, but subsequently the House of Lords acquitted him of all charges.
Initially, Burke did not condemn the French Revolution. In a letter of 9 August 1789, he wrote: "England gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for Liberty and not knowing whether to blame or to applaud! The thing indeed, though I thought I saw something like it in progress for several years, has still something in it paradoxical and Mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to admire; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner". The events of 5–6 October 1789, when a crowd of Parisian women marched on Versailles to compel King Louis XVI to return to Paris, turned Burke against it. In a letter to his son Richard Burke dated 10 October, he said: "This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous state of France—where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be produced in the place of it—where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable". On 4 November, Charles-Jean-François Depont wrote to Burke, requesting that he endorse the Revolution. Burke replied that any critical language of it by him should be taken "as no more than the expression of doubt", but he added: "You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover'd freedom". In the same month, he described France as "a country undone". Burke's first public condemnation of the Revolution occurred on the debate in Parliament on the army estimates on 9 February 1790 provoked by praise of the Revolution by Pitt and Fox:
Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures...[There was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy...[In religion] the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.
In January 1790, Burke read Richard Price's sermon of 4 November 1789 entitled A Discourse on the Love of Our Country to the Revolution Society. That society had been founded to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In this sermon, Price espoused the philosophy of universal "Rights of Men". Price argued that love of our country "does not imply any conviction of the superior value of it to other countries, or any particular preference of its laws and constitution of government". Instead, Price asserted that Englishmen should see themselves "more as citizens of the world than as members of any particular community".
A debate between Price and Burke ensued that was "the classic moment at which two fundamentally different conceptions of national identity were presented to the English public". Price claimed that the principles of the Glorious Revolution included "the right to choose our own governors, to cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a government for ourselves".
Immediately after reading Price's sermon, Burke wrote a draft of what eventually became Reflections on the Revolution in France. On 13 February 1790, a notice in the press said that shortly Burke would publish a pamphlet on the Revolution and its British supporters, but he spent the year revising and expanding it. On 1 November, he finally published the Reflections and it was an immediate best-seller. Priced at five shillings, it was more expensive than most political pamphlets, but by the end of 1790, it had gone through ten printings and sold approximately 17,500 copies. A French translation appeared on 29 November and on 30 November the translator Pierre-Gaëton Dupont wrote to Burke saying 2,500 copies had already been sold. The French translation ran to ten printings by June 1791.
What the Glorious Revolution had meant was as important to Burke and his contemporaries as it had been for the last one hundred years in British politics. In the Reflections, Burke argued against Price's interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and instead, gave a classic Whig defence of it. Burke argued against the idea of abstract, metaphysical rights of humans and instead advocated national tradition:
The Revolution was made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty...The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon [scion] alien to the nature of the original plant...Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove that the ancient charter...were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom...In the famous law...called the Petition of Right, the parliament says to the king, "Your subjects have inherited this freedom", claiming their franchises not on abstract principles "as the rights of men", but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers.
Burke said: "We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to Parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected". Burke defended this prejudice on the grounds that it is "the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages" and superior to individual reason, which is small in comparison. "Prejudice", Burke claimed, "is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit". Burke criticised social contract theory by claiming that society is indeed a contract, although it is "a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born".
The most famous passage in Burke's Reflections was his description of the events of 5–6 October 1789 and the part of Marie-Antoinette in them. Burke's account differs little from modern historians who have used primary sources. His use of flowery language to describe it provoked both praise and criticism. Philip Francis wrote to Burke saying that what he wrote of Marie-Antoinette was "pure foppery". Edward Gibbon reacted differently: "I adore his chivalry". Burke was informed by an Englishman who had talked with the Duchesse de Biron that when Marie-Antoinette was reading the passage she burst into tears and took considerable time to finish reading it. Price had rejoiced that the French king had been "led in triumph" during the October Days, but to Burke, this symbolised the opposing revolutionary sentiment of the Jacobins and the natural sentiments of those who shared his own view with horror—that the ungallant assault on Marie-Antoinette was a cowardly attack on a defenceless woman.
Louis XVI translated the Reflections "from end to end" into French. Fellow Whig MPs Richard Sheridan and Charles James Fox disagreed with Burke and split with him. Fox thought the Reflections to be "in very bad taste" and "favouring Tory principles". Other Whigs such as the Duke of Portland and Earl Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke, but they did not wish for a public breach with their Whig colleagues. Burke wrote on 29 November 1790: "I have received from the Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord John Cavendish, Montagu (Frederick Montagu MP), and a long et cetera of the old Stamina of the Whiggs a most full approbation of the principles of that work and a kind indulgence to the execution". The Duke of Portland said in 1791 that when anyone criticised the Reflections to him, he informed them that he had recommended the book to his sons as containing the true Whig creed.
In the opinion of Paul Langford, Burke crossed something of a Rubicon when he attended a levee on 3 February 1791 to meet the King, later described by Jane Burke as follows:
On his coming to Town for the Winter, as he generally does, he went to the Levee with the Duke of Portland, who went with Lord William to kiss hands on his going into the Guards—while Lord William was kissing hands, The King was talking to The Duke, but his Eyes were fixed on [Burke] who was standing in the Crowd, and when He said His say to The Duke, without waiting for [Burke]'s coming up in his turn, The King went up to him, and, after the usual questions of how long have you been in Town and the weather, He said you have been very much employed of late, and very much confined. [Burke] said, no, Sir, not more than usual—You have and very well employed too, but there are none so deaf as those that w'ont hear, and none so blind as those that w'ont see—[Burke] made a low bow, Sir, I certainly now understand you, but was afraid my vanity or presumption might have led me to imagine what Your Majesty has said referred to what I have done—You cannot be vain—You have been of use to us all, it is a general opinion, is it not so Lord Stair? who was standing near. It is said Lord Stair;—Your Majesty's adopting it, Sir, will make the opinion general, said [Burke]—I know it is the general opinion, and I know that there is no Man who calls himself a Gentleman that must not think himself obliged to you, for you have supported the cause of the Gentlemen—You know the tone at Court is a whisper, but The King said all this loud, so as to be heard by every one at Court.
Burke's Reflections sparked a pamphlet war. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the first into print, publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Men a few weeks after Burke. Thomas Paine followed with the Rights of Man in 1791. James Mackintosh, who wrote Vindiciae Gallicae, was the first to see the Reflections as "the manifesto of a Counter Revolution". Mackintosh later agreed with Burke's views, remarking in December 1796 after meeting him that Burke was "minutely and accurately informed, to a wonderful exactness, with respect to every fact relating to the French Revolution". Mackintosh later said: "Burke was one of the first thinkers as well as one of the greatest orators of his time. He is without parallel in any age, excepting perhaps Lord Bacon and Cicero; and his works contain an ampler store of political and moral wisdom than can be found in any other writer whatever".
In November 1790, François-Louis-Thibault de Menonville, a member of the National Assembly of France, wrote to Burke, praising Reflections and requesting more "very refreshing mental food" that he could publish. This Burke did in April 1791 when he published A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. Burke called for external forces to reverse the Revolution and included an attack on the late French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau as being the subject of a personality cult that had developed in revolutionary France. Although Burke conceded that Rousseau sometimes showed "a considerable insight into human nature", he mostly was critical. Although he did not meet Rousseau on his visit to Britain in 1766–1767, Burke was a friend of David Hume, with whom Rousseau had stayed. Burke said Rousseau "entertained no principle either to influence of his heart, or to guide his understanding—but vanity"—which he "was possessed to a degree little short of madness". He also cited Rousseau's Confessions as evidence that Rousseau had a life of "obscure and vulgar vices" that was not "chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or even distinguished by a single good action". Burke contrasted Rousseau's theory of universal benevolence and his having sent his children to a foundling hospital, stating that he was "a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred".
These events and the disagreements that arose from them within the Whig Party led to its break-up and to the rupture of Burke's friendship with Fox. In debate in Parliament on Britain's relations with Russia, Fox praised the principles of the Revolution, although Burke was not able to reply at this time as he was "overpowered by continued cries of question from his own side of the House". When Parliament was debating the Quebec Bill for a constitution for Canada, Fox praised the Revolution and criticised some of Burke's arguments such as hereditary power. On 6 May 1791, Burke used the opportunity to answer Fox during another debate in Parliament on the Quebec Bill and condemn the new French Constitution and "the horrible consequences flowing from the French idea of the Rights of Man". Burke asserted that those ideas were the antithesis of both the British and the American constitutions. Burke was interrupted and Fox intervened, saying that Burke should be allowed to carry on with his speech. However, a vote of censure was moved against Burke for noticing the affairs of France which was moved by Lord Sheffield and seconded by Fox. Pitt made a speech praising Burke and Fox made a speech—both rebuking and complimenting Burke. He questioned the sincerity of Burke, who seemed to have forgotten the lessons he had learned from him, quoting from Burke's own speeches of fourteen and fifteen years before. Burke's response was as follows:
It certainly was indiscreet at any period, but especially at his time of life, to parade enemies, or give his friends occasion to desert him; yet if his firm and steady adherence to the British constitution placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty and public experience taught him, with his last words exclaim, "Fly from the French Constitution".
At this point, Fox whispered that there was "no loss of friendship". "I regret to say there is", Burke replied, "I have indeed made a great sacrifice; I have done my duty though I have lost my friend. There is something in the detested French constitution that envenoms every thing it touches". This provoked a reply from Fox, yet he was unable to give his speech for some time since he was overcome with tears and emotion. Fox appealed to Burke to remember their inalienable friendship, but he also repeated his criticisms of Burke and uttered "unusually bitter sarcasms". This only aggravated the rupture between the two men. Burke demonstrated his separation from the party on 5 June 1791 by writing to Fitzwilliam, declining money from him.
Burke was dismayed that some Whigs, instead of reaffirming the principles of the Whig Party he laid out in the Reflections, had rejected them in favour of "French principles" and that they criticised Burke for abandoning Whig principles. Burke wanted to demonstrate his fidelity to Whig principles and feared that acquiescence to Fox and his followers would allow the Whig Party to become a vehicle for Jacobinism.
Burke knew that many members of the Whig Party did not share Fox's views and he wanted to provoke them into condemning the French Revolution. Burke wrote that he wanted to represent the whole Whig Party "as tolerating, and by a toleration, countenancing those proceedings" so that he could "stimulate them to a public declaration of what every one of their acquaintance privately knows to be...their sentiments". On 3 August 1791, Burke published his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs in which he renewed his criticism of the radical revolutionary programmes inspired by the French Revolution and attacked the Whigs who supported them as holding principles contrary to those traditionally held by the Whig Party.
Burke owned two copies of what has been called "that practical compendium of Whig political theory", namely The Tryal of Dr. Henry Sacheverell (1710). Burke wrote of the trial: "It rarely happens to a party to have the opportunity of a clear, authentic, recorded, declaration of their political tenets upon the subject of a great constitutional event like that of the [Glorious] Revolution". Writing in the third person, Burke asserted in his Appeal:
[The] foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,—a breach of the original contract, implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords and Commons.—That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified only upon the necessity of the case; as the only means left for the recovery of that antient constitution, formed by the original contract of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the same government. These are the points to be proved.
Burke then provided quotations from Paine's Rights of Man to demonstrate what the New Whigs believed. Burke's belief that Foxite principles corresponded to Paine's was genuine. Finally, Burke denied that a majority of "the people" had, or ought to have, the final say in politics and alter society at their pleasure. People had rights, but also duties and these duties were not voluntary. According to Burke, the people could not overthrow morality derived from God.
Although Whig grandees such as Portland and Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke's Appeal, they wished he had used more moderate language. Fitzwilliam saw the Appeal as containing "the doctrines I have sworn by, long and long since". Francis Basset, a backbench Whig MP, wrote to Burke that "though for reasons which I will not now detail I did not then deliver my sentiments, I most perfectly differ from Mr. Fox & from the great Body of opposition on the French Revolution". Burke sent a copy of the Appeal to the King and the King requested a friend to communicate to Burke that he had read it "with great Satisfaction". Burke wrote of its reception: "Not one word from one of our party. They are secretly galled. They agree with me to a title; but they dare not speak out for fear of hurting Fox...They leave me to myself; they see that I can do myself justice". Charles Burney viewed it as "a most admirable book—the best & most useful on political subjects that I have ever seen", but he believed the differences in the Whig Party between Burke and Fox should not be aired publicly.
Eventually, most of the Whigs sided with Burke and gave their support to William Pitt the Younger's Tory government which in response to France's declaration of war against Britain declared war on France's Revolutionary Government in 1793.
In December 1791, Burke sent government ministers his Thoughts on French Affairs where he put forward three main points, namely that no counter-revolution in France would come about by purely domestic causes; that the longer the Revolutionary Government exists, the stronger it becomes; and that the Revolutionary Government's interest and aim is to disturb all of the other governments of Europe.
As a Whig, Burke did not wish to see an absolute monarchy again in France after the extirpation of Jacobinism. Writing to an émigré in 1791, Burke expressed his views against a restoration of the Ancien Régime:
When such a complete convulsion has shaken the State, and hardly left any thing whatsoever, either in civil arrangements, or in the Characters and disposition of men's minds, exactly where it was, whatever shall be settled although in the former persons and upon old forms, will be in some measure a new thing and will labour under something of the weakness as well as other inconveniences of a Change. My poor opinion is that you mean to establish what you call 'L'ancien Régime,' If any one means that system of Court Intrigue miscalled a Government as it stood, at Versailles before the present confusions as the thing to be established, that I believe will be found absolutely impossible; and if you consider the Nature, as well of persons, as of affairs, I flatter myself you must be of my opinion. That was tho' not so violent a State of Anarchy as well as the present. If it were even possible to lay things down exactly as they stood, before the series of experimental politicks began, I am quite sure that they could not long continue in that situation. In one Sense of L'Ancien Régime I am clear that nothing else can reasonably be done.
Burke delivered a speech on the debate of the Aliens Bill on 28 December 1792. He supported the Bill as it would exclude "murderous atheists, who would pull down Church and state; religion and God; morality and happiness". The peroration included a reference to a French order for 3,000 daggers. Burke revealed a dagger he had concealed in his coat and threw it to the floor: "This is what you are to gain by an alliance with France". Burke picked up the dagger and continued:
When they smile, I see blood trickling down their faces; I see their insidious purposes; I see that the object of all their cajoling is—blood! I now warn my countrymen to beware of these execrable philosophers, whose only object it is to destroy every thing that is good here, and to establish immorality and murder by precept and example—'Hic niger est hunc tu Romane caveto' ['Such a man is evil; beware of him, Roman'. Horace, Satires I. 4. 85.].
Burke supported the war against Revolutionary France, seeing Britain as fighting on the side of the royalists and émigres in a civil war, rather than fighting against the whole nation of France. Burke also supported the royalist uprising in La Vendée, describing it on 4 November 1793 in a letter to William Windham as "the sole affair I have much heart in". Burke wrote to Henry Dundas on 7 October urging him to send reinforcements there as he viewed it as the only theatre in the war that might lead to a march on Paris, but Dundas did not follow Burke's advice.
Burke believed the British government was not taking the uprising seriously enough, a view reinforced by a letter he had received from the Prince Charles of France (S.A.R. le comte d'Artois), dated 23 October, requesting that he intercede on behalf of the royalists to the government. Burke was forced to reply on 6 November: "I am not in His Majesty's Service; or at all consulted in his Affairs". Burke published his Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with Respect to France, begun in October, where he said: "I am sure every thing has shewn us that in this war with France, one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of this".
On 20 June 1794, Burke received a vote of thanks from the House of Commons for his services in the Hastings Trial and he immediately resigned his seat, being replaced by his son Richard. A tragic blow fell upon Burke with the loss of Richard in August 1794, to whom he was tenderly attached and in whom he saw signs of promise which were not patent to others and which in fact appear to have been non-existent, although this view may have rather reflected the fact that his son Richard had worked successfully in the early battle for Catholic emancipation. King George III, whose favour he had gained by his attitude on the French Revolution, wished to create him Earl of Beaconsfield, but the death of his son deprived the opportunity of such an honour and all its attractions, so the only award he would accept was a pension of £2,500. Even this modest reward was attacked by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to whom Burke replied in his Letter to a Noble Lord (1796): "It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform". He argued that he was rewarded on merit, but the Duke of Bedford received his rewards from inheritance alone, his ancestor being the original pensioner: "Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from Henry the Eighth". Burke also hinted at what would happen to such people if their revolutionary ideas were implemented and included a description of the British Constitution:
But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long as the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France.
Burke's last publications were the Letters on a Regicide Peace (October 1796), called forth by negotiations for peace with France by the Pitt government. Burke regarded this as appeasement, injurious to national dignity and honour. In his Second Letter, Burke wrote of the French Revolutionary government: "Individuality is left out of their scheme of government. The State is all in all. Everything is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The State has dominion and conquest for its sole objects—dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms".
This is held to be the first explanation of the modern concept of totalitarian state. Burke regarded the war with France as ideological, against an "armed doctrine". He wished that France would not be partitioned due to the effect this would have on the balance of power in Europe and that the war was not against France, but against the revolutionaries governing her. Burke said: "It is not France extending a foreign empire over other nations: it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning with the conquest of France".
In November 1795, there was a debate in Parliament on the high price of corn and Burke wrote a memorandum to Pitt on the subject. In December, Samuel Whitbread MP introduced a bill giving magistrates the power to fix minimum wages and Fox said he would vote for it. This debate probably led Burke to editing his memorandum as there appeared a notice that Burke would soon publish a letter on the subject to the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture Arthur Young, but he failed to complete it. These fragments were inserted into the memorandum after his death and published posthumously in 1800 as Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. In it, Burke expounded "some of the doctrines of political economists bearing upon agriculture as a trade". Burke criticised policies such as maximum prices and state regulation of wages and set out what the limits of government should be:
That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.
The economist Adam Smith remarked that Burke was "the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us".
Writing to a friend in May 1795, Burke surveyed the causes of discontent: "I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism [i.e. corporate tyranny, as practised by the British East Indies Company], as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil". By March 1796, Burke had changed his mind: "Our Government and our Laws are beset by two different Enemies, which are sapping its foundations, Indianism, and Jacobinism. In some Cases they act separately, in some they act in conjunction: But of this I am sure; that the first is the worst by far, and the hardest to deal with; and for this amongst other reasons, that it weakens discredits, and ruins that force, which ought to be employed with the greatest Credit and Energy against the other; and that it furnishes Jacobinism with its strongest arms against all formal Government".
For more than a year prior to his death, Burke knew that his stomach was "irrecoverably ruind". After hearing that Burke was nearing death, Fox wrote to Mrs. Burke enquiring after him. Fox received the reply the next day:
Mrs. Burke presents her compliments to Mr. Fox, and thanks him for his obliging inquiries. Mrs. Burke communicated his letter to Mr. Burke, and by his desire has to inform Mr. Fox that it has cost Mr. Burke the most heart-felt pain to obey the stern voice of his duty in rending asunder a long friendship, but that he deemed this sacrifice necessary; that his principles continue the same; and that in whatever of life may yet remain to him, he conceives that he must live for others and not for himself. Mr. Burke is convinced that the principles which he has endeavoured to maintain are necessary to the welfare and dignity of his country, and that these principles can be enforced only by the general persuasion of his sincerity.
Burke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 9 July 1797 and was buried there alongside his son and brother.
Burke is regarded by most political historians in the English-speaking world as a liberal conservative and the father of modern British conservatism. Burke was utilitarian and empirical in his arguments while Joseph de Maistre, a fellow conservative from the Continent, was more providentialist and sociological and deployed a more confrontational tone in his arguments.
Burke believed that property was essential to human life. Because of his conviction that people desire to be ruled and controlled, the division of property formed the basis for social structure, helping develop control within a property-based hierarchy. He viewed the social changes brought on by property as the natural order of events which should be taking place as the human race progressed. With the division of property and the class system, he also believed that it kept the monarch in check to the needs of the classes beneath the monarch. Since property largely aligned or defined divisions of social class, class too was seen as natural—part of a social agreement that the setting of persons into different classes, is the mutual benefit of all subjects. Concern for property is not Burke's only influence. Christopher Hitchens summarises as follows: "If modern conservatism can be held to derive from Burke, it is not just because he appealed to property owners in behalf of stability but also because he appealed to an everyday interest in the preservation of the ancestral and the immemorial".
Burke's support for the causes of the "oppressed majorities", such as Irish Catholics and Indians, led him to be at the receiving end of hostile criticism from Tories; while his opposition to the spread of the French Republic (and its radical ideals) across Europe led to similar charges from Whigs. As a consequence, Burke often became isolated in Parliament.
In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both liberals and conservatives. Burke's friend Philip Francis wrote that Burke "was a man who truly & prophetically foresaw all the consequences which would rise from the adoption of the French principles", but because Burke wrote with so much passion, people were doubtful of his arguments. William Windham spoke from the same bench in the House of Commons as Burke had when he had separated from Fox and an observer said Windham spoke "like the ghost of Burke" when he made a speech against peace with France in 1801. William Hazlitt, a political opponent of Burke, regarded him as amongst his three favourite writers (the others being Junius and Rousseau) and made it "a test of the sense and candour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great man". William Wordsworth was originally a supporter of the French Revolution and attacked Burke in A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (1793), but by the early 19th century he had changed his mind and came to admire Burke. In his Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland, Wordsworth called Burke "the most sagacious Politician of his age", whose predictions "time has verified". He later revised his poem The Prelude to include praise of Burke ("Genius of Burke! forgive the pen seduced/By specious wonders") and portrayed him as an old oak. Samuel Taylor Coleridge came to have a similar conversion as he had criticised Burke in The Watchman, but in his Friend (1809–1810) had defended Burke from charges of inconsistency. Later in his Biographia Literaria (1817), Coleridge hails Burke as a prophet and praises Burke for referring "habitually to principles. He was a scientific statesman; and therefore a seer". Henry Brougham wrote of Burke that "all his predictions, save one momentary expression, had been more than fulfilled: anarchy and bloodshed had borne sway in France; conquest and convulsion had desolated Europe...[T]he providence of mortals is not often able to penetrate so far as this into futurity". George Canning believed that Burke's Reflections "has been justified by the course of subsequent events; and almost every prophecy has been strictly fulfilled". In 1823, Canning wrote that he took Burke's "last works and words [as] the manual of my politics". The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli "was deeply penetrated with the spirit and sentiment of Burke's later writings".
The 19th-century Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone considered Burke "a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America" and in his diary recorded: "Made many extracts from Burke—sometimes almost divine". The Radical MP and anti-Corn Law activist Richard Cobden often praised Burke's Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. The Liberal historian Lord Acton considered Burke one of the three greatest Liberals, along with Gladstone and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Lord Macaulay recorded in his diary: "I have now finished reading again most of Burke's works. Admirable! The greatest man since Milton". The Gladstonian Liberal MP John Morley published two books on Burke (including a biography) and was influenced by Burke, including his views on prejudice. The Cobdenite Radical Francis Hirst thought Burke deserved "a place among English libertarians, even though of all lovers of liberty and of all reformers he was the most conservative, the least abstract, always anxious to preserve and renovate rather than to innovate. In politics, he resembled the modern architect who would restore an old house instead of pulling it down to construct a new one on the site". Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France was controversial at the time of its publication, but after his death, it was to become his best-known and most influential work and a manifesto for Conservative thinking.
Two contrasting assessments of Burke also were offered long after his death by Karl Marx and Winston Churchill. In a footnote to Volume One of Das Kapital, Marx wrote:
The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois. "The laws of commerce are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God." (E. Burke, l.c., pp. 31, 32) No wonder that, true to the laws of God and Nature, he always sold himself in the best market.
In Consistency in Politics, Churchill wrote:
On the one hand [Burke] is revealed as a foremost apostle of Liberty, on the other as the redoubtable champion of Authority. But a charge of political inconsistency applied to this life appears a mean and petty thing. History easily discerns the reasons and forces which actuated him, and the immense changes in the problems he was facing which evoked from the same profound mind and sincere spirit these entirely contrary manifestations. His soul revolted against tyranny, whether it appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch and a corrupt Court and Parliamentary system, or whether, mouthing the watch-words of a non-existent liberty, it towered up against him in the dictation of a brutal mob and wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.
The historian Piers Brendon asserts that Burke laid the moral foundations for the British Empire, epitomised in the trial of Warren Hastings, that was ultimately to be its undoing. When Burke stated that "[t]he British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no other", this was "an ideological bacillus that would prove fatal. This was Edmund Burke's paternalistic doctrine that colonial government was a trust. It was to be so exercised for the benefit of subject people that they would eventually attain their birthright—freedom". As a consequence of these opinions, Burke objected to the opium trade which he called a "smuggling adventure" and condemned "the great Disgrace of the British character in India". According to political scientist Jennifer Pitts, Burke "was arguably the first political thinker to undertake a comprehensive critique of British imperial practice in the name of justice for those who suffered from its moral and political exclusions."
A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Burke at 37 Gerrard Street now in London's Chinatown.
Statues of Burke are in Bristol, England, Trinity College Dublin and Washington, D.C. Burke is also the namesake of a private college preparatory school in Washington, Edmund Burke School.
Burke Avenue, in The Bronx, New York, is named for him.
One of Burke's largest and most developed critics was the American political theorist Leo Strauss. In his book Natural Right and History, Strauss makes a series of points in which he somewhat harshly evaluates Burke's writings.
One of the topics that he first addresses is the fact that Burke creates a definitive separation between happiness and virtue and explains that "Burke, therefore, seeks the foundation of government 'in a conformity to our duties' and not in 'imaginary rights of man". Strauss views Burke as believing that government should focus solely on the duties that a man should have in society as opposed to trying to address any additional needs or desires. Government is simply a practicality to Burke and not necessarily meant to function as a tool to help individuals to live as well as possible. Strauss also argues that in a sense Burke's theory could be seen as opposing the very idea of forming such philosophies. Burke expresses the view that theory cannot adequately predict future occurrences and therefore men need to have instincts that cannot be practised or derived from ideology.
This leads to an overarching criticism that Strauss holds regarding Burke which is his rejection of the use of logic. Burke dismisses a widely held view amongst theorists that reason should be the primary tool in the forming of a constitution or contract. Burke instead believes that constitutions should be made based on natural processes as opposed to rational planning for the future. However, Strauss points out that criticising rationality actually works against Burke's original stance of returning to traditional ways because some amount of human reason is inherent and therefore is in part grounded in tradition. In regards to this formation of legitimate social order, Strauss does not necessarily support Burke's opinion—that order cannot be established by individual wise people, but exclusively by a culmination of individuals with historical knowledge of past functions to use as a foundation. Strauss notes that Burke would oppose more newly formed republics due to this thought, although Lenzner adds the fact that he did seem to believe that America's constitution could be justified given the specific circumstances. On the other hand, France's constitution was much too radical as it relied too heavily on enlightened reasoning as opposed to traditional methods and values.
Burke's religious writing comprises published works and commentary on the subject of religion. Burke's religious thought was grounded in the belief that religion is the foundation of civil society. He sharply criticised deism and atheism and emphasised Christianity as a vehicle of social progress. Born in Ireland to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, Burke vigorously defended the Anglican Church, but he also demonstrated sensitivity to Catholic concerns. He linked the conservation of a state-established religion with the preservation of citizens' constitutional liberties and highlighted Christianity's benefit not only to the believer's soul, but also to political arrangements.
The well-known maxim that "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" is widely attributed to Burke, despite the debated origin of the quotation. It is known that, in 1770, Burke wrote the following passage in "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents":
[W]hen bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
In 1867, John Stuart Mill made a similar statement in an inaugural address delivered at the University of St Andrews:
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
Actor T. P. McKenna was cast as Edmund Burke in the TV series Longitude in 2000. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Edmund Burke (/ˈbɜːrk/; 12 January [NS] 1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher who spent most of his career in Great Britain. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Burke was a proponent of underpinning virtues with manners in society and of the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state. These views were expressed in his A Vindication of Natural Society (1756). He criticised the actions of the British government towards the American colonies, including its taxation policies. Burke also supported the rights of the colonists to resist metropolitan authority, although he opposed the attempt to achieve independence. He is remembered for his support for Catholic emancipation, the Impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and his staunch opposition to the French Revolution.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke asserted that the revolution was destroying the fabric of \"good\" society and traditional institutions of state and society, and he condemned the persecution of the Catholic Church that resulted from it. This led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig Party which he dubbed the Old Whigs as opposed to the pro–French Revolution New Whigs led by Charles James Fox.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals. Subsequently, in the 20th century, he became widely regarded, especially in the United States, as the philosophical founder of conservatism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Burke was born in Dublin, Ireland. His mother Mary, née Nagle (c. 1702–1770), was a Roman Catholic who hailed from a County Cork family and a cousin of the Catholic educator Nano Nagle, whereas his father Richard (died 1761), a successful solicitor, was a member of the Church of Ireland. It remains unclear whether this is the same Richard Burke who converted from Catholicism. The Burgh (Burke) dynasty descends from the Anglo-Norman knight, William de Burgh (d.1205/6), who arrived in Ireland in 1185 following Henry II of England's 1171 invasion of Ireland and is among the \"chief Gall or Old English families that assimilated into Gaelic society\" (the surname de Burgh (Latinised as de Burgo) was gaelicised in Irish as de Búrca or Búrc which over the centuries became Burke).",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Burke adhered to his father's faith and remained a practising Anglican throughout his life, unlike his sister Juliana who was brought up as and remained a Roman Catholic. Later, his political enemies repeatedly accused him of having been educated at the Jesuit College of St. Omer, near Calais, France; and of harbouring secret Catholic sympathies at a time when membership of the Catholic Church would disqualify him from public office per Penal Laws in Ireland. As Burke told Frances Crewe:",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Mr. Burke's Enemies often endeavoured to convince the World that he had been bred up in the Catholic Faith, & that his Family were of it, & that he himself had been educated at St. Omer—but this was false, as his father was a regular practitioner of the Law at Dublin, which he could not be unless of the Established Church: & it so happened that though Mr. B—was twice at Paris, he never happened to go through the Town of St. Omer.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "After being elected to the House of Commons, Burke took the required oath of allegiance and abjuration, the oath of supremacy and the declaration against transubstantiation.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "As a child, Burke sometimes spent time away from the unhealthy air of Dublin with his mother's family near Killavullen in the Blackwater Valley in County Cork. He received his early education at a Quaker school in Ballitore, County Kildare, some 67 kilometres (42 mi) from Dublin; and possibly like his cousin Nano Nagle at a Hedge school near Killavullen. He remained in correspondence with his schoolmate from there, Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of the school's owner, throughout his life.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1744, Burke started at Trinity College Dublin, a Protestant establishment which up until 1793 did not permit Catholics to take degrees. In 1747, he set up a debating society, Edmund Burke's Club, which in 1770 merged with TCD's Historical Club to form the College Historical Society, the oldest undergraduate society in the world. The minutes of the meetings of Burke's Club remain in the collection of the Historical Society. Burke graduated from Trinity in 1748. Burke's father wanted him to read Law and with this in mind, he went to London in 1750, where he entered the Middle Temple, before soon giving up legal study to travel in Continental Europe. After eschewing the Law, he pursued a livelihood through writing.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The late Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on the Study and Use of History was published in 1752 and his collected works appeared in 1754. This provoked Burke into writing his first published work, A Vindication of Natural Society: A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind, appearing in Spring 1756. Burke imitated Bolingbroke's style and ideas in a reductio ad absurdum of his arguments for deistic rationalism in order to demonstrate their absurdity.",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Burke claimed that Bolingbroke's arguments against revealed religion could apply to all social and civil institutions as well. Lord Chesterfield and Bishop Warburton as well as others initially thought that the work was genuinely by Bolingbroke rather than a satire. All the reviews of the work were positive, with critics especially appreciative of Burke's quality of writing. Some reviewers failed to notice the ironic nature of the book which led to Burke stating in the preface to the second edition (1757) that it was a satire.",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Richard Hurd believed that Burke's imitation was near-perfect and that this defeated his purpose, arguing that an ironist \"should take care by a constant exaggeration to make the ridicule shine through the Imitation. Whereas this Vindication is everywhere enforc'd, not only in the language, and on the principles of L. Bol., but with so apparent, or rather so real an earnestness, that half his purpose is sacrificed to the other\". A minority of scholars have taken the position that in fact Burke did write the Vindication in earnest, later disowning it only for political reasons.",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1757, Burke published a treatise on aesthetics titled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful that attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant. It was his only purely philosophical work, completed in 1753. When asked by Sir Joshua Reynolds and French Laurence to expand it thirty years later, Burke replied that he was no longer fit for abstract speculation.",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On 25 February 1757, Burke signed a contract with Robert Dodsley to write a \"history of England from the time of Julius Caesar to the end of the reign of Queen Anne\", its length being eighty quarto sheets (640 pages), nearly 400,000 words. It was to be submitted for publication by Christmas 1758. Burke completed the work to the year 1216 and stopped; it was not published until after Burke's death, in an 1812 collection of his works, An Essay Towards an Abridgement of the English History. G. M. Young did not value Burke's history and claimed that it was \"demonstrably a translation from the French\". On commenting on the story that Burke stopped his history because David Hume published his, Lord Acton said \"it is ever to be regretted that the reverse did not occur\".",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "During the year following that contract, Burke founded with Dodsley the influential Annual Register, a publication in which various authors evaluated the international political events of the previous year. The extent to which Burke contributed to the Annual Register is unclear. In his biography of Burke, Robert Murray quotes the Register as evidence of Burke's opinions, yet Philip Magnus in his biography does not cite it directly as a reference. Burke remained the chief editor of the publication until at least 1789 and there is no evidence that any other writer contributed to it before 1766.",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On 12 March 1757, Burke married Jane Mary Nugent (1734–1812), daughter of Dr. Christopher Nugent, a Catholic physician who had provided him with medical treatment at Bath. Their son Richard was born on 9 February 1758 while an elder son, Christopher, died in infancy. Burke also helped raise a ward, Edmund Nagle (later Admiral Sir Edmund Nagle), the son of a maternal cousin orphaned in 1763.",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "At about this same time, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton (known as \"Single-speech Hamilton\"). When Hamilton was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, Burke accompanied him to Dublin as his private secretary, a position he held for three years. In 1765, Burke became private secretary to the liberal Whig politician Charles, Marquess of Rockingham, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, who remained Burke's close friend and associate until his death in 1782.",
"title": "Early writing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In December 1765, Burke entered the House of Commons of the British Parliament as Member for Wendover in Buckinghamshire, a pocket borough in the gift of Lord Fermanagh, later 2nd Earl Verney and a close political ally of Rockingham. After Burke delivered his maiden speech, William Pitt the Elder said he had \"spoken in such a manner as to stop the mouths of all Europe\" and that the Commons should congratulate itself on acquiring such a Member.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The first great subject Burke addressed was the controversy with the American colonies which soon developed into war and ultimate separation. In reply to the 1769 Grenvillite pamphlet The Present State of the Nation, he published his own pamphlet titled Observations on a Late State of the Nation. Surveying the finances of France, Burke predicts \"some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system\".",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During the same year, with mostly borrowed money, Burke purchased Gregories, a 600-acre (2.4 km) estate near Beaconsfield. Although the estate included saleable assets such as art works by Titian, Gregories proved a heavy financial burden in the following decades and Burke was never able to repay its purchase price in full. His speeches and writings, having made him famous, led to the suggestion that he was the author of the Letters of Junius.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "At about this time, Burke joined the circle of leading intellectuals and artists in London of whom Samuel Johnson was the central luminary. This circle also included David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith and Joshua Reynolds. Edward Gibbon described Burke as \"the most eloquent and rational madman that I ever knew\". Although Johnson admired Burke's brilliance, he found him a dishonest politician.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Burke took a leading role in the debate regarding the constitutional limits to the executive authority of the King. He argued strongly against unrestrained royal power and for the role of political parties in maintaining a principled opposition capable of preventing abuses, either by the monarch or by specific factions within the government. His most important publication in this regard was his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents of 23 April 1770. Burke identified the \"discontents\" as stemming from the \"secret influence\" of a neo-Tory group he labelled as the \"king's friends\", whose system \"comprehending the exterior and interior administrations, is commonly called, in the technical language of the Court, Double Cabinet\". Britain needed a party with \"an unshaken adherence to principle, and attachment to connexion, against every allurement of interest\". Party divisions, \"whether operating for good or evil, are things inseparable from free government\".",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "During 1771, Burke wrote a bill that would have given juries the right to determine what was libel, if passed. Burke spoke in favour of the bill, but it was opposed by some, including Charles James Fox, not becoming law. When introducing his own bill in 1791 in opposition, Fox repeated almost verbatim the text of Burke's bill without acknowledgement. Burke was prominent in securing the right to publish debates held in Parliament.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Speaking in a Parliamentary debate on the prohibition on the export of grain on 16 November 1770, Burke argued in favour of a free market in corn: \"There are no such things as a high, & a low price that is encouraging, & discouraging; there is nothing but a natural price, which grain brings at an universal market\". In 1772, Burke was instrumental in the passing of the Repeal of Certain Laws Act 1772 which repealed various old laws against dealers and forestallers in corn.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the Annual Register for 1772 (published in July 1773), Burke condemned the partition of Poland. He saw it as \"the first very great breach in the modern political system of Europe\" and as upsetting the balance of power in Europe.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "On 3 November 1774, Burke was elected Member for Bristol, at the time \"England's second city\" and a large constituency with a genuine electoral contest. At the conclusion of the poll, he made his Speech to the Electors of Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll, a remarkable disclaimer of the constituent-imperative form of democracy, for which he substituted his statement of the \"representative mandate\" form. He failed to win re-election for that seat in the subsequent 1780 general election.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In May 1778, Burke supported a Parliamentary motion revising restrictions on Irish trade. His constituents, citizens of the great trading city of Bristol, urged Burke to oppose free trade with Ireland. Burke resisted their protestations and said: \"If, from this conduct, I shall forfeit their suffrages at an ensuing election, it will stand on record an example to future representatives of the Commons of England, that one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents when his judgment assured him they were wrong\".",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Burke published Two Letters to Gentlemen of Bristol on the Bills relative to the Trade of Ireland in which he espoused \"some of the chief principles of commerce; such as the advantage of free intercourse between all parts of the same kingdom...the evils attending restriction and monopoly...and that the gain of others is not necessarily our loss, but on the contrary an advantage by causing a greater demand for such wares as we have for sale\".",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Burke also supported the attempts of Sir George Savile to repeal some of the penal laws against Catholics. Burke also called capital punishment \"the Butchery which we call justice\" in 1776 and in 1780 condemned the use of the pillory for two men convicted for attempting to practice sodomy.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "This support for unpopular causes, notably free trade with Ireland and Catholic emancipation, led to Burke losing his seat in 1780. For the remainder of his Parliamentary career, Burke represented Malton, another pocket borough under the Marquess of Rockingham's patronage.",
"title": "Member of Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Burke expressed his support for the grievances of the American Thirteen Colonies under the government of King George III and his appointed representatives. On 19 April 1774, Burke made a speech, \"On American Taxation\" (published in January 1775), on a motion to repeal the tea duty:",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Again and again, revert to your old principles—seek peace and ensue it; leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it...Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it...Do not burthen them with taxes...But if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question...If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body of men will be argued into slavery.",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "On 22 March 1775, Burke delivered in the House of Commons a speech (published in May 1775) on reconciliation with America. Burke appealed for peace as preferable to civil war and reminded the House of Commons of America's growing population, its industry and its wealth. He warned against the notion that the Americans would back down in the face of force since most Americans were of British descent:",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "[T]he people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen...They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. The people are Protestants...a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it...My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government—they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation—the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Burke prized peace with America above all else, pleading with the House of Commons to remember that the interest by way of money received from the American colonies was far more attractive than any sense of putting the colonists in their place:",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war, not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations, not peace to arise out of universal discord...[I]t is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Burke was not merely presenting a peace agreement to Parliament, but rather he stepped forward with four reasons against using force, carefully reasoned. He laid out his objections in an orderly manner, focusing on one before moving to the next. His first concern was that the use of force would have to be temporary and that the uprisings and objections to British governance in Colonial America would not be. Second, Burke worried about the uncertainty surrounding whether Britain would win a conflict in America. \"An armament\", Burke said, \"is not a victory\". Third, Burke brought up the issue of impairment, stating that it would do the British government no good to engage in a scorched earth war and have the object they desired (America) become damaged or even useless. The American colonists could always retreat into the mountains, but the land they left behind would most likely be unusable, whether by accident or design. The fourth and final reason to avoid the use of force was experienced as the British had never attempted to rein in an unruly colony by force and they did not know if it could be done, let alone accomplished thousands of miles away from home. Not only were all of these concerns reasonable, but some turned out to be prophetic—the American colonists did not surrender, even when things looked extremely bleak and the British were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempts to win a war fought on American soil.",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "It was not temporary force, uncertainty, impairment, or even experience that Burke cited as the primary reason for avoiding war with the American colonies. Rather, it was the character of the American people themselves: \"In this character of Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole...[T]his fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth...[The] men [are] acute, inquisitive, dextrous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources\". Burke concludes with another plea for peace and a prayer that Britain might avoid actions which in Burke's words \"may bring on the destruction of this Empire\".",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Burke proposed six resolutions to settle the American conflict peacefully:",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Had they been passed, the effect of these resolutions can never be known. Unfortunately, Burke delivered this speech just less than a month before the explosive conflict at Concord and Lexington. As these resolutions were not enacted, little was done that would help to dissuade conflict.",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Among the reasons this speech was so greatly admired was its passage on Lord Bathurst (1684–1775) in which Burke describes an angel in 1704 prophesying to Bathurst the future greatness of England and also of America: \"Young man, There is America—which at this day serves little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, shew itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world\". Samuel Johnson was so irritated at hearing it continually praised that he made a parody of it, where the devil appears to a young Whig and predicts that in short time Whiggism will poison even the paradise of America.",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The administration of Lord North (1770–1782) tried to defeat the colonist rebellion by military force. British and American forces clashed in 1775 and in 1776 came the American Declaration of Independence. Burke was appalled by celebrations in Britain of the defeat of the Americans in New York and Pennsylvania. He claimed the English national character was being changed by this authoritarianism. Burke wrote: \"As to the good people of England, they seem to partake every day more and more of the Character of that administration which they have been induced to tolerate. I am satisfied, that within a few years there has been a great Change in the National Character. We seem no longer that eager, inquisitive, jealous, fiery people, which we have been formerly\".",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In Burke's view, the British government was fighting \"the American English\" (\"our English Brethren in the Colonies\"), with a Germanic king employing \"the hireling sword of German boors and vassals\" to destroy the English liberties of the colonists. On American independence, Burke wrote: \"I do not know how to wish success to those whose Victory is to separate from us a large and noble part of our Empire. Still less do I wish success to injustice, oppression and absurdity\".",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "During the Gordon Riots in 1780, Burke became a target of hostility and his home was placed under armed guard by the military.",
"title": "American War of Independence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The fall of North led to Rockingham being recalled to power in March 1782. Burke was appointed Paymaster of the Forces and a Privy Counsellor, but without a seat in Cabinet. Rockingham's unexpected death in July 1782 and replacement with Shelburne as Prime Minister put an end to his administration after only a few months, but Burke did manage to introduce two Acts.",
"title": "Paymaster of the Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Paymaster General Act 1782 ended the post as a lucrative sinecure. Previously, Paymasters had been able to draw on money from HM Treasury at their discretion. Instead, now they were required to put the money they had requested to withdraw from the Treasury into the Bank of England, from where it was to be withdrawn for specific purposes. The Treasury would receive monthly statements of the Paymaster's balance at the Bank. This Act was repealed by Shelburne's administration, but the Act that replaced it repeated verbatim almost the whole text of the Burke Act.",
"title": "Paymaster of the Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The Civil List and Secret Service Money Act 1782 was a watered-down version of Burke's original intentions as outlined in his famous Speech on Economical Reform of 11 February 1780. However, he managed to abolish 134 offices in the royal household and civil administration. The third Secretary of State and the Board of Trade were abolished and pensions were limited and regulated. The Act was anticipated to save £72,368 a year.",
"title": "Paymaster of the Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In February 1783, Burke resumed the post of Paymaster of the Forces when Shelburne's government fell and was replaced by a coalition headed by North that included Charles James Fox. That coalition fell in 1783 and was succeeded by the long Tory administration of William Pitt the Younger which lasted until 1801. Accordingly, having supported Fox and North, Burke was in opposition for the remainder of his political life.",
"title": "Paymaster of the Forces"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 1774, Burke's Speech to the Electors at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll was noted for its defence of the principles of representative government against the notion that those elected to assemblies like Parliament are, or should be, merely delegates:",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any sett of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "My worthy Colleague says, his Will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If Government were a matter of Will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But Government and Legislation are matters of reason and judgement, and not of inclination; and, what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one sett of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenour of our constitution.",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "It is often forgotten in this connection that Burke, as detailed below, was an opponent of slavery, and therefore his conscience was refusing to support a trade in which many of his Bristol electors were lucratively involved.",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Political scientist Hanna Pitkin points out that Burke linked the interest of the district with the proper behaviour of its elected official, explaining: \"Burke conceives of broad, relatively fixed interest, few in number and clearly defined, of which any group or locality has just one. These interests are largely economic or associated with particular localities whose livelihood they characterize, in his over-all prosperity they involve\".",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Burke was a leading sceptic with respect to democracy. While admitting that theoretically in some cases it might be desirable, he insisted a democratic government in Britain in his day would not only be inept, but also oppressive. He opposed democracy for three basic reasons. First, government required a degree of intelligence and breadth of knowledge of the sort that occurred rarely among the common people. Second, he thought that if they had the vote, common people had dangerous and angry passions that could be aroused easily by demagogues, fearing that the authoritarian impulses that could be empowered by these passions would undermine cherished traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property. Third, Burke warned that democracy would create a tyranny over unpopular minorities, who needed the protection of the upper classes.",
"title": "Representative democracy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Burke proposed a bill to ban slaveholders from being able to sit in the House of Commons, claiming they were a danger incompatible with traditional notions of British liberty. While Burke did believe that Africans were \"barbaric\" and needed to be \"civilised\" by Christianity, Gregory Collins argues that this was not an unusual attitude amongst abolitionists at the time. Furthermore, Burke seemed to believe that Christianity would provide a civilising benefit to any group of people, as he believed Christianity had \"tamed\" European civilisation and regarded Southern European peoples as equally savage and barbarous. Collins also suggests that Burke viewed the \"uncivilised\" behaviour of African slaves as being partially caused by slavery itself, as he believed that making someone a slave stripped them of any virtues and rendered them mentally deficient, regardless of race. Burke proposed a gradual program of emancipation called Sketch of a Negro Code, which Collins argues was quite detailed for the time. Collins concludes that Burke's \"gradualist\" position on the emancipation of slaves, while perhaps seeming ridiculous to some modern-day readers, was nonetheless sincere.",
"title": "Opposition to the slave trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "For years, Burke pursued impeachment efforts against Warren Hastings, formerly Governor-General of Bengal, that resulted in the trial during 1786. His interaction with the British dominion of India began well before Hastings' impeachment trial. For two decades prior to the impeachment, Parliament had dealt with the Indian issue. This trial was the pinnacle of years of unrest and deliberation. In 1781, Burke was first able to delve into the issues surrounding the East India Company when he was appointed Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on East Indian Affairs—from that point until the end of the trial, India was Burke's primary concern. This committee was charged \"to investigate alleged injustices in Bengal, the war with Hyder Ali, and other Indian difficulties\". While Burke and the committee focused their attention on these matters, a second secret committee was formed to assess the same issues. Both committee reports were written by Burke. Among other purposes, the reports conveyed to the Indian princes that Britain would not wage war on them, along with demanding that the East India Company should recall Hastings. This was Burke's first call for substantive change regarding imperial practices. When addressing the whole House of Commons regarding the committee report, Burke described the Indian issue as one that \"began 'in commerce' but 'ended in empire'\".",
"title": "India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "On 28 February 1785, Burke delivered a now-famous speech, The Nabob of Arcot's Debts, wherein he condemned the damage to India by the East India Company. In the province of the Carnatic, the Indians had constructed a system of reservoirs to make the soil fertile in a naturally dry region, and centred their society on the husbandry of water:",
"title": "India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people; testators to a posterity which they embraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition; but by the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of human life, had strained, with all the reachings and graspings of a vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of nature, and to perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians, the protectors, the nourishers of mankind.",
"title": "India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Burke claimed that the advent of East India Company domination in India had eroded much that was good in these traditions and that as a consequence of this and the lack of new customs to replace them the Indian populace under Company rule was needlessly suffering. He set about establishing a set of imperial expectations, whose moral foundation would in his opinion warrant an overseas empire.",
"title": "India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "On 4 April 1786, Burke presented the House of Commons with the Article of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Hastings. The impeachment in Westminster Hall which did not begin until 14 February 1788 would be the \"first major public discursive event of its kind in England\", bringing the morality of imperialism to the forefront of public perception. Burke was already known for his eloquent rhetorical skills and his involvement in the trial only enhanced its popularity and significance. Burke's indictment, fuelled by emotional indignation, branded Hastings a \"captain-general of iniquity\" who never dined without \"creating a famine\", whose heart was \"gangrened to the core\" and who resembled both a \"spider of Hell\" and a \"ravenous vulture devouring the carcasses of the dead\". The House of Commons eventually impeached Hastings, but subsequently the House of Lords acquitted him of all charges.",
"title": "India and the impeachment of Warren Hastings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Initially, Burke did not condemn the French Revolution. In a letter of 9 August 1789, he wrote: \"England gazing with astonishment at a French struggle for Liberty and not knowing whether to blame or to applaud! The thing indeed, though I thought I saw something like it in progress for several years, has still something in it paradoxical and Mysterious. The spirit it is impossible not to admire; but the old Parisian ferocity has broken out in a shocking manner\". The events of 5–6 October 1789, when a crowd of Parisian women marched on Versailles to compel King Louis XVI to return to Paris, turned Burke against it. In a letter to his son Richard Burke dated 10 October, he said: \"This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous state of France—where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be produced in the place of it—where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable\". On 4 November, Charles-Jean-François Depont wrote to Burke, requesting that he endorse the Revolution. Burke replied that any critical language of it by him should be taken \"as no more than the expression of doubt\", but he added: \"You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover'd freedom\". In the same month, he described France as \"a country undone\". Burke's first public condemnation of the Revolution occurred on the debate in Parliament on the army estimates on 9 February 1790 provoked by praise of the Revolution by Pitt and Fox:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures...[There was a danger of] an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody and tyrannical democracy...[In religion] the danger of their example is no longer from intolerance, but from Atheism; a foul, unnatural vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of mankind; which seems in France, for a long time, to have been embodied into a faction, accredited, and almost avowed.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In January 1790, Burke read Richard Price's sermon of 4 November 1789 entitled A Discourse on the Love of Our Country to the Revolution Society. That society had been founded to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In this sermon, Price espoused the philosophy of universal \"Rights of Men\". Price argued that love of our country \"does not imply any conviction of the superior value of it to other countries, or any particular preference of its laws and constitution of government\". Instead, Price asserted that Englishmen should see themselves \"more as citizens of the world than as members of any particular community\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "A debate between Price and Burke ensued that was \"the classic moment at which two fundamentally different conceptions of national identity were presented to the English public\". Price claimed that the principles of the Glorious Revolution included \"the right to choose our own governors, to cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a government for ourselves\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Immediately after reading Price's sermon, Burke wrote a draft of what eventually became Reflections on the Revolution in France. On 13 February 1790, a notice in the press said that shortly Burke would publish a pamphlet on the Revolution and its British supporters, but he spent the year revising and expanding it. On 1 November, he finally published the Reflections and it was an immediate best-seller. Priced at five shillings, it was more expensive than most political pamphlets, but by the end of 1790, it had gone through ten printings and sold approximately 17,500 copies. A French translation appeared on 29 November and on 30 November the translator Pierre-Gaëton Dupont wrote to Burke saying 2,500 copies had already been sold. The French translation ran to ten printings by June 1791.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "What the Glorious Revolution had meant was as important to Burke and his contemporaries as it had been for the last one hundred years in British politics. In the Reflections, Burke argued against Price's interpretation of the Glorious Revolution and instead, gave a classic Whig defence of it. Burke argued against the idea of abstract, metaphysical rights of humans and instead advocated national tradition:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "The Revolution was made to preserve our antient indisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty...The very idea of the fabrication of a new government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon [scion] alien to the nature of the original plant...Our oldest reformation is that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove that the ancient charter...were nothing more than a re-affirmance of the still more ancient standing law of the kingdom...In the famous law...called the Petition of Right, the parliament says to the king, \"Your subjects have inherited this freedom\", claiming their franchises not on abstract principles \"as the rights of men\", but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Burke said: \"We fear God, we look up with awe to kings; with affection to Parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected\". Burke defended this prejudice on the grounds that it is \"the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages\" and superior to individual reason, which is small in comparison. \"Prejudice\", Burke claimed, \"is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit\". Burke criticised social contract theory by claiming that society is indeed a contract, although it is \"a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The most famous passage in Burke's Reflections was his description of the events of 5–6 October 1789 and the part of Marie-Antoinette in them. Burke's account differs little from modern historians who have used primary sources. His use of flowery language to describe it provoked both praise and criticism. Philip Francis wrote to Burke saying that what he wrote of Marie-Antoinette was \"pure foppery\". Edward Gibbon reacted differently: \"I adore his chivalry\". Burke was informed by an Englishman who had talked with the Duchesse de Biron that when Marie-Antoinette was reading the passage she burst into tears and took considerable time to finish reading it. Price had rejoiced that the French king had been \"led in triumph\" during the October Days, but to Burke, this symbolised the opposing revolutionary sentiment of the Jacobins and the natural sentiments of those who shared his own view with horror—that the ungallant assault on Marie-Antoinette was a cowardly attack on a defenceless woman.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Louis XVI translated the Reflections \"from end to end\" into French. Fellow Whig MPs Richard Sheridan and Charles James Fox disagreed with Burke and split with him. Fox thought the Reflections to be \"in very bad taste\" and \"favouring Tory principles\". Other Whigs such as the Duke of Portland and Earl Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke, but they did not wish for a public breach with their Whig colleagues. Burke wrote on 29 November 1790: \"I have received from the Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord John Cavendish, Montagu (Frederick Montagu MP), and a long et cetera of the old Stamina of the Whiggs a most full approbation of the principles of that work and a kind indulgence to the execution\". The Duke of Portland said in 1791 that when anyone criticised the Reflections to him, he informed them that he had recommended the book to his sons as containing the true Whig creed.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In the opinion of Paul Langford, Burke crossed something of a Rubicon when he attended a levee on 3 February 1791 to meet the King, later described by Jane Burke as follows:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "On his coming to Town for the Winter, as he generally does, he went to the Levee with the Duke of Portland, who went with Lord William to kiss hands on his going into the Guards—while Lord William was kissing hands, The King was talking to The Duke, but his Eyes were fixed on [Burke] who was standing in the Crowd, and when He said His say to The Duke, without waiting for [Burke]'s coming up in his turn, The King went up to him, and, after the usual questions of how long have you been in Town and the weather, He said you have been very much employed of late, and very much confined. [Burke] said, no, Sir, not more than usual—You have and very well employed too, but there are none so deaf as those that w'ont hear, and none so blind as those that w'ont see—[Burke] made a low bow, Sir, I certainly now understand you, but was afraid my vanity or presumption might have led me to imagine what Your Majesty has said referred to what I have done—You cannot be vain—You have been of use to us all, it is a general opinion, is it not so Lord Stair? who was standing near. It is said Lord Stair;—Your Majesty's adopting it, Sir, will make the opinion general, said [Burke]—I know it is the general opinion, and I know that there is no Man who calls himself a Gentleman that must not think himself obliged to you, for you have supported the cause of the Gentlemen—You know the tone at Court is a whisper, but The King said all this loud, so as to be heard by every one at Court.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Burke's Reflections sparked a pamphlet war. Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the first into print, publishing A Vindication of the Rights of Men a few weeks after Burke. Thomas Paine followed with the Rights of Man in 1791. James Mackintosh, who wrote Vindiciae Gallicae, was the first to see the Reflections as \"the manifesto of a Counter Revolution\". Mackintosh later agreed with Burke's views, remarking in December 1796 after meeting him that Burke was \"minutely and accurately informed, to a wonderful exactness, with respect to every fact relating to the French Revolution\". Mackintosh later said: \"Burke was one of the first thinkers as well as one of the greatest orators of his time. He is without parallel in any age, excepting perhaps Lord Bacon and Cicero; and his works contain an ampler store of political and moral wisdom than can be found in any other writer whatever\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In November 1790, François-Louis-Thibault de Menonville, a member of the National Assembly of France, wrote to Burke, praising Reflections and requesting more \"very refreshing mental food\" that he could publish. This Burke did in April 1791 when he published A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. Burke called for external forces to reverse the Revolution and included an attack on the late French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau as being the subject of a personality cult that had developed in revolutionary France. Although Burke conceded that Rousseau sometimes showed \"a considerable insight into human nature\", he mostly was critical. Although he did not meet Rousseau on his visit to Britain in 1766–1767, Burke was a friend of David Hume, with whom Rousseau had stayed. Burke said Rousseau \"entertained no principle either to influence of his heart, or to guide his understanding—but vanity\"—which he \"was possessed to a degree little short of madness\". He also cited Rousseau's Confessions as evidence that Rousseau had a life of \"obscure and vulgar vices\" that was not \"chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or even distinguished by a single good action\". Burke contrasted Rousseau's theory of universal benevolence and his having sent his children to a foundling hospital, stating that he was \"a lover of his kind, but a hater of his kindred\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "These events and the disagreements that arose from them within the Whig Party led to its break-up and to the rupture of Burke's friendship with Fox. In debate in Parliament on Britain's relations with Russia, Fox praised the principles of the Revolution, although Burke was not able to reply at this time as he was \"overpowered by continued cries of question from his own side of the House\". When Parliament was debating the Quebec Bill for a constitution for Canada, Fox praised the Revolution and criticised some of Burke's arguments such as hereditary power. On 6 May 1791, Burke used the opportunity to answer Fox during another debate in Parliament on the Quebec Bill and condemn the new French Constitution and \"the horrible consequences flowing from the French idea of the Rights of Man\". Burke asserted that those ideas were the antithesis of both the British and the American constitutions. Burke was interrupted and Fox intervened, saying that Burke should be allowed to carry on with his speech. However, a vote of censure was moved against Burke for noticing the affairs of France which was moved by Lord Sheffield and seconded by Fox. Pitt made a speech praising Burke and Fox made a speech—both rebuking and complimenting Burke. He questioned the sincerity of Burke, who seemed to have forgotten the lessons he had learned from him, quoting from Burke's own speeches of fourteen and fifteen years before. Burke's response was as follows:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "It certainly was indiscreet at any period, but especially at his time of life, to parade enemies, or give his friends occasion to desert him; yet if his firm and steady adherence to the British constitution placed him in such a dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty and public experience taught him, with his last words exclaim, \"Fly from the French Constitution\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "At this point, Fox whispered that there was \"no loss of friendship\". \"I regret to say there is\", Burke replied, \"I have indeed made a great sacrifice; I have done my duty though I have lost my friend. There is something in the detested French constitution that envenoms every thing it touches\". This provoked a reply from Fox, yet he was unable to give his speech for some time since he was overcome with tears and emotion. Fox appealed to Burke to remember their inalienable friendship, but he also repeated his criticisms of Burke and uttered \"unusually bitter sarcasms\". This only aggravated the rupture between the two men. Burke demonstrated his separation from the party on 5 June 1791 by writing to Fitzwilliam, declining money from him.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Burke was dismayed that some Whigs, instead of reaffirming the principles of the Whig Party he laid out in the Reflections, had rejected them in favour of \"French principles\" and that they criticised Burke for abandoning Whig principles. Burke wanted to demonstrate his fidelity to Whig principles and feared that acquiescence to Fox and his followers would allow the Whig Party to become a vehicle for Jacobinism.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Burke knew that many members of the Whig Party did not share Fox's views and he wanted to provoke them into condemning the French Revolution. Burke wrote that he wanted to represent the whole Whig Party \"as tolerating, and by a toleration, countenancing those proceedings\" so that he could \"stimulate them to a public declaration of what every one of their acquaintance privately knows to be...their sentiments\". On 3 August 1791, Burke published his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs in which he renewed his criticism of the radical revolutionary programmes inspired by the French Revolution and attacked the Whigs who supported them as holding principles contrary to those traditionally held by the Whig Party.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Burke owned two copies of what has been called \"that practical compendium of Whig political theory\", namely The Tryal of Dr. Henry Sacheverell (1710). Burke wrote of the trial: \"It rarely happens to a party to have the opportunity of a clear, authentic, recorded, declaration of their political tenets upon the subject of a great constitutional event like that of the [Glorious] Revolution\". Writing in the third person, Burke asserted in his Appeal:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "[The] foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,—a breach of the original contract, implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords and Commons.—That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified only upon the necessity of the case; as the only means left for the recovery of that antient constitution, formed by the original contract of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the same government. These are the points to be proved.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Burke then provided quotations from Paine's Rights of Man to demonstrate what the New Whigs believed. Burke's belief that Foxite principles corresponded to Paine's was genuine. Finally, Burke denied that a majority of \"the people\" had, or ought to have, the final say in politics and alter society at their pleasure. People had rights, but also duties and these duties were not voluntary. According to Burke, the people could not overthrow morality derived from God.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Although Whig grandees such as Portland and Fitzwilliam privately agreed with Burke's Appeal, they wished he had used more moderate language. Fitzwilliam saw the Appeal as containing \"the doctrines I have sworn by, long and long since\". Francis Basset, a backbench Whig MP, wrote to Burke that \"though for reasons which I will not now detail I did not then deliver my sentiments, I most perfectly differ from Mr. Fox & from the great Body of opposition on the French Revolution\". Burke sent a copy of the Appeal to the King and the King requested a friend to communicate to Burke that he had read it \"with great Satisfaction\". Burke wrote of its reception: \"Not one word from one of our party. They are secretly galled. They agree with me to a title; but they dare not speak out for fear of hurting Fox...They leave me to myself; they see that I can do myself justice\". Charles Burney viewed it as \"a most admirable book—the best & most useful on political subjects that I have ever seen\", but he believed the differences in the Whig Party between Burke and Fox should not be aired publicly.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Eventually, most of the Whigs sided with Burke and gave their support to William Pitt the Younger's Tory government which in response to France's declaration of war against Britain declared war on France's Revolutionary Government in 1793.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In December 1791, Burke sent government ministers his Thoughts on French Affairs where he put forward three main points, namely that no counter-revolution in France would come about by purely domestic causes; that the longer the Revolutionary Government exists, the stronger it becomes; and that the Revolutionary Government's interest and aim is to disturb all of the other governments of Europe.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "As a Whig, Burke did not wish to see an absolute monarchy again in France after the extirpation of Jacobinism. Writing to an émigré in 1791, Burke expressed his views against a restoration of the Ancien Régime:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "When such a complete convulsion has shaken the State, and hardly left any thing whatsoever, either in civil arrangements, or in the Characters and disposition of men's minds, exactly where it was, whatever shall be settled although in the former persons and upon old forms, will be in some measure a new thing and will labour under something of the weakness as well as other inconveniences of a Change. My poor opinion is that you mean to establish what you call 'L'ancien Régime,' If any one means that system of Court Intrigue miscalled a Government as it stood, at Versailles before the present confusions as the thing to be established, that I believe will be found absolutely impossible; and if you consider the Nature, as well of persons, as of affairs, I flatter myself you must be of my opinion. That was tho' not so violent a State of Anarchy as well as the present. If it were even possible to lay things down exactly as they stood, before the series of experimental politicks began, I am quite sure that they could not long continue in that situation. In one Sense of L'Ancien Régime I am clear that nothing else can reasonably be done.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Burke delivered a speech on the debate of the Aliens Bill on 28 December 1792. He supported the Bill as it would exclude \"murderous atheists, who would pull down Church and state; religion and God; morality and happiness\". The peroration included a reference to a French order for 3,000 daggers. Burke revealed a dagger he had concealed in his coat and threw it to the floor: \"This is what you are to gain by an alliance with France\". Burke picked up the dagger and continued:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "When they smile, I see blood trickling down their faces; I see their insidious purposes; I see that the object of all their cajoling is—blood! I now warn my countrymen to beware of these execrable philosophers, whose only object it is to destroy every thing that is good here, and to establish immorality and murder by precept and example—'Hic niger est hunc tu Romane caveto' ['Such a man is evil; beware of him, Roman'. Horace, Satires I. 4. 85.].",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Burke supported the war against Revolutionary France, seeing Britain as fighting on the side of the royalists and émigres in a civil war, rather than fighting against the whole nation of France. Burke also supported the royalist uprising in La Vendée, describing it on 4 November 1793 in a letter to William Windham as \"the sole affair I have much heart in\". Burke wrote to Henry Dundas on 7 October urging him to send reinforcements there as he viewed it as the only theatre in the war that might lead to a march on Paris, but Dundas did not follow Burke's advice.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Burke believed the British government was not taking the uprising seriously enough, a view reinforced by a letter he had received from the Prince Charles of France (S.A.R. le comte d'Artois), dated 23 October, requesting that he intercede on behalf of the royalists to the government. Burke was forced to reply on 6 November: \"I am not in His Majesty's Service; or at all consulted in his Affairs\". Burke published his Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with Respect to France, begun in October, where he said: \"I am sure every thing has shewn us that in this war with France, one Frenchman is worth twenty foreigners. La Vendée is a proof of this\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "On 20 June 1794, Burke received a vote of thanks from the House of Commons for his services in the Hastings Trial and he immediately resigned his seat, being replaced by his son Richard. A tragic blow fell upon Burke with the loss of Richard in August 1794, to whom he was tenderly attached and in whom he saw signs of promise which were not patent to others and which in fact appear to have been non-existent, although this view may have rather reflected the fact that his son Richard had worked successfully in the early battle for Catholic emancipation. King George III, whose favour he had gained by his attitude on the French Revolution, wished to create him Earl of Beaconsfield, but the death of his son deprived the opportunity of such an honour and all its attractions, so the only award he would accept was a pension of £2,500. Even this modest reward was attacked by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, to whom Burke replied in his Letter to a Noble Lord (1796): \"It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform\". He argued that he was rewarded on merit, but the Duke of Bedford received his rewards from inheritance alone, his ancestor being the original pensioner: \"Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign; his from Henry the Eighth\". Burke also hinted at what would happen to such people if their revolutionary ideas were implemented and included a description of the British Constitution:",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion—as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land—so long as the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France.",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Burke's last publications were the Letters on a Regicide Peace (October 1796), called forth by negotiations for peace with France by the Pitt government. Burke regarded this as appeasement, injurious to national dignity and honour. In his Second Letter, Burke wrote of the French Revolutionary government: \"Individuality is left out of their scheme of government. The State is all in all. Everything is referred to the production of force; afterwards, everything is trusted to the use of it. It is military in its principle, in its maxims, in its spirit, and in all its movements. The State has dominion and conquest for its sole objects—dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "This is held to be the first explanation of the modern concept of totalitarian state. Burke regarded the war with France as ideological, against an \"armed doctrine\". He wished that France would not be partitioned due to the effect this would have on the balance of power in Europe and that the war was not against France, but against the revolutionaries governing her. Burke said: \"It is not France extending a foreign empire over other nations: it is a sect aiming at universal empire, and beginning with the conquest of France\".",
"title": "French Revolution: 1688 versus 1789"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In November 1795, there was a debate in Parliament on the high price of corn and Burke wrote a memorandum to Pitt on the subject. In December, Samuel Whitbread MP introduced a bill giving magistrates the power to fix minimum wages and Fox said he would vote for it. This debate probably led Burke to editing his memorandum as there appeared a notice that Burke would soon publish a letter on the subject to the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture Arthur Young, but he failed to complete it. These fragments were inserted into the memorandum after his death and published posthumously in 1800 as Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. In it, Burke expounded \"some of the doctrines of political economists bearing upon agriculture as a trade\". Burke criticised policies such as maximum prices and state regulation of wages and set out what the limits of government should be:",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "That the State ought to confine itself to what regards the State, or the creatures of the State, namely, the exterior establishment of its religion; its magistracy; its revenue; its military force by sea and land; the corporations that owe their existence to its fiat; in a word, to every thing that is truly and properly public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The economist Adam Smith remarked that Burke was \"the only man I ever knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us\".",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Writing to a friend in May 1795, Burke surveyed the causes of discontent: \"I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism [i.e. corporate tyranny, as practised by the British East Indies Company], as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil\". By March 1796, Burke had changed his mind: \"Our Government and our Laws are beset by two different Enemies, which are sapping its foundations, Indianism, and Jacobinism. In some Cases they act separately, in some they act in conjunction: But of this I am sure; that the first is the worst by far, and the hardest to deal with; and for this amongst other reasons, that it weakens discredits, and ruins that force, which ought to be employed with the greatest Credit and Energy against the other; and that it furnishes Jacobinism with its strongest arms against all formal Government\".",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "For more than a year prior to his death, Burke knew that his stomach was \"irrecoverably ruind\". After hearing that Burke was nearing death, Fox wrote to Mrs. Burke enquiring after him. Fox received the reply the next day:",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Mrs. Burke presents her compliments to Mr. Fox, and thanks him for his obliging inquiries. Mrs. Burke communicated his letter to Mr. Burke, and by his desire has to inform Mr. Fox that it has cost Mr. Burke the most heart-felt pain to obey the stern voice of his duty in rending asunder a long friendship, but that he deemed this sacrifice necessary; that his principles continue the same; and that in whatever of life may yet remain to him, he conceives that he must live for others and not for himself. Mr. Burke is convinced that the principles which he has endeavoured to maintain are necessary to the welfare and dignity of his country, and that these principles can be enforced only by the general persuasion of his sincerity.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Burke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 9 July 1797 and was buried there alongside his son and brother.",
"title": "Later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Burke is regarded by most political historians in the English-speaking world as a liberal conservative and the father of modern British conservatism. Burke was utilitarian and empirical in his arguments while Joseph de Maistre, a fellow conservative from the Continent, was more providentialist and sociological and deployed a more confrontational tone in his arguments.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Burke believed that property was essential to human life. Because of his conviction that people desire to be ruled and controlled, the division of property formed the basis for social structure, helping develop control within a property-based hierarchy. He viewed the social changes brought on by property as the natural order of events which should be taking place as the human race progressed. With the division of property and the class system, he also believed that it kept the monarch in check to the needs of the classes beneath the monarch. Since property largely aligned or defined divisions of social class, class too was seen as natural—part of a social agreement that the setting of persons into different classes, is the mutual benefit of all subjects. Concern for property is not Burke's only influence. Christopher Hitchens summarises as follows: \"If modern conservatism can be held to derive from Burke, it is not just because he appealed to property owners in behalf of stability but also because he appealed to an everyday interest in the preservation of the ancestral and the immemorial\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Burke's support for the causes of the \"oppressed majorities\", such as Irish Catholics and Indians, led him to be at the receiving end of hostile criticism from Tories; while his opposition to the spread of the French Republic (and its radical ideals) across Europe led to similar charges from Whigs. As a consequence, Burke often became isolated in Parliament.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both liberals and conservatives. Burke's friend Philip Francis wrote that Burke \"was a man who truly & prophetically foresaw all the consequences which would rise from the adoption of the French principles\", but because Burke wrote with so much passion, people were doubtful of his arguments. William Windham spoke from the same bench in the House of Commons as Burke had when he had separated from Fox and an observer said Windham spoke \"like the ghost of Burke\" when he made a speech against peace with France in 1801. William Hazlitt, a political opponent of Burke, regarded him as amongst his three favourite writers (the others being Junius and Rousseau) and made it \"a test of the sense and candour of any one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to be a great man\". William Wordsworth was originally a supporter of the French Revolution and attacked Burke in A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (1793), but by the early 19th century he had changed his mind and came to admire Burke. In his Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmorland, Wordsworth called Burke \"the most sagacious Politician of his age\", whose predictions \"time has verified\". He later revised his poem The Prelude to include praise of Burke (\"Genius of Burke! forgive the pen seduced/By specious wonders\") and portrayed him as an old oak. Samuel Taylor Coleridge came to have a similar conversion as he had criticised Burke in The Watchman, but in his Friend (1809–1810) had defended Burke from charges of inconsistency. Later in his Biographia Literaria (1817), Coleridge hails Burke as a prophet and praises Burke for referring \"habitually to principles. He was a scientific statesman; and therefore a seer\". Henry Brougham wrote of Burke that \"all his predictions, save one momentary expression, had been more than fulfilled: anarchy and bloodshed had borne sway in France; conquest and convulsion had desolated Europe...[T]he providence of mortals is not often able to penetrate so far as this into futurity\". George Canning believed that Burke's Reflections \"has been justified by the course of subsequent events; and almost every prophecy has been strictly fulfilled\". In 1823, Canning wrote that he took Burke's \"last works and words [as] the manual of my politics\". The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli \"was deeply penetrated with the spirit and sentiment of Burke's later writings\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "The 19th-century Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone considered Burke \"a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America\" and in his diary recorded: \"Made many extracts from Burke—sometimes almost divine\". The Radical MP and anti-Corn Law activist Richard Cobden often praised Burke's Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. The Liberal historian Lord Acton considered Burke one of the three greatest Liberals, along with Gladstone and Thomas Babington Macaulay. Lord Macaulay recorded in his diary: \"I have now finished reading again most of Burke's works. Admirable! The greatest man since Milton\". The Gladstonian Liberal MP John Morley published two books on Burke (including a biography) and was influenced by Burke, including his views on prejudice. The Cobdenite Radical Francis Hirst thought Burke deserved \"a place among English libertarians, even though of all lovers of liberty and of all reformers he was the most conservative, the least abstract, always anxious to preserve and renovate rather than to innovate. In politics, he resembled the modern architect who would restore an old house instead of pulling it down to construct a new one on the site\". Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France was controversial at the time of its publication, but after his death, it was to become his best-known and most influential work and a manifesto for Conservative thinking.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Two contrasting assessments of Burke also were offered long after his death by Karl Marx and Winston Churchill. In a footnote to Volume One of Das Kapital, Marx wrote:",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois. \"The laws of commerce are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God.\" (E. Burke, l.c., pp. 31, 32) No wonder that, true to the laws of God and Nature, he always sold himself in the best market.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In Consistency in Politics, Churchill wrote:",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "On the one hand [Burke] is revealed as a foremost apostle of Liberty, on the other as the redoubtable champion of Authority. But a charge of political inconsistency applied to this life appears a mean and petty thing. History easily discerns the reasons and forces which actuated him, and the immense changes in the problems he was facing which evoked from the same profound mind and sincere spirit these entirely contrary manifestations. His soul revolted against tyranny, whether it appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch and a corrupt Court and Parliamentary system, or whether, mouthing the watch-words of a non-existent liberty, it towered up against him in the dictation of a brutal mob and wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The historian Piers Brendon asserts that Burke laid the moral foundations for the British Empire, epitomised in the trial of Warren Hastings, that was ultimately to be its undoing. When Burke stated that \"[t]he British Empire must be governed on a plan of freedom, for it will be governed by no other\", this was \"an ideological bacillus that would prove fatal. This was Edmund Burke's paternalistic doctrine that colonial government was a trust. It was to be so exercised for the benefit of subject people that they would eventually attain their birthright—freedom\". As a consequence of these opinions, Burke objected to the opium trade which he called a \"smuggling adventure\" and condemned \"the great Disgrace of the British character in India\". According to political scientist Jennifer Pitts, Burke \"was arguably the first political thinker to undertake a comprehensive critique of British imperial practice in the name of justice for those who suffered from its moral and political exclusions.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Burke at 37 Gerrard Street now in London's Chinatown.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Statues of Burke are in Bristol, England, Trinity College Dublin and Washington, D.C. Burke is also the namesake of a private college preparatory school in Washington, Edmund Burke School.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Burke Avenue, in The Bronx, New York, is named for him.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "One of Burke's largest and most developed critics was the American political theorist Leo Strauss. In his book Natural Right and History, Strauss makes a series of points in which he somewhat harshly evaluates Burke's writings.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "One of the topics that he first addresses is the fact that Burke creates a definitive separation between happiness and virtue and explains that \"Burke, therefore, seeks the foundation of government 'in a conformity to our duties' and not in 'imaginary rights of man\". Strauss views Burke as believing that government should focus solely on the duties that a man should have in society as opposed to trying to address any additional needs or desires. Government is simply a practicality to Burke and not necessarily meant to function as a tool to help individuals to live as well as possible. Strauss also argues that in a sense Burke's theory could be seen as opposing the very idea of forming such philosophies. Burke expresses the view that theory cannot adequately predict future occurrences and therefore men need to have instincts that cannot be practised or derived from ideology.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "This leads to an overarching criticism that Strauss holds regarding Burke which is his rejection of the use of logic. Burke dismisses a widely held view amongst theorists that reason should be the primary tool in the forming of a constitution or contract. Burke instead believes that constitutions should be made based on natural processes as opposed to rational planning for the future. However, Strauss points out that criticising rationality actually works against Burke's original stance of returning to traditional ways because some amount of human reason is inherent and therefore is in part grounded in tradition. In regards to this formation of legitimate social order, Strauss does not necessarily support Burke's opinion—that order cannot be established by individual wise people, but exclusively by a culmination of individuals with historical knowledge of past functions to use as a foundation. Strauss notes that Burke would oppose more newly formed republics due to this thought, although Lenzner adds the fact that he did seem to believe that America's constitution could be justified given the specific circumstances. On the other hand, France's constitution was much too radical as it relied too heavily on enlightened reasoning as opposed to traditional methods and values.",
"title": "Criticism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Burke's religious writing comprises published works and commentary on the subject of religion. Burke's religious thought was grounded in the belief that religion is the foundation of civil society. He sharply criticised deism and atheism and emphasised Christianity as a vehicle of social progress. Born in Ireland to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, Burke vigorously defended the Anglican Church, but he also demonstrated sensitivity to Catholic concerns. He linked the conservation of a state-established religion with the preservation of citizens' constitutional liberties and highlighted Christianity's benefit not only to the believer's soul, but also to political arrangements.",
"title": "Religious thought"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "The well-known maxim that \"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing\" is widely attributed to Burke, despite the debated origin of the quotation. It is known that, in 1770, Burke wrote the following passage in \"Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents\":",
"title": "Disputed or misattributed quotations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "[W]hen bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.",
"title": "Disputed or misattributed quotations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In 1867, John Stuart Mill made a similar statement in an inaugural address delivered at the University of St Andrews:",
"title": "Disputed or misattributed quotations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.",
"title": "Disputed or misattributed quotations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "Actor T. P. McKenna was cast as Edmund Burke in the TV series Longitude in 2000.",
"title": "In popular media"
}
]
| Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher who spent most of his career in Great Britain. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. Burke was a proponent of underpinning virtues with manners in society and of the importance of religious institutions for the moral stability and good of the state. These views were expressed in his A Vindication of Natural Society (1756). He criticised the actions of the British government towards the American colonies, including its taxation policies. Burke also supported the rights of the colonists to resist metropolitan authority, although he opposed the attempt to achieve independence. He is remembered for his support for Catholic emancipation, the Impeachment of Warren Hastings from the East India Company, and his staunch opposition to the French Revolution. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Burke asserted that the revolution was destroying the fabric of "good" society and traditional institutions of state and society, and he condemned the persecution of the Catholic Church that resulted from it. This led to his becoming the leading figure within the conservative faction of the Whig Party which he dubbed the Old Whigs as opposed to the pro–French Revolution New Whigs led by Charles James Fox. In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals. Subsequently, in the 20th century, he became widely regarded, especially in the United States, as the philosophical founder of conservatism. | 2001-11-03T05:55:56Z | 2023-12-30T17:02:51Z | [
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10,033 | Early music | Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical music.
Interpretations of historical scope of "early music" vary. The original Academy of Ancient Music formed in 1726 defined "Ancient" music as works written by composers who lived before the end of the 16th century. Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries would have understood Early music to range from the High Renaissance and Baroque, while some scholars consider that Early music should include the music of ancient Greece or Rome before 500 AD (a period that is generally covered by the term Ancient music). Music critic Michael Kennedy excludes Baroque, defining Early music as "musical compositions from [the] earliest times up to and including music of [the] Renaissance period".
Musicologist Thomas Forrest Kelly considers that the essence of Early music is the revival of "forgotten" musical repertoire and that the term is intertwined with the rediscovery of old performance practice. According to the UK's National Centre for Early Music, the term "early music" refers to both a repertory (European music written between 1250 and 1750 embracing Medieval, Renaissance and the Baroque) – and a historically informed approach to the performance of that music.
Today, the understanding of "Early music" has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises, instruments and other contemporary evidence."
In the later 20th century there was a resurgence of interest in the performance of music from the Medieval and Renaissance eras, and a number of instrumental consorts and choral ensembles specialising in Early music repertoire were formed. Groups such as the Tallis Scholars, the Early Music Consort and the Taverner Consort and Players have been influential in bringing Early music to modern audiences through performances and popular recordings.
The revival of interest in Early music has given rise to a scholarly approach to the performance of music. Through academic musicological research of music treatises, urtext editions of musical scores and other historical evidence, performers attempt to be faithful to the performance style of the musical era in which a work was originally conceived. Additionally, there has been a rise in the use of original or reproduction period instruments as part of the performance of Early music, such as the revival of the harpsichord or the viol.
The practice of "historically informed performance" is nevertheless dependent on stylistic inference. According to Margaret Bent, Renaissance notation is not as prescriptive as modern scoring, and there is much that was left to the performer's interpretation: "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness. Accidentals … may or may not have been notated, but what modern notation requires would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint". | [
{
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"text": "Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical music.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Interpretations of historical scope of \"early music\" vary. The original Academy of Ancient Music formed in 1726 defined \"Ancient\" music as works written by composers who lived before the end of the 16th century. Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries would have understood Early music to range from the High Renaissance and Baroque, while some scholars consider that Early music should include the music of ancient Greece or Rome before 500 AD (a period that is generally covered by the term Ancient music). Music critic Michael Kennedy excludes Baroque, defining Early music as \"musical compositions from [the] earliest times up to and including music of [the] Renaissance period\".",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Musicologist Thomas Forrest Kelly considers that the essence of Early music is the revival of \"forgotten\" musical repertoire and that the term is intertwined with the rediscovery of old performance practice. According to the UK's National Centre for Early Music, the term \"early music\" refers to both a repertory (European music written between 1250 and 1750 embracing Medieval, Renaissance and the Baroque) – and a historically informed approach to the performance of that music.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Today, the understanding of \"Early music\" has come to include \"any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises, instruments and other contemporary evidence.\"",
"title": "Terminology"
},
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"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In the later 20th century there was a resurgence of interest in the performance of music from the Medieval and Renaissance eras, and a number of instrumental consorts and choral ensembles specialising in Early music repertoire were formed. Groups such as the Tallis Scholars, the Early Music Consort and the Taverner Consort and Players have been influential in bringing Early music to modern audiences through performances and popular recordings.",
"title": "Revival"
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"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The revival of interest in Early music has given rise to a scholarly approach to the performance of music. Through academic musicological research of music treatises, urtext editions of musical scores and other historical evidence, performers attempt to be faithful to the performance style of the musical era in which a work was originally conceived. Additionally, there has been a rise in the use of original or reproduction period instruments as part of the performance of Early music, such as the revival of the harpsichord or the viol.",
"title": "Performance practice"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The practice of \"historically informed performance\" is nevertheless dependent on stylistic inference. According to Margaret Bent, Renaissance notation is not as prescriptive as modern scoring, and there is much that was left to the performer's interpretation: \"Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness. Accidentals … may or may not have been notated, but what modern notation requires would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint\".",
"title": "Performance practice"
}
]
| Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical music. | 2022-05-02T21:24:41Z | [
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10,035 | Elfenland | Elfenland is a German-style board game designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Amigo Spiele in German and Rio Grande Games in English in 1998. Elfenland won the Spiel des Jahres award in 1998.
The game was originally based on his earlier game Elfenroads (published by White Wind), but since Elfenroads took about four hours for a game, the play was simplified to reduce the time closer to an hour, making it appeal more as a family game.
The game is played by 2–6 players, with 4–5 making for the best game. Each player tries to reach as many cities as possible and then return to his "home city." Home cities are drawn at the beginning of the game from a pack of city cards and they remain hidden throughout the game. The game is thus reminiscent of the traveling salesman problem.
Players move using transportation cards. Elves can travel on a wide variety of vehicles including troll wagons, elf cycles, rafts, giant pigs, unicorns, dragons and magic clouds. Different types of transportation will travel better over different terrain, and some methods of transport cannot cross certain terrains at all. There is only one problem: you cannot travel over a route (except water) unless there is a tile on that road, and only the type of transport shown on the tile can be used to move along that road. Before anyone can move, tiles are drawn and laid out across the board. This part is the one that calls for the most strategy, as players try to line up their tiles to set up a nice route for themselves and a difficult one for their opponents at the same time.
As well as normal tiles, each player receives one trouble tile for use during the game. These hinder other players by forcing them to use an extra transportation card at that point. Also, any player can simply use any three cards to pass over any route that has a tile already there, allowing the type of transport shown on the tile to be ignored.
The game has subtle strategies to make others navigate through the cities. When a player puts a transportation type you don't want in your path then you have to find a way around it. All of the aspects of the game make for a very exciting race to visit the most cities while never quite being sure who is winning until the last round.
There was an expansion for Elfenland published, called Elfengold. Note that this is different from the original Elfengold published by White Wind.
Bernhard Fischer from Spieltest praised the game's mechanisms, and accessibility, but was mixed on the luck elements. It also won the 1998 Spiel des Jahres award, and placed third place in the 1998 Deutscher Spiele Preis award. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Elfenland is a German-style board game designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Amigo Spiele in German and Rio Grande Games in English in 1998. Elfenland won the Spiel des Jahres award in 1998.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The game was originally based on his earlier game Elfenroads (published by White Wind), but since Elfenroads took about four hours for a game, the play was simplified to reduce the time closer to an hour, making it appeal more as a family game.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The game is played by 2–6 players, with 4–5 making for the best game. Each player tries to reach as many cities as possible and then return to his \"home city.\" Home cities are drawn at the beginning of the game from a pack of city cards and they remain hidden throughout the game. The game is thus reminiscent of the traveling salesman problem.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Players move using transportation cards. Elves can travel on a wide variety of vehicles including troll wagons, elf cycles, rafts, giant pigs, unicorns, dragons and magic clouds. Different types of transportation will travel better over different terrain, and some methods of transport cannot cross certain terrains at all. There is only one problem: you cannot travel over a route (except water) unless there is a tile on that road, and only the type of transport shown on the tile can be used to move along that road. Before anyone can move, tiles are drawn and laid out across the board. This part is the one that calls for the most strategy, as players try to line up their tiles to set up a nice route for themselves and a difficult one for their opponents at the same time.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "As well as normal tiles, each player receives one trouble tile for use during the game. These hinder other players by forcing them to use an extra transportation card at that point. Also, any player can simply use any three cards to pass over any route that has a tile already there, allowing the type of transport shown on the tile to be ignored.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The game has subtle strategies to make others navigate through the cities. When a player puts a transportation type you don't want in your path then you have to find a way around it. All of the aspects of the game make for a very exciting race to visit the most cities while never quite being sure who is winning until the last round.",
"title": "Gameplay"
},
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"text": "There was an expansion for Elfenland published, called Elfengold. Note that this is different from the original Elfengold published by White Wind.",
"title": "Expansion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Bernhard Fischer from Spieltest praised the game's mechanisms, and accessibility, but was mixed on the luck elements. It also won the 1998 Spiel des Jahres award, and placed third place in the 1998 Deutscher Spiele Preis award.",
"title": "Reception"
}
]
| Elfenland is a German-style board game designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Amigo Spiele in German and Rio Grande Games in English in 1998. Elfenland won the Spiel des Jahres award in 1998. | 2023-04-03T22:19:15Z | [
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|
10,037 | Euroscepticism | Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies, and seek reform (Eurorealism, Eurocritical, or soft Euroscepticism), to those who oppose EU membership and see the EU as unreformable (anti-European Unionism, anti-EUism, or hard Euroscepticism). The opposite of Euroscepticism is known as pro-Europeanism, or European Unionism.
The main drivers of Euroscepticism have been beliefs that integration undermines national sovereignty and the nation state, that the EU is elitist and lacks democratic legitimacy and transparency, that it is too bureaucratic and wasteful, that it encourages high levels of immigration, or perceptions that it is a neoliberal organisation serving the big business elite at the expense of the working class, that it is responsible for austerity, and drives privatization.
Euroscepticism is found in groups across the political spectrum, both left-wing and right-wing, and is often found in populist parties. Although they criticise the EU for many of the same reasons, Eurosceptic left-wing populists focus more on economic issues, such as the European debt crisis and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, while Eurosceptic right-wing populists focus more on nationalism and immigration, such as the European migrant crisis. The rise in radical-right parties since the 2000s is strongly linked to a rise in Euroscepticism.
Eurobarometer surveys of EU citizens show that trust in the EU and its institutions declined strongly from 2007 to 2015. In that period, it was consistently below 50%. A 2009 survey showed that support for EU membership was lowest in the United Kingdom (UK), Latvia, and Hungary. By 2016, the countries viewing the EU most unfavourably were the UK, Greece, France, and Spain. The 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum resulted in a 51.9% vote in favour of leaving the EU (Brexit), a decision that came into effect on 31 January 2020.
Since 2015, trust in the EU has risen in most EU countries as a result of falling unemployment rates and the end of the migrant crisis. A post-2019 election Eurobarometer survey showed that 68% of citizens support the EU, the highest level since 1983; however, sentiment that things are not going in the right direction in the EU had increased to 50%.
Trust in the EU had increased significantly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with levels varying across member states.
The main reasons for Euroscepticism include beliefs that:
There can be considered to be several different types of Eurosceptic thought, which differ in the extent to which adherents reject integration between member states of the EU and in their reasons for doing so. Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart described two of these as hard and soft Euroscepticism. At the same time, some scholars have said that there is no clear line between the presumed hard and soft Euroscepticism. Cas Mudde and Petr Kopecky have said that if the demarcation line is the number of and which policies a party opposes, then the question arises of how many must a party oppose and which ones should a party oppose that makes them hard Eurosceptic instead of soft.
According to Taggart and Szczerbiak, hard Euroscepticism or anti-EU-ism is "a principled opposition to the EU and European integration and therefore can be seen in parties who think that their countries should withdraw from membership, or whose policies towards the EU are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of European integration as it is currently conceived." The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament (2014–2019) displayed hard Euroscepticism, but following the 2019 EU elections the group was disbanded due to too few members, as its largest member, the British Brexit Party, withdrew ahead of the United Kingdom's formal exit from the EU.
Some hard Eurosceptics regard their position as pragmatic rather than in principle. Additionally, Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP who fought against European integration in 1975 by opposing membership of the European Communities in that year's referendum on the issue, emphasised his opposition to xenophobia and his support of democracy, saying: "My view about the European Union has always been not that I am hostile to foreigners, but that I am in favour of democracy. ... I think they're building an empire there, they want us to be a part of their empire and I don't want that."
The Czech president Václav Klaus rejected the term Euroscepticism for its purported negative undertones, saying at a meeting in April 2012 that the expressions for a Eurosceptic and their opponent should be "a Euro-realist" and someone who is "Euro-naïve", respectively. François Asselineau of the French Popular Republican Union has criticised the use of the term 'sceptic' to describe hard Eurosceptics, and would rather advocate the use of the term "Euro opponent". He believes the use of the term 'sceptic' for soft Eurosceptics to be correct, since other Eurosceptic parties in France are "merely criticising" the EU without taking into account the fact that the Treaty of Rome can only be modified with a unanimous agreement of all the EU member states, something he considers impossible to achieve.
Soft Euroscepticism reflects a support for the existence of, and membership of, a form of EU but with opposition to specific EU policies, or in Taggart's and Szczerbiak's words, "where there is NOT a principled objection to European integration or EU membership but where concerns on one (or a number) of policy areas lead to the expression of qualified opposition to the EU, or where there is a sense that 'national interest' is currently at odds with the EU's trajectory."
Both the European Conservatives and Reformists group, dominated by the right-wing Polish party Law and Justice, and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left, which is an alliance of the left-wing parties in the European Parliament, display soft Euroscepticism. The European Conservatives and Reformist Group does not itself use the descriptions Euroscepticism or soft Euroscepticism and instead describes its position as one of Eurorealism, a distinction described by Leruth as being one that is "quite subtle but should not be ignored" given the association of the term Euroscepticism with "European disintegration". Leruth describes Eurorealism as "a pragmatic, anti-federalist, and flexible vision of European integration where the principle of subsidiarity prevails, aiming to reform the current institutional framework to extend the role of national parliaments in the decision-making process." Steven states that "Eurorealism is a form of conservativism, first and foremost, rather than a form or Euroscepticism, even if it obviously very much also has the 'soft' Eurosceptic tendencies which are present in a number of ECR member parties."
While having some overlaps, Euroscepticism and anti-Europeanism are different. Euroscepticism is criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. Anti-Europeanism is sentiment or policies in opposition to Europe. For example, American exceptionalism in the United States has long led to criticism of European domestic policy, such as the size of the welfare state in European countries, and foreign policy, such as European countries that did not support the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Some scholars consider the gradual difference in terminology between hard and soft Euroscepticism inadequate to accommodate the large differences in terms of political agenda; hard Euroscepticism has also been referred to as Europhobia as opposed to mere Euroscepticism. Other alternative names for hard and soft Euroscepticism include withdrawalist and reformist, respectively.
A survey in November 2015, conducted by TNS Opinion and Social on behalf of the European Commission, showed that, across the EU as a whole, those with a positive image of the EU were down from a high of 52% in 2007 to 37% in autumn 2015; this compares with 23% with a negative image of the EU, and 38% with a neutral image. About 43% of Europeans thought things were "going in the wrong direction" in the EU, compared with 23% who thought things were going "in the right direction" (11% "don't know"). About 32% of EU citizens tend to trust the EU as an institution, and about 55% do not tend to trust it (13% "don't know"). Distrust of the EU was highest in Greece (81%), Cyprus (72%), Austria (65%), France (65%), the United Kingdom (UK) and the Czech Republic (both 63%). Overall, more respondents distrusted their own government (66%) than they distrusted the EU (55%). Distrust of national government was highest in Greece (82%), Slovenia (80%), Portugal (79%), Cyprus (76%), and France (76%).
A Eurobarometer survey carried out four days prior to and six days after the 2016 United States presidential election revealed that the surprise victory of Donald Trump caused an increase in the popularity of the EU in Europe. The increase was strongest among the political right and among respondents who perceived their country as economically struggling.
A survey carried out in April 2018 for the European Parliament by Kantar Public consulting found that support for the EU was "the highest score ever measured since 1983". Support for the EU was up in 26 out of 28 EU countries, the exceptions being Germany and the UK, where support had dropped by about 2% since the previous survey. Almost half (48%) of the 27,601 EU citizens surveyed agreed that their voice counted in the EU, up from 37% in 2016, whereas 46% disagreed with this statement. Two-thirds (67%) of respondents felt that their country had benefited from EU membership and 60% said that being part of the bloc was a good thing, as opposed to 12% who felt the opposite. At the height of the EU's financial and economic crises in 2011, just 47% had been of the view that EU membership was a good thing. Support for EU membership was greatest in Malta (93%), Ireland (91%), Lithuania (90%), Poland (88%), Luxembourg (88%), Estonia (86%), and Denmark (84%), and lowest in Greece (57%), Bulgaria (57%), Cyprus (56%), Austria (54%), the United Kingdom (53%), and Italy (44%).
When asked which issues should be a priority for the European Parliament, survey respondents picked terrorism as the most pressing topic of discussion, ahead of youth unemployment and immigration. Not all countries shared the same priorities. Immigration topped the list in Italy (66% of citizens surveyed considered it a priority issue), Malta (65%), and Hungary (62%) but fighting youth unemployment and support for economic growth were top concerns in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Croatia. Social protection of citizens was the top concern for Dutch, Swedish, and Danish respondents.
The April 2019 Eurobarometer showed that despite the challenges of the past years, and in cases such as the ongoing debate surrounding Brexit, possibly even because of it, the European sense of togetherness had not weakened, with 68% of respondents across the EU27 believing that their countries have benefited from being part of the EU, a historically high level since 1983. On the other hand, more Europeans (27%) were uncertain and saw the EU as "neither a good thing nor a bad thing", an increase in 19 countries. Despite the overall positive attitude towards the EU but in line with the uncertainty expressed by a growing number of Europeans, the feeling that things were not going in the right direction in both the EU and in their own countries had increased to 50% on EU average since September 2018.
The Eurobarometer 93.1 survey was in the field across Europe when the European Council summit reached political agreement on a pandemic economic recovery fund (later named Next Generation EU) on 21 July 2020. A comparison of Eurobarometer responses gathered before this seminal decision and interviews conducted shortly thereafter indicates that the European Council's endorsement of pandemic economic relief increased popular support of Covid-19 economic recovery aid - but only among Europeans who view EU decisionmakers as trustworthy.
A study analysed voting records of the Fifth European Parliament and ranked groups, concluding: "Towards the top of the figure are the more pro-European parties (PES, EPP-ED, and ALDE), whereas towards the bottom of the figure are the more anti-European parties (EUL/NGL, G/EFA, UEN and EDD)."
In 2004, 37 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliament group called "Independence and Democracy" from the old Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD) group.
The main goal of the ID group was to reject the proposed Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. Some delegations within the group, notably that from UKIP, also advocated the complete withdrawal of their country from the EU, while others only wished to limit further European integration.
The elections of 2009 saw a significant fall in support in some areas for Eurosceptic parties, with all such MEPs from Poland, Denmark and Sweden losing their seats. In the UK, the Eurosceptic UKIP achieved second place in the election, finishing ahead of the governing Labour Party, and the British National Party (BNP) won its first-ever two MEPs. Although new members joined the ID group from Greece and the Netherlands, it was unclear whether the group would reform in the new parliament.
The ID group did reform, as the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) and is represented by 32 MEPs from nine countries.
The elections of 2014 saw a big anti-establishment vote in favour of Eurosceptic parties, which took around a quarter of the seats available. Those that came first their national elections included: UKIP in the UK (the first time since 1906 that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives had won a national vote), the National Front in France, the People's Party in Denmark and Syriza in Greece. Second places were taken by Sinn Féin in Ireland and the Five Star Movement in Italy. Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, agreed following the election to re-evaluate the economic area's agenda and to launch consultations on future policy areas with the 28 member states.
The elections of 2019 saw the centre-left and centre-right parties suffer significant losses including losing their overall majority, while green, pro-EU liberal, and some Eurosceptic right wing parties saw significant gains. Those that came first in their national elections included: the Brexit Party in the UK (which was only launched on 12 April 2019 by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage), the National Rally of France (formerly the National Front party until June 2018), Fidesz in Hungary, Lega in Italy, and Law and Justice in Poland. There were also notable falls in support for the Danish People's Party (previously topped the 2014 European election). Whilst Vox got elected with 3 seats, Spain's first Eurosceptic party and Belgium's Vlaams Belang rallied to gain second place after its poor 2014 result.
The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), established in 1956, is a right-wing populist party that mainly attracts support from young people and workers. In 1989, it changed its stance over the EU to Euroscepticism. It opposed Austria joining the EU in 1994, and opposed the introduction of the euro in 1998. The party would like to leave the EU if it threatens to develop into a country, or if Turkey joins. The FPÖ received 20–27% of the national vote in the 1990s, and more recently received 18% in 2008. Following the 2017 Austrian legislative election, it has 51/183 National Council seats, 16/62 Federal Council seats, and 4/19 European Parliament seats.
The Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), established in 2005, is a socially conservative party that has always held Eurosceptic elements. In 2011 the party openly supported leaving the eurozone, and in 2012 it announced that it supported a full withdrawal from the European Union. The party has also called upon a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. In polls it generally received around 10–15%, although in one state it did receive 45% of the vote in 2009. Since the 2017 election, it has 0/183 National Council seats, 0/62 Federal Council seats, and 0/19 European Parliament seats.
Team Stronach, established in 2012, has campaigned to reform the European Union, as well as to replace the euro with an Austrian Euro. In 2012, it regularly received 8–10% support in national polls. Politicians from many different parties (including the Social Democratic Party and the BZÖ) as well as previous independents switched their allegiances to the new party upon creation. In two local elections in March 2013, it won 11% of the vote in Carinthia, and 10% of the vote in Lower Austria. It dissolved in 2017.
Ewald Stadler, a former member of FPÖ (and later of BZÖ) was very Eurosceptic, but in 2011 became a member of the European Parliament due to the Lisbon Treaty. Before Stadler accepted the seat, this led to heavy critics by Jörg Leichtfried (SPÖ) "Stadler wants to just rescue his political career" because Stadler before mentioned he would never accept a seat as MEP if this was only due to the Lisbon Treaty. On 23 December 2013 he founded a conservative and Eurosceptic party called The Reform Conservatives, although it has been inactive since June 2016.
In the 2014 European Parliament election, the FPÖ increased its vote to 19.7% (up 7.0%), gaining 2 new MEPs, making a total of 4; the party came third, behind the ÖVP and the SPÖ. EU-STOP (the electoral alliance of the EU Withdrawal Party and the Neutral Free Austria Federation) polled 2.8%, gaining no seats, and the Reform Conservatives 1.2%, with Team Stronach putting up no candidates.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, the FPÖ came 3rd with 17.2% of the vote which was only slightly down on 2014 despite a scandal allegedly promising public contracts to a woman posing as a Russian backer. This precipitated the collapse of the ruling coalition and a new election being called.
According to Eurostat, in the fall of 2018, 44% of Belgium people stated that they did not trust the European Union. The main Eurosceptic party in Belgium is Vlaams Belang which is active in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. In the 2014 European Parliament election, Belgium's Vlaams Belang lost over half of its previous vote share, polling 4.3% (down 5.5%) and losing 1 of its 2 members of the European Parliament. Despite the presence of Eurosceptic parties in Belgium, their weight is relatively low, as Belgium is predominantly Europeanist.
In 2019, Vlaams Belang stated in its program for the 2019 European Parliament election that it opposes the creation of a European state, would like to change the Economic and Monetary Union of the EU, and to end the Schengen Area, and refuses the accession of Turkey to the EU. More widely, the euro-sceptic arguments of the Vlaams Belang are based on four pillars:
The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) is a soft Eurosceptic party in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Before 2010, the N-VA was pro-European and supported the idea of a democratic European confederation, but has since altered this policy to a more sceptical stance on further European integration and now calls for more democratic transparency within the EU, changes to the EU's common asylum policy and economic reforms to the Eurozone. The N-VA has obtained 26.8% of the votes or 4 seats of the Dutch-language college out of 12 (21 MEPs for Belgium) in the 2014 European Parliament election. In April 2019, it stood in European Conservatives and Reformists of the European Parliament, and can be considered a moderate Eurosceptic party.
In the French-speaking part of Belgium (Walloons), there are four Eurosceptic parties. The first one is Nation Movement, a far-right party which was a member of the Alliance for Peace and Freedom in the European Parliament. The second one is National Front, also a far right party which criticizes the European bureaucracy, intends to guarantee and preserve national independence and freedom in a liberated Europe; it also reaffirms the Christian roots of Europe. The third one is the People's Party, classified as right or extreme right. In its program for the European election of 2019 the People's Party proposes to abolish the European Commission, reduce the number of European parliamentarians and fight against the worker-posted directive. For this party, the EU must be led by a president elected by universal suffrage with clear but limited competences. It also wants to renegotiate the European Union treaties, restrict the judicial activism of the European Court of Human Rights. It declares itself against the Global Compact for Migration. The last one is the Parti libertarien. In early 2019, the party aims to reduce the powers of the European Commission, to abolish the Common Agricultural Policy, to abandon common defense projects, to simplify the exit procedure of the European Union, to reject federalism and to forbid the European Union to direct economic, fiscal or social policy, Finally, the Workers' Party of Belgium is an electoral and unitary party. It also intends to revise the European treaties considered too liberal. One of the Party's currencies is "The left that stings, against the Europe of money".
Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are NFSB, Attack, and VMRO – BND, which is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists). Bulgaria's Minister of Finance, Simeon Djankov, stated in 2011 that ERM II membership to enter the Euro zone would be postponed until after the Eurozone crisis had stabilised.
In the 2014 European Parliament election Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU, with the Eurosceptic Attack party receiving 3% of the vote, down 9%, with the splinter group National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria taking 3; neither party secured any MEPs. A coalition between VMRO – BND and Bulgaria Without Censorship secured an MEP position for Angel Dzhambazki from IMRO, who is a hard Eurosceptic.
Followers of Eurosceptic Attack tore down and trampled the European flag on 3 March 2016 at a meeting of the party in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, dedicated to the commemoration of the 138th anniversary of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU with the ruling centre-right Gerb party winning with 31%, against 26% for the socialist BSP.
Since the 2021–2023 Bulgarian political crisis, the far-right hard Eurosceptic party Revival has outplaced Attack, with it getting 14% on the most recent 2023 Bulgarian parliamentary election.
Parties with Eurosceptic views are mainly small right-wing parties like Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Party of Rights dr. Ante Starčević, Croatian Pure Party of Rights, Autochthonous Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Christian Democratic Party and Only Croatia – Movement for Croatia.
The only parliamentary party that is vocally Eurosceptic is the Human Shield that won 5 out of 151 seats at the 2016 parliamentary election. Their position is generally considered to waver between hard and soft Euroscepticism; it requests thorough reform of the EU so that all member states would be perfectly equal.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Human Shield gained its first seat in the European Parliament with 6% of the vote putting it in 5th place.
Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views in Cyprus are the Progressive Party of Working People and ELAM.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, there was little change politically – the conservatives won narrowly, the ruling DISY taking two seats with 29%, followed by socialist AKEL (27.5%, two seats) with no seats taken by Eurosceptic parties.
In May 2010, the Czech president Václav Klaus said that they "needn't hurry to enter the Eurozone".
Petr Mach, an economist, a close associate of president Václav Klaus and a member of the Civic Democratic Party between 1997 and 2007, founded the Free Citizens Party in 2009. The party aims to mainly attract dissatisfied Civic Democratic Party voters. At the time of the Lisbon Treaty ratification, they were actively campaigning against it, supported by the president Vaclav Klaus, who demanded opt-outs such as were granted to the United Kingdom and Poland, unlike the governing Civic Democratic Party, who endorsed it in the Chamber of Deputies. After the treaty has been ratified, Mach's party is in favour of withdrawing from the European Union completely. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Free Citizens Party won one mandate and allied with UKIP in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFD).
The 2017 Czech legislative election brought into Parliament one soft eurosceptic party, the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) (11%), and two hard eurosceptic parties, the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) (11%) and the left-wing to far-left Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) (8%).
An April 2016 survey by the CVVM Institute indicated that 25% of Czechs were satisfied with EU membership, down from 32% the previous year.
Dividends worth CZK 270 billion were paid to the foreign owners of Czech companies in 2017, which has become a political issue in the Czech Republic.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Civic Democratic Party saw its vote share rise to 15% and its seats doubled from 2 to 4. The Freedom and Direct Democracy party took 2 seats with 9% of the vote. KSČM dropped 2 seats leaving it with only one and a vote share of 7%
The People's Movement against the EU only takes part in European Parliament elections and has one member in the European Parliament. The soft Eurosceptic June Movement, originally a split-off from the People's Movement against the EU, existed from 1992 to 2009.
In the Danish Parliament, the Red-Green Alliance previously advocated withdrawal from the EU, but in March 2019, the party announced it would no longer campaign for a referendum to leave the EU, pointing to Brexit illustrating the need for clarity before withdrawal can be considered. The Danish People's Party also advocates withdrawal, but says it supports some EU structures such as the internal market, and supported the EU-positive Liberal-Conservative coalition between 2001 and 2011 and again from 2015 to 2019.
The Socialist People's Party, minorities within the Social Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party, and some smaller parties were against accession to the European Union in 1972. Still in 1986, these parties advocated a no vote in the Single European Act referendum. Later, the Social Liberal Party changed to a strongly EU-positive party, and EU opposition within the Social Democratic Party faded. The Socialist People's Party were against the Amsterdam Treaty in 1998 and Denmark's joining the euro in 2000, but has become increasingly EU-positive, for example when MEP Margrete Auken left the European United Left–Nordic Green Left and joined The Greens–European Free Alliance in 2004.
In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party came first by a large margin with 27% of the vote, gaining 2 extra seats for a total of 4 MEPs. The People's Movement against the EU polled 8%, retaining its single MEP.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party lost around two-thirds of their previous vote share dropping from 4 seats to just 1. The People's Movement against the EU lost their seat and the Red-Green Alliance got one seat.
The 2019 Danish general election saw the emergence of a new hard Eurosceptic party Nye Borgerlige which supports Denmark leaving the EU. The party won four seats in parliament.
The Independence Party and Centre Party were against accession to the EU, but only the Independence Party still wants Estonia to withdraw from the EU. The Conservative People's Party (EKRE) also has some Eurosceptic policies and increased its vote share from 4% in 2014 to 13% in the 2019 European Elections winning one seat.
The largest Eurosceptic party in Finland is the Finns Party. In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Finns Party increased their vote share by 3% to 13%, adding a second MEP. With their 39 seats, the Finns Party are also the second-biggest party in the 200-seat Finnish Eduskunta.
In Eurobarometer 77 (fieldwork in Spring 2012), 41% of Finns trusted the European Union (EU-27 average: 31%), 51% trusted The European Parliament (EU-27average: 40%), and 74% were in favour of the euro currency (EU-27 average: 52%).
In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Finns Party increased their vote share slightly from 13% to 14% and retained their 2 seats.
In its latest party platform written in 2019, the Finns Party is strongly opposed to further EU integration. The party proposes introducing a parallel currency within Finland in tandem with the Euro in order to phase out Finnish membership of the Eurozone and argues that while Finland is needed in the short-term in the European Parliament to defend Finland's interests, the country should also enact policies to help gradually withdraw Finland from the EU. During the 2018 Finnish presidential election, the Finns Party candidate Laura Huhtasaari stated that her campaign would support exiting the EU.
In France there are multiple parties that are Eurosceptic to different degrees, varying from advocating less EU intervention in national affairs, to advocating outright withdrawal from the EU and the Eurozone. These parties belong to all sides of the political spectrum, so the reasons for their Euroscepticism may differ. In the past many French people appeared to be uninterested in such matters, with only 40% of the French electorate voting in the 2009 European Parliament elections.
Right-wing Eurosceptic parties include the Gaullist Debout la République, and Mouvement pour la France, which was part of Libertas, a pan-European Eurosceptic party. In the 2009 European Parliament elections, Debout la République received 1.8% of the national vote, and Libertas 4.8%. In a similar way to some moderate parties, the French right and far-right in general are naturally opposed to the EU, as they criticise France's loss of political and economic sovereignty to a supranational entity. Some of these hard Eurosceptic parties include the Popular Republican Union and formerly the Front National (FN). Popular Republican Union seek France's withdrawal from the EU and the euro as well as France's withdrawal from NATO. The FN received 33.9% of the votes in the 2017 French presidential election, making it the largest Eurosceptic party in France. In June 2018, the National Front was renamed as National Rally (RN) and in 2019 dropped support for France leaving the European Union and the Eurozone from its manifesto, instead calling for "reform from within" the union.
Eurosceptic parties on the left in France tend to criticise what they see as the neoliberal agenda of the EU, as well as the elements of its structure which are undemocratic and seen as top-down. These parties include the Parti de Gauche and the French Communist Party, which formed the Front de Gauche for the 2009 European Parliament elections and received 6.3% of the votes. The leader of the Left Front defends a complete reform of the Monetary Union, rather than the withdrawal of France from the Eurozone. Some of the major far-left Eurosceptic parties in France include the New Anticapitalist Party which received 4.8% and Lutte Ouvrière which received 1.2%. The Citizen and Republican Movement, a left-wing Eurosceptic and souverainist party, have not participated in any elections for the European Parliament.
The party Chasse, Pêche, Nature & Traditions, is an agrarianist Eurosceptic party that says it is neither left nor right.
In the European Parliament election, 2014, the National Front won the elections with 24.9% of the vote, a swing of 18.6%, winning 24 seats, up from 3 previously. The former French President François Hollande had called for the EU to be reformed and for a scaling back of its power.
In the European Parliament election, 2019, the renamed National Rally won the elections with 23.3% of the vote, winning 22 seats, down from 23 previously when their vote share was 24.9%.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is Germany's largest Eurosceptic party. It was elected into the German Parliament with 94 seats in September 2017. Initially the AfD was a soft Eurosceptic party, that considered itself pro-Europe and pro-EU, but opposed the euro, which it believed had undermined European integration, and called for reforms to the Eurozone.
In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Alternative for Germany came 5th with 7% of the vote, winning 7 seats and is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists. The Alternative for Germany went on to take seats in three state legislatures in the Autumn of 2014.
The party became purely Eurosceptic in 2015, when an internal split occurred, leading to Frauke Petry's leadership and a more hard-line approach to the European Union, including its calling for an end for German Eurozone membership, withdrawal from EU common asylum policies and significantly reducing the power of the EU with some AfD members supporting a complete exit from the EU altogether.
In July 2015 an AfD splinter group created a new soft Eurosceptic party called Alliance for Progress and Renewal.
In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Alternative for Germany increased their vote share from 7% and 7 seats to 11% and 11 seats.
In the 2021 German Federal Election, AfD won 10.3% of the vote and 94 seats whereas in 2017, they received 12.6% of the vote and 83 seats; this meant they moved from third place to fifth place, falling behind the Green Party and FDP, both of which had been less popular than the AfD in 2017. Despite their overall electoral decline, the AfD still emerged as the largest in the states of Saxony and Thuringia, and saw a strong performance in eastern Germany.
Golden Dawn, Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Greek Solution, ANEL, Course of Freedom, Popular Unity, and LAOS have been the main Eurosceptic parties in Greece. According to the London School of Economics, Greece used to be the second most Eurosceptic country in the European Union, with 50% of Greeks thinking that their country has not benefited at all from the EU (only behind the UK). Meanwhile, 33% of Greeks viewed Greek membership in EU as a good thing, marginally ahead of the UK. 81% of Greeks felt that the EU was going in the wrong direction. These figures represented a major increase in Euroscepticism in Greece since 2009.
In June 2012, the Eurosceptic parties in Greece that were represented in the parliament before the Election in January 2015 (ANEL, Golden Dawn, KKE) got 45.8% of the votes and 40.3% of the seats in the parliament. In the legislative election of January 2015 the pro-European (left and right-wing) parties (ND, PASOK, Potami, KIDISO, EK and Prasinoi-DIMAR) got 43.3% of the votes. The Eurosceptic parties got 54.6%. The Eurosceptic left (KKE, ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (M–L)/M–L KKE) got 42.6% of the votes and the Eurosceptic right (Golden Dawn, ANEL and LAOS) got 12.1% of the votes, with Syriza ahead with 36.3%. The Eurosceptic parties got 194 seats in the new parliament and the pro-EU parties got 106 seats.
According to the polls conducted in June and July 2015 (12 polls), the Eurosceptic left would get on average 48.0% (excluding extraparliamentary parties as ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (m–l)/ML-KKE), the parliamentary pro-EU parties (Potami, New Democracy and PASOK) would get 33.8%, the extra-parliamentary (not represented in the Hellenic Parliament) pro-EU parties (KIDISO and EK) would get 4.4% and the Eurosceptic right would get 10.2% (excluding extraparliamentary parties, such as LAOS, not displayed on recent opinion polls). The soft Eurosceptic parties would get 42.3%, the hard Eurosceptic parties (including KKE, ANEL and Golden Dawn) would get 15.9%, and the pro-EU parties (including extra-parliamentary parties displayed on opinion polls) would get 38.3% of the votes.
In the European Parliament election, 2014, Syriza won the election with 26.6% of the vote (a swing of 21.9%) taking 6 seats (up 5), with Golden Dawn coming 3rd taking 3 seats, the Communist Party taking 2 seats and the Independent Greeks gaining their first ever seat. Syriza's leader Tsipras said he's not anti-European and does not want to leave the euro. According to The Economist, Tsipras is willing to negotiate with Greece's European partners, and it is believed a Syriza victory could encourage radical leftist parties across Europe. Alexis Tsipras vowed to reverse many of the austerity measures adopted by Greece since a series of bailouts began in 2010, at odds with the Eurogroup's positions. The government coalition in Greece was composed by Syriza and ANEL (right-wing hard Eurosceptic party, led by Panos Kammenos, who is the current Minister of Defence).
Euroscepticism has softened in Greece as the economy improved. According to a research in early 2018, 68% of Greeks judge as positive the participation of Greece in the EU (instead of 53.5% in 2017).
In the European Parliament election, 2019, the New Democracy movement, beat the ruling left-wing Syriza formation with 33.1% and 23.8% of the vote respectively, maintaining Syriza's 6 seats and prompting the Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to call a legislative election on 7 July 2019. In this election, which was won by ND, the pro-European parties (ND, SYRIZA, KINAL, MeRA25, and the extra-parliamentary Union of Centrists and Recreate Greece) got 84.9% of the vote and the Eurosceptic parties (KKE, Greek Solution, the extraparliamentary Golden Dawn and a host of other small mainly left-wing parties) got 15.1%. That drastic change in the balance is mostly the result of SYRIZA abandoning Euroscepticism.
Viktor Orbán is the soft Eurosceptic Prime Minister of Hungary for the national-conservative Fidesz Party. Another Eurosceptic party that was present in Hungary was Jobbik, which until around 2016, it was identified as a radical and far-right party. Those far-right factions, who left Jobbik, they decided to form the Our Homeland Movement party.
In Hungary 39% of the population have a positive image of the EU, 20% have a negative image, and 40% neutral (1% "Don't know").
In the 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election, Fidesz got 44.5% of the votes, Jobbik got 20.5% of the votes and the communist Hungarian Workers' Party got 0.6% of the votes. Thus at the time, Eurosceptic parties in Hungary obtained 65.7% of the votes, one of the highest figures in Europe.
The green-liberal Politics Can Be Different (Lehet Más a Politika, LMP) classifies as a soft or reformist Eurosceptic party given its self-professed euro-critical stance. During the European parliamentary campaign of 2014 party Co-president András Schiffer described LMP as having a pronounced pro-integration position on environmental, wage and labour policy as supporting member state autonomy on the self-determination of local communities concerning land resources. So as to combat the differentiated integration of the multi-speed Europe which discriminates against Eastern and Southern member states, LMP would like to initiate an eco-social market economy within the union.
In the European Parliament election, 2019, Fidesz consolidated their position by increasing their vote share to 51.5% and adding a seat to take their tally to 13. Former Eurosceptic (now pro-European) Jobbik dropped to 6.3% of the votes, losing 2 of its 3 seats. The Momentum Movement, a newly created pro-European party, came 3rd with 9.3% of the vote, with the strongly pro-European Democratic Coalition coming second with 16.1% of the vote. Our Homeland Movement got to 3.3% of the votes, gaining no seats.
Euroscepticism is a minority view in Ireland, with opinion polls from 2016 to 2018 indicating growing support for EU membership, moving from 70% to 92% in that time.
The Irish people initially voted against ratifying the Nice and Lisbon Treaties. Following renegotiations, second referendums on both were passed with approximately 2:1 majorities in both cases. Some commentators and smaller political groups questioned the validity of the Irish Government's decision to call second referendums.
The left-wing Irish republican party Sinn Féin expresses soft Eurosceptic positions on the current structure of the European Union and the direction in which it is moving. The party expresses, "support for Europe-wide measures that promote and enhance human rights, equality and the all-Ireland agenda", but has a "principled opposition" to a European superstate. In its manifesto for the 2015 UK general election, Sinn Féin pledged that the party would campaign for the UK to stay within the EU. In the 2019 European Parliament election, Sinn Féin won one seat and 11.7% of the vote, down 7.8%.
The Socialist Party, a Trotskyist organisation, supports Ireland leaving the EU and supported the Brexit result. It argues that the European Union is institutionally capitalist and neoliberal. The Socialist Party campaigned against the Lisbon and Nice Treaties and favours the foundation of an alternative Socialist European Union.
The Five Star Movement (M5S), an anti-establishment movement founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, originally set itself out as a Eurosceptic party. The M5S received 25.5% of vote in the 2013 general election, becoming the largest anti-establishment and Eurosceptic party in Europe. The party used to advocate a non-binding referendum on the withdrawal of Italy from the Eurozone (but not from the European Union) and the return to the lira. Since then, the party has toned down its eurosceptic rhetoric and such policy was rejected in 2018, and the M5S's leader has since stated that the "European Union is the Five Star Movement's home", clarifying that the party wants Italy to stay in the EU, even though it remains critical of some of its treaties. The M5S's popular support is distributed all across Italy: in the 2018 general election the party won 32.7% of the popular vote nationwide, and was particularly successful in central and southern Italy.
A party that retains a Eurosceptic identity is the Northern League (LN), a regionalist movement led by Matteo Salvini favouring Italy's exit from the Eurozone and the re-introduction of the lira. When in government, Lega approved the Treaty of Lisbon. The party won 6.2% of the vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections, but two of its leading members are presidents of Lombardy and Veneto (where Lega gained 40.9% of the vote in 2015).
In the 2014 European Parliament election the Five Star Movement came second, with 17 seats and 21.2% of the vote after contesting EP seats for the first time. Northern League had five seats and The Other Europe with Tsipras had three seats.
Other minor Eurosceptic organizations include right-wing political parties (e.g., Brothers of Italy, Tricolour Flame, New Force, National Front, CasaPound, National Movement for Sovereignty, the No Euro Movement), far-left political parties (e.g., the Communist Party of Marco Rizzo, the Italian Communist Party and the political movement Power to the People) and other political movements (e.g., the Sovereignist Front, MMT Italy). In addition, the European Union is criticized (especially for the austerity and the creation of the euro) by some left-wing thinkers, like the trade unionist Giorgio Cremaschi and the journalist Paolo Barnard, and some academics, such as the economists Alberto Bagnai and Vladimiro Giacché, the philosopher Diego Fusaro and the mathematician Marino Badiale.
According to the Standard Eurobarometer 87 conducted by the European Commission in spring 2017, 48% of Italians tend not to trust the European Union compared to 36% of Italians who do.
In the 2019 European election, the Italian Eurosceptic and souverainist right-wing, represented in large part by the League, increased its number of seats in the EP, but was not assigned any presidency in the committees of the European Parliament. Despite its national political alliance with the League during the Conte Cabinet, the Five Star Movement voted for Ursula von der Leyen, member of pro-EU Christian Democratic Union of Germany, as President of the European Commission.
In July 2020, senator Gianluigi Paragone formed Italexit, a new political party with a main goal to withdraw Italy from the European Union.
The National Alliance (For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK/All for Latvia!), Union of Greens and Farmers and For Latvia from the Heart are parties that are described by some political commentators as bearing soft Eurosceptic views. A small hard Eurosceptic party Eurosceptic Party of Action exists, but it has failed to gain any administrative seats throughout history of its existence.
The Order and Justice party had mainly Eurosceptic views.
The Alternative Democratic Reform Party is a soft Eurosceptic party. It is a member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists.
The Labour Party was not in favour of Malta entering the European Union. It was in favour of a partnership with the EU. After a long battle, the Nationalist Party led by Eddie Fenech Adami won the referendum and the following election, making Malta one of the states to enter the European Union on 1 May 2004. The party is now pro-European. Nowadays the People's Party often adopts Eurosceptic views.
Historically, the Netherlands have been a very pro-European country, being one of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, and campaigning with much effort to include the United Kingdom into the Community in the 1970s and others after that. It has become slightly more Eurosceptic in the 2000s, rejecting the European Constitution in 2005 and complaining about the relatively high financial investment into the Union or the democratic deficit amongst other issues.
A number of hard and soft eurosceptic parties have politicians elected to the Dutch House of Representatives and European Parliament which include:
A prominent former Eurosceptic party in the Netherlands was the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF) established by politician and academic Pim Fortuyn in 2002. The party campaigned to reduce Dutch financial contributions to the EU, was against Turkish membership and opposed what it saw as the excessive bureaucracy and threat to national sovereignty posed by the EU. During the 2002 general election, the LPF polled in second place with 17% of the vote. Following the assassination of Fortuyn in the run-up to the election, support for the party declined soon after and it was disbanded in 2008 with many of is former supporters transferring to the Party for Freedom.
Despite these concerns, in 2014 the majority of the Dutch electorate continued to support parties that favour ongoing European integration: the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals, but most of all the (Liberal) Democrats.
In 2016, a substantial majority in a low-turnout referendum rejected the ratification of an EU trade and association treaty with Ukraine.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, Eurosceptic parties had mixed results with Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom losing all 4 of its seats taking only 3.5% of the vote. The new Forum for Democracy established in late 2016 took 11.0% of the vote and entered the European Parliament with 3 seats.
The main parties with Eurosceptic views are Law and Justice (PiS), United Poland (SP) and the Confederation Liberty and Independence and the main Eurosceptic politicians include Ryszard Bender, Andrzej Grzesik, Krzysztof Bosak, Dariusz Grabowski, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Marian Kowalski, Paweł Kukiz, Zbigniew Ziobro, Anna Sobecka, Robert Winnicki, Artur Zawisza, and Stanisław Żółtek.
Former president of Poland Lech Kaczyński resisted giving his signature on behalf of Poland to the Treaty of Lisbon, objecting specifically to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Subsequently, Poland got an opt-out from this charter. As Polish President, Kaczyński also opposed the Polish government's intentions to join the euro.
In 2015, it was reported that Euroscepticism was growing in Poland, which was thought to be due to the "economic crisis, concern over perceived interference from Brussels and migration". Polish president Andrzej Duda indicated that he wished for Poland to step back from further EU integration. He suggested that the country should "hold a referendum on joining the euro, resist further integration and fight the EU's green policies", despite getting the largest share of EU cash.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Law and Justice party won the largest number of seats, with a vote share increase up from 31.8% to 45.4%, increasing its seats from 19 to 27.
In 2019, the former MEP Stanisław Żółtek created a political party called PolEXIT, whose flagship ideology is euroscepticism. Its candidate for president of Poland in the 2020 elections was the party's leader, Żółtek, who got 45 419 votes (0.23%), ranking 7th out of 11 candidates and did not qualify to the second round.
The main Eurosceptic parties in Portugal are Chega, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), and Left Bloc (BE). Opinion polling in Portugal in 2015 indicated that 48 per cent tended not to trust the EU, while 79 per cent tended not to trust the Portuguese government (then led by Portugal Ahead). Eurosceptic political parties hold a combined total of 23 seats out of 230 in Portugal's parliament (BE 5, PCP 6, PNR 0, CHEGA 12) and a combined total of 4 out of Portugal's 21 seats in the European Parliament (PCP 2, BE 2, PNR 0, CHEGA 0).
In the last 2014 European Parliament election, the Portuguese Communist Party won three seats and the Left Bloc won one seat.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, Left Bloc took 9.8% and gained 1 seat, Portuguese Communist Party working in coalition with Ecologist Party "The Greens" took 6.9% and 2 seats and National Renovator Party (PNR) polled just 0.5%, with no seats.
2019 saw the emergence of a new Eurosceptic political party, Chega, who gained a seat in that year's legislative election. The party did not capture any seats in the 2019 European Parliament elections, but saw its leader André Ventura finish third in the 2021 presidential election, securing 11.9% of those voting.
In the 2022 Portuguese snap election, Chega got 7.2% of the vote and 12 out of the 230 seats in the Assembly of the Republic.
Several parties espousing Eurosceptic views exist on the right, such as the New Republic, the Greater Romania Party and Noua Dreaptă, but as of June 2020 none of these parties are represented in European Parliament. Euroscepticism is relatively unpopular in Romania, a 2015 survey found 65% of Romanians had a positive view of the country's EU membership.
The Eurosceptic parties remained unrepresented in the 2019 European Parliament election.
The soft Eurosceptic Alliance for the Union of Romanians, which was founded in September 2019, entered the Romanian parliament in 2020.
Parties with Eurosceptic views are the Slovak National Party, Republic, We Are Family, People's Party Our Slovakia. Prominent Slovak Eurosceptic politicians include Andrej Danko, Milan Uhrík, Boris Kollár, Marian Kotleba.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, People's Party Our Slovakia came 3rd securing 12.1% and winning their first 2 seats in the European Parliament, whereas the Slovak National Party and We Are Family did not win any seats.
Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are Slovenian National Party and The Left. Neither won seats in the 2019 European Parliament election in Slovenia.
The process of Europeanization changed during the years in Spain. In 1986 Spain entered in the European Community. Since then, Spain has been one of the most Europeanist countries. Therefore, when Spain became part of the European Community, the country had a strong pro-Europeanist feeling, according to Eurobarometer, as it reflected a 60% of the population. In Spain different reasons explain its entrance to the European Community. On the one hand, democracy has just been established in Spain after Francisco Franco dictatorship. On the other hand, the main objectives of Spain were to achieve economic development, and also a social modernization. Spain was one of the few countries to vote Yes for the European Constitution in a referendum in February 2005, though by a lower margin in Catalonia and the Basque Country. In 2008, after the financial crisis reached Spain, the percentage of pro European persons started to fall. Thus, during the five years of the economic crisis, the Eurobarometer shows how the trust in the EU increasingly fell in Spain, and the confidence of the Spanish citizens in the European Union decreased for more than 50 points. Spain became one of the most Eurosceptic countries among all European Union Members, as it happened in pretty much European countries, where nationalist and eurosceptic characterised parties became stronger.
The historical two-parties system, composed by the conservative Partido Popular and the social-democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Español, collapsed. In the 2000s, the liberal Ciudadanos and leftist party Podemos became part of the political context, gaining electoral consensus, followed years later by ultranationalist party Vox. The new parties were the effect of the disaffection of most Spaniards towards politics and politicians, that increased for several reasons: firstly, corruption at all political levels, reaching the Royal Family too; secondly, recession intensified distrust of the population towards national government; thirdly, a phase of renovation of the autonomous regions which extended the distance between the National government and the Regional ones. Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, a left-wing to far-left political party with about 1,300 members advocates independence for Catalonia outside of the European Union. Up to 2014 European elections, there were no Spanish parties present in the Eurosceptic groups at the European Parliament. In the 2015 Spanish general election, Podemos became the first left-wing Eurosceptic political party to win seats in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 69 seats, and in the 2019 Spanish general election, Vox became the first far-right Eurosceptic political party to win seats in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 24 seats.
The Left Party of Sweden is against accession to the eurozone and previously wanted Sweden to leave the European Union until 2019.
The nationalist and right-wing populist party Sweden Democrats support closer political, economic and military cooperation with neighboring Nordic and certain Northern European countries, but strongly oppose further EU integration and further transfers of Swedish sovereignty to the EU as a whole. The party is also against Swedish accession to the eurozone, the creation of a combined EU military budget and want to renegotiate Swedish membership of the Schengen Agreement.
The June List, a Eurosceptic list consisting of members from both the political right and left won three seats in the 2004 Elections to the European Parliament and sat in the EU-critical IND/DEM group in the European Parliament. The movement Folkrörelsen Nej till EU [sv] favours a withdrawal from the EU.
Around 75% of the Riksdag members represent parties that officially supports the Sweden membership.
In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Sweden Democrats gained 2 seats with 9.7% of the vote, up 6.4%, and the Left Party took one seat with 6.3% of the vote.
In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Sweden Democrats increased from 2 to 3 seats with 15.3% of the vote, up from 9.7%, and the Left Party retained its one seat with 6.8% of the vote.
In winter 2019–2020, in connection with the request from "poor" member countries of much higher membership fees for "rich" member countries, for the reason of keeping support levels so "poor" countries wouldn't suffer from Brexit, where a "rich" country left the union in part due to high membership fees, a media and social media debate for a "Swexit" increased. This was still rejected by parties representing a majority of the parliament, with the COVID-19 pandemic quickly taking over the debate.
Prosperous Armenia represents the main Eurosceptic party in Armenia. Following the 2018 Armenian parliamentary election, the party gained 26 seats in the National Assembly, becoming the official opposition. Following the 2021 Armenian parliamentary election, the party lost all political representation and currently acts as an extra-parliamentary force. The party was a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe.
The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats is a Bosnian Serb political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Founded in 1996, it is the governing party in Bosnia and Herzegovina's entity called Republika Srpska, with its leader being Milorad Dodik.
Georgian March is the main Eurosceptic party in Georgia. The party supports a slight distancing of Georgia from the West, as well as rejecting the country's entrance into NATO.
In March 2022, Georgia submitted a formal application for membership of the EU.
The three main Eurosceptic parties in Iceland are the Independence Party, Left-Green Movement and the Progressive Party. The Independence Party and the Progressive Party won the parliamentary election in April 2013 and they have halted the current negotiations with the European Union regarding Icelandic membership and tabled a parliamentary resolution on 21 February 2014 to withdraw the application completely.
In 2017, Iceland's newly elected government announced that it would hold a vote in parliament on whether to hold a referendum on resuming EU membership negotiations. In November 2017 that government was replaced by a coalition of the Independence Party, the Left Green Movement and the Progressive Party; all of whom oppose membership. Only 11 out of 63 MPs are in favour of EU membership.
The main Eurosceptic parties in Moldova are the left-wing Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, which officially declared its main purpose to be the integration of Moldova in the Eurasian Economic Union, the Revival Party, and the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, even if nowadays its leader speech became more soft on the issue of Euroscepticism. As of March 2022 all the parties are represented in Moldovan Parliament, with 37 MPs out of a total of 101 MPs.
In March 2022, Moldova submitted a formal application for membership of the EU.
The right-wing Democratic Front alliance are the main moderate eurosceptic subject in the Parliament of Montenegro, although its initially declaratively supported country's bid for accession to the European Union, all other parliamentary subjects officially advocates Montenegrin access to EU. The only parties that advocates Montenegro's rejecting the European integration are the extra-parliamentary right-wing populist to far-right parties, such as True Montenegro, Party of Serb Radicals, Democratic Party of Unity and the Serb List, all four are known for their close cooperation with the parliamentary Democratic Front.
Since having come into national opposition, and amid disagreements in the Macedonia naming dispute, the VMRO-DPMNE – which does not endorse the name of North Macedonia, instead continuing to refer to Republic of Macedonia without qualifiers – no longer supports the country's candidacy for EU membership. It has subsequently declared its aspirations towards Russia.
Norway has rejected EU membership in two referendums, 1972 and 1994. The Centre Party, Christian Democratic Party, Socialist Left Party and Liberal Party were against EU membership in both referendums. The Liberal Party was particularly divided on the issue, and a large pro-EEC minority split off from the party before the 1972 referendum. In 2020, the Liberal Party officially reversed its position and since then, supports Norwegian EU membership.
Among the established political parties of Norway, the Centre Party, Socialist Left Party, and Red Party are also against Norway's current membership of the European Economic Area. In addition, the libertarian Capitalist Party and Christian-conservative The Christians, both of whom have never held a seat in the Norwegian parliament, are also against Norway's membership in the EEA.
Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are the ruling United Russia, and opposition parties the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.
Following the 2014 Crimean crisis, the European Union issued sanctions on the Russian Federation in response to what it regards as the "illegal" annexation of Crimea and "deliberate destabilisation" of a neighbouring sovereign country. In response to this, Alexey Borodavkin – Russia's permanent representative with the UN – said "The EU is committing a direct violation of human rights by its actions against Russia. The unilateral sanctions introduced against us are not only illegitimate according to international law, they also undermine Russian citizens' freedom of travel, freedom of development, freedom of work and others". In the same year, Russian president Vladimir Putin said: "What are the so-called European values? Maintaining the coup, the armed seizure of power and the suppression of dissent with the help of the armed forces?"
A February 2014 poll conducted by the Levada Center, Russia's largest independent polling organization, found that nearly 80% of Russian respondents had a "good" impression of the EU. This changed dramatically in 2014 with the Ukrainian crisis resulting in 70% taking a hostile view of the EU compared to 20% viewing it positively.
A Levada poll released in August 2018 found that 68% of Russians polled believe that Russia needs to dramatically improve relations with Western countries. 42% of Russian respondents said they had a positive view of the EU, up from 28% in May 2018.
A referendum was held in the landlocked microstate on 20 October 2013 in which the citizens were asked whether the country should submit an application to join the European Union. The proposal was rejected because of a low turnout, even though 50.3% of voters approved it. The "Yes" campaign was supported by the main left-wing parties (Socialist Party, United Left) and the Union for the Republic whereas the Sammarinese Christian Democratic Party suggested voting with a blank ballot, the Popular Alliance declared itself neutral, and We Sammarinese and the RETE movement supported the "No" campaign. The Citizens' Rights Directive, which defines the right of free movement for the European citizens, may have been an important reason for those voting no.
In Serbia, political parties with eurosceptic views tend to be right-orientated. The most notable examples are the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) which since its inception has opposed entering the European Union and the right-wing populist Dveri. Political parties such as the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) had pro-Western views and was initially supportive of the accession into the European Union but under the late 2000s leadership of Vojislav Koštunica they turned eurosceptic, and the Enough is Enough (DJB) political party, initially a liberal centrist party that also supported the accession turned towards the right-wing eurosceptic position shortly after 2018.
Historically, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Yugoslav Left (JUL) were the only two left-leaning political parties that imposed eurosceptic and anti-Western views. The ruling coalition in Serbia, For Our Children, which is predominantly pro-European orientated is also composed of two minor eurosceptic parties, the right-wing Serbian People's Party that advocates closer ties to Russia, and the left-leaning Movement of Socialists which was formed as the eurosceptic split from SPS in the 2000s.
Other minor political parties in Serbia that have eurosceptic views are Healthy Serbia, People's Freedom Movement, Russian Party, Love, Faith, Hope, Serbian Party Oathkeepers, Serbian Right and Leviathan Movement.
Switzerland has long been known for its neutrality in international politics. Swiss voters rejected EEA membership in 1992, and EU membership in 2001. Despite the passing of several referendums calling for closer relations between Switzerland and the European Union such as the adoption of bilateral treaties and the joining of the Schengen Area, a second referendum of the joining of the EEA or the EU is not expected, and the general public remains opposed to joining.
In February 2014, the Swiss voters narrowly approved a referendum limiting the freedom of movement of EU citizens to Switzerland.
Eurosceptic political parties include the Swiss People's Party, which is the largest political party in Switzerland, with 29.4% of the popular vote as of the 2015 federal election. Smaller Eurosceptic parties include, but are not limited to, the Federal Democratic Union, the Ticino League, and the Geneva Citizens' Movement, all of which are considered right-wing parties.
In addition, the Campaign for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland is a political organisation in Switzerland that is strongly opposed to Swiss membership of or further integration otherwise with the European Union.
Regionally, the German-speaking majority as well as the Italian-speaking areas are the most Eurosceptic, while French-speaking Switzerland tends to be more pro-European integration. In the 2001 referendum, the majority of French-speakers voted against EU membership. According to a 2016 survey conducted by M.I.S Trend and published in L'Hebdo, 69 percent of the Swiss population supports systematic border controls, and 53 percent want restrictions on the EU accord of the free movements of peoples and 14 percent want it completely abolished. 54% of the Swiss population said that if necessary, they would ultimately keep the freedom of movement of people's accord.
The two main Eurosceptic parties are the far-right ultranationalist, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which secured 11.1% of votes, and 49 seats in the Parliament at the last election, and the Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi), a far-right Sunni Islamist party, which has no seats in the Parliament, as it only secured 0.7% of the votes in the last election, far below the 10% threshold necessary to be represented in the Parliament.
Many left-wing nationalist and far-left parties hold no seats at parliament but they control many activist and student movements in Turkey. The Patriotic Party (formerly called Workers' Party) consider the European Union as a front-runner of global imperialism.
Founded on 26 August 2021 under the leadership of Ümit Özdağ, Victory Party (Turkey) is a Turkish nationalist and anti-immigrant political party. It is represented by two deputies in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. "The European Union does not want to negotiate with Turkey. We will not humiliate Turkey anymore." Özdağ said.
Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are Opposition Platform – For Life, Opposition Bloc, Party of Shariy and Right Sector.
The far-right Ukrainian group Right Sector opposes joining the European Union. It regards the EU as an "oppressor" of European nations.
In the 2019 parliamentary election the Opposition Platform – For Life won 37 seats on the nationwide party list and 6 constituency seats.
The leader of the Party of Shariy Anatoly Shariy is one of the closest associates of Viktor Medvedchuk, whom Ukraine's special services suspect of financing terrorism.
Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom has been a significant element in British politics ever since the inception of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor to the EU. The European Union strongly divides the British public, political parties, media and civil society.
The UK Independence Party has backed the idea of the UK unilaterally leaving the European Union (Brexit) since its foundation in 1993. During the 23 June 2016 referendum on the issue, whilst the Conservatives had no official position, although its leader David Cameron was in favour of remaining in the EU albeit after some renegotiation of the terms of membership, the party remained profoundly split, as it always had been. The Labour Party officially supported remaining in the EU, although party leader Jeremy Corbyn did suggest early on in the campaign that he would consider withdrawal, a position he had personally advocated from the far left for many years, in fact throughout his period as a Labour MP. The Liberal Democrats were the most adamantly pro-EU party, and since the referendum, pro-Europeanism has been their main policy.
The referendum resulted in an overall vote to leave the EU, as opposed to remaining an EU member, by 51.9% to 48.1%, on a turnout of 72.2%. The vote was split between the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, with a majority in England and Wales voting to leave, and a majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as Gibraltar (a British Overseas Territory), voting to remain. As a result of the referendum, the UK Government notified the EU of its intention to withdraw on 29 March 2017 by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
On 12 April 2019, a new Eurosceptic party, the Brexit Party was officially launched by former UK Independence Party Leader Nigel Farage.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Brexit Party topped the national poll by a large margin with 31.7% gaining 29 seats by running on a single policy of leaving the EU, versus the second-placed Liberal Democrats with 18.5% and 16 seats who promoted themselves as the party of Remain (the total vote for Remain-supporting parties was approximately the same as that for parties supporting a 'no-deal' Brexit). The Conservative Party suffered their lowest ever national vote share of 9.1% with just 4 seats following 3 years of Theresa May's unsuccessful Brexit negotiations. The Labour Party's ambiguous position on Brexit led to their vote share dropping significantly to 14.1% resulting in the loss of half their seats, down from 20 to 10. The rapid growth of the Brexit Party was a contributing factor to Theresa May announcing on 24 May that she would step down as Prime Minister on 7 June 2019. After the elections, the Eurosceptic Blue Collar Conservative caucus of Conservative MPs was formed.
Historically, the Conservative Party has expressed divided sentiments on the issue of EU membership, with the official stance changing with party leadership and individual MPs within the party variously favouring total withdrawal and remaining in the EU, while others adopted a position of soft Euroscepticism being supportive of membership but opposed to joining the eurozone and pursuing further integration. Until the 1980s, the Conservative Party was somewhat more pro-EU than the Labour Party: for example, in the 1971 House of Commons vote on whether the UK should join the European Economic Community, only 39 of the then 330 Conservative MPs were opposed to membership. When Margaret Thatcher came into power in 1979, the Conservative parties view on the EU saw a big shift from supporting the EU to becoming skeptical, thus campaigning against increasing its powers. Thatcher was seen as the "spiritual mother" of Euroscepticism and was one of the most important Eurosceptic voices in the United Kingdom, ultimately changing the Conservative parties view on the EU throughout the 1980s. In 2009 the Conservative Party actively campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty, which it believes would give away too much sovereignty to Brussels. Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague stated that, should the treaty be in force by the time of an incoming Conservative government, he would "not let matters rest there". Following the election of Boris Johnson as leader in 2019, the Conservative Party became a strong supporter of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union and its platform was changed to unanimously support EU withdrawal. In the 2019 general election the Conservative Party adopted a clear pro-Brexit platform in its manifesto.
Although often associated with being a cause on the right in the twenty-first century with the contemporary Labour Party supporting EU membership, there have been notable Eurosceptic politicians on the left of British politics, such as former Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn who held a longstanding opposition to British membership of the EU throughout his career. Other Labour MPs who have supported eurosceptic sentiments and British withdrawal have included Kate Hoey, Frank Field, Graham Stringer, Ian Austin, Tom Harris, Gisela Stuart and Austin Mitchell. Other figures on the left have included George Galloway and socialist politician and trade unionist Arthur Scargill who both endorsed Britain's exit from the European Union.
On 23 January 2020, the Parliament of the United Kingdom ratified a withdrawal agreement from the European Union, which was ratified by the EU Parliament on 30 January. On 31 January, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union after 47 years. During a transition period until 31 December 2020, the UK still followed EU rules and continued free trade and free movement for people within the European Union.
Ben Chu, writing for The Independent, argued against the left-wing notion that the EU is a neoliberal organization, pointing to "high levels of social protection, state-owned rail companies, nationalised utilities and banks, various price controls and industrial interventions". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies, and seek reform (Eurorealism, Eurocritical, or soft Euroscepticism), to those who oppose EU membership and see the EU as unreformable (anti-European Unionism, anti-EUism, or hard Euroscepticism). The opposite of Euroscepticism is known as pro-Europeanism, or European Unionism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The main drivers of Euroscepticism have been beliefs that integration undermines national sovereignty and the nation state, that the EU is elitist and lacks democratic legitimacy and transparency, that it is too bureaucratic and wasteful, that it encourages high levels of immigration, or perceptions that it is a neoliberal organisation serving the big business elite at the expense of the working class, that it is responsible for austerity, and drives privatization.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Euroscepticism is found in groups across the political spectrum, both left-wing and right-wing, and is often found in populist parties. Although they criticise the EU for many of the same reasons, Eurosceptic left-wing populists focus more on economic issues, such as the European debt crisis and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, while Eurosceptic right-wing populists focus more on nationalism and immigration, such as the European migrant crisis. The rise in radical-right parties since the 2000s is strongly linked to a rise in Euroscepticism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Eurobarometer surveys of EU citizens show that trust in the EU and its institutions declined strongly from 2007 to 2015. In that period, it was consistently below 50%. A 2009 survey showed that support for EU membership was lowest in the United Kingdom (UK), Latvia, and Hungary. By 2016, the countries viewing the EU most unfavourably were the UK, Greece, France, and Spain. The 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum resulted in a 51.9% vote in favour of leaving the EU (Brexit), a decision that came into effect on 31 January 2020.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Since 2015, trust in the EU has risen in most EU countries as a result of falling unemployment rates and the end of the migrant crisis. A post-2019 election Eurobarometer survey showed that 68% of citizens support the EU, the highest level since 1983; however, sentiment that things are not going in the right direction in the EU had increased to 50%.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Trust in the EU had increased significantly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with levels varying across member states.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The main reasons for Euroscepticism include beliefs that:",
"title": "Reasoning"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "There can be considered to be several different types of Eurosceptic thought, which differ in the extent to which adherents reject integration between member states of the EU and in their reasons for doing so. Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart described two of these as hard and soft Euroscepticism. At the same time, some scholars have said that there is no clear line between the presumed hard and soft Euroscepticism. Cas Mudde and Petr Kopecky have said that if the demarcation line is the number of and which policies a party opposes, then the question arises of how many must a party oppose and which ones should a party oppose that makes them hard Eurosceptic instead of soft.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "According to Taggart and Szczerbiak, hard Euroscepticism or anti-EU-ism is \"a principled opposition to the EU and European integration and therefore can be seen in parties who think that their countries should withdraw from membership, or whose policies towards the EU are tantamount to being opposed to the whole project of European integration as it is currently conceived.\" The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament (2014–2019) displayed hard Euroscepticism, but following the 2019 EU elections the group was disbanded due to too few members, as its largest member, the British Brexit Party, withdrew ahead of the United Kingdom's formal exit from the EU.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Some hard Eurosceptics regard their position as pragmatic rather than in principle. Additionally, Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP who fought against European integration in 1975 by opposing membership of the European Communities in that year's referendum on the issue, emphasised his opposition to xenophobia and his support of democracy, saying: \"My view about the European Union has always been not that I am hostile to foreigners, but that I am in favour of democracy. ... I think they're building an empire there, they want us to be a part of their empire and I don't want that.\"",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Czech president Václav Klaus rejected the term Euroscepticism for its purported negative undertones, saying at a meeting in April 2012 that the expressions for a Eurosceptic and their opponent should be \"a Euro-realist\" and someone who is \"Euro-naïve\", respectively. François Asselineau of the French Popular Republican Union has criticised the use of the term 'sceptic' to describe hard Eurosceptics, and would rather advocate the use of the term \"Euro opponent\". He believes the use of the term 'sceptic' for soft Eurosceptics to be correct, since other Eurosceptic parties in France are \"merely criticising\" the EU without taking into account the fact that the Treaty of Rome can only be modified with a unanimous agreement of all the EU member states, something he considers impossible to achieve.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Soft Euroscepticism reflects a support for the existence of, and membership of, a form of EU but with opposition to specific EU policies, or in Taggart's and Szczerbiak's words, \"where there is NOT a principled objection to European integration or EU membership but where concerns on one (or a number) of policy areas lead to the expression of qualified opposition to the EU, or where there is a sense that 'national interest' is currently at odds with the EU's trajectory.\"",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Both the European Conservatives and Reformists group, dominated by the right-wing Polish party Law and Justice, and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left, which is an alliance of the left-wing parties in the European Parliament, display soft Euroscepticism. The European Conservatives and Reformist Group does not itself use the descriptions Euroscepticism or soft Euroscepticism and instead describes its position as one of Eurorealism, a distinction described by Leruth as being one that is \"quite subtle but should not be ignored\" given the association of the term Euroscepticism with \"European disintegration\". Leruth describes Eurorealism as \"a pragmatic, anti-federalist, and flexible vision of European integration where the principle of subsidiarity prevails, aiming to reform the current institutional framework to extend the role of national parliaments in the decision-making process.\" Steven states that \"Eurorealism is a form of conservativism, first and foremost, rather than a form or Euroscepticism, even if it obviously very much also has the 'soft' Eurosceptic tendencies which are present in a number of ECR member parties.\"",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "While having some overlaps, Euroscepticism and anti-Europeanism are different. Euroscepticism is criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. Anti-Europeanism is sentiment or policies in opposition to Europe. For example, American exceptionalism in the United States has long led to criticism of European domestic policy, such as the size of the welfare state in European countries, and foreign policy, such as European countries that did not support the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Some scholars consider the gradual difference in terminology between hard and soft Euroscepticism inadequate to accommodate the large differences in terms of political agenda; hard Euroscepticism has also been referred to as Europhobia as opposed to mere Euroscepticism. Other alternative names for hard and soft Euroscepticism include withdrawalist and reformist, respectively.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "A survey in November 2015, conducted by TNS Opinion and Social on behalf of the European Commission, showed that, across the EU as a whole, those with a positive image of the EU were down from a high of 52% in 2007 to 37% in autumn 2015; this compares with 23% with a negative image of the EU, and 38% with a neutral image. About 43% of Europeans thought things were \"going in the wrong direction\" in the EU, compared with 23% who thought things were going \"in the right direction\" (11% \"don't know\"). About 32% of EU citizens tend to trust the EU as an institution, and about 55% do not tend to trust it (13% \"don't know\"). Distrust of the EU was highest in Greece (81%), Cyprus (72%), Austria (65%), France (65%), the United Kingdom (UK) and the Czech Republic (both 63%). Overall, more respondents distrusted their own government (66%) than they distrusted the EU (55%). Distrust of national government was highest in Greece (82%), Slovenia (80%), Portugal (79%), Cyprus (76%), and France (76%).",
"title": "Eurobarometer surveys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A Eurobarometer survey carried out four days prior to and six days after the 2016 United States presidential election revealed that the surprise victory of Donald Trump caused an increase in the popularity of the EU in Europe. The increase was strongest among the political right and among respondents who perceived their country as economically struggling.",
"title": "Eurobarometer surveys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "A survey carried out in April 2018 for the European Parliament by Kantar Public consulting found that support for the EU was \"the highest score ever measured since 1983\". Support for the EU was up in 26 out of 28 EU countries, the exceptions being Germany and the UK, where support had dropped by about 2% since the previous survey. Almost half (48%) of the 27,601 EU citizens surveyed agreed that their voice counted in the EU, up from 37% in 2016, whereas 46% disagreed with this statement. Two-thirds (67%) of respondents felt that their country had benefited from EU membership and 60% said that being part of the bloc was a good thing, as opposed to 12% who felt the opposite. At the height of the EU's financial and economic crises in 2011, just 47% had been of the view that EU membership was a good thing. Support for EU membership was greatest in Malta (93%), Ireland (91%), Lithuania (90%), Poland (88%), Luxembourg (88%), Estonia (86%), and Denmark (84%), and lowest in Greece (57%), Bulgaria (57%), Cyprus (56%), Austria (54%), the United Kingdom (53%), and Italy (44%).",
"title": "Eurobarometer surveys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "When asked which issues should be a priority for the European Parliament, survey respondents picked terrorism as the most pressing topic of discussion, ahead of youth unemployment and immigration. Not all countries shared the same priorities. Immigration topped the list in Italy (66% of citizens surveyed considered it a priority issue), Malta (65%), and Hungary (62%) but fighting youth unemployment and support for economic growth were top concerns in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Croatia. Social protection of citizens was the top concern for Dutch, Swedish, and Danish respondents.",
"title": "Eurobarometer surveys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The April 2019 Eurobarometer showed that despite the challenges of the past years, and in cases such as the ongoing debate surrounding Brexit, possibly even because of it, the European sense of togetherness had not weakened, with 68% of respondents across the EU27 believing that their countries have benefited from being part of the EU, a historically high level since 1983. On the other hand, more Europeans (27%) were uncertain and saw the EU as \"neither a good thing nor a bad thing\", an increase in 19 countries. Despite the overall positive attitude towards the EU but in line with the uncertainty expressed by a growing number of Europeans, the feeling that things were not going in the right direction in both the EU and in their own countries had increased to 50% on EU average since September 2018.",
"title": "Eurobarometer surveys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Eurobarometer 93.1 survey was in the field across Europe when the European Council summit reached political agreement on a pandemic economic recovery fund (later named Next Generation EU) on 21 July 2020. A comparison of Eurobarometer responses gathered before this seminal decision and interviews conducted shortly thereafter indicates that the European Council's endorsement of pandemic economic relief increased popular support of Covid-19 economic recovery aid - but only among Europeans who view EU decisionmakers as trustworthy.",
"title": "Eurobarometer surveys"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "A study analysed voting records of the Fifth European Parliament and ranked groups, concluding: \"Towards the top of the figure are the more pro-European parties (PES, EPP-ED, and ALDE), whereas towards the bottom of the figure are the more anti-European parties (EUL/NGL, G/EFA, UEN and EDD).\"",
"title": "History in the European Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2004, 37 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the UK, Poland, Denmark and Sweden founded a new European Parliament group called \"Independence and Democracy\" from the old Europe of Democracies and Diversities (EDD) group.",
"title": "History in the European Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The main goal of the ID group was to reject the proposed Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe. Some delegations within the group, notably that from UKIP, also advocated the complete withdrawal of their country from the EU, while others only wished to limit further European integration.",
"title": "History in the European Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The elections of 2009 saw a significant fall in support in some areas for Eurosceptic parties, with all such MEPs from Poland, Denmark and Sweden losing their seats. In the UK, the Eurosceptic UKIP achieved second place in the election, finishing ahead of the governing Labour Party, and the British National Party (BNP) won its first-ever two MEPs. Although new members joined the ID group from Greece and the Netherlands, it was unclear whether the group would reform in the new parliament.",
"title": "History in the European Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The ID group did reform, as the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) and is represented by 32 MEPs from nine countries.",
"title": "History in the European Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The elections of 2014 saw a big anti-establishment vote in favour of Eurosceptic parties, which took around a quarter of the seats available. Those that came first their national elections included: UKIP in the UK (the first time since 1906 that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives had won a national vote), the National Front in France, the People's Party in Denmark and Syriza in Greece. Second places were taken by Sinn Féin in Ireland and the Five Star Movement in Italy. Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council, agreed following the election to re-evaluate the economic area's agenda and to launch consultations on future policy areas with the 28 member states.",
"title": "History in the European Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The elections of 2019 saw the centre-left and centre-right parties suffer significant losses including losing their overall majority, while green, pro-EU liberal, and some Eurosceptic right wing parties saw significant gains. Those that came first in their national elections included: the Brexit Party in the UK (which was only launched on 12 April 2019 by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage), the National Rally of France (formerly the National Front party until June 2018), Fidesz in Hungary, Lega in Italy, and Law and Justice in Poland. There were also notable falls in support for the Danish People's Party (previously topped the 2014 European election). Whilst Vox got elected with 3 seats, Spain's first Eurosceptic party and Belgium's Vlaams Belang rallied to gain second place after its poor 2014 result.",
"title": "History in the European Parliament"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), established in 1956, is a right-wing populist party that mainly attracts support from young people and workers. In 1989, it changed its stance over the EU to Euroscepticism. It opposed Austria joining the EU in 1994, and opposed the introduction of the euro in 1998. The party would like to leave the EU if it threatens to develop into a country, or if Turkey joins. The FPÖ received 20–27% of the national vote in the 1990s, and more recently received 18% in 2008. Following the 2017 Austrian legislative election, it has 51/183 National Council seats, 16/62 Federal Council seats, and 4/19 European Parliament seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), established in 2005, is a socially conservative party that has always held Eurosceptic elements. In 2011 the party openly supported leaving the eurozone, and in 2012 it announced that it supported a full withdrawal from the European Union. The party has also called upon a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. In polls it generally received around 10–15%, although in one state it did receive 45% of the vote in 2009. Since the 2017 election, it has 0/183 National Council seats, 0/62 Federal Council seats, and 0/19 European Parliament seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Team Stronach, established in 2012, has campaigned to reform the European Union, as well as to replace the euro with an Austrian Euro. In 2012, it regularly received 8–10% support in national polls. Politicians from many different parties (including the Social Democratic Party and the BZÖ) as well as previous independents switched their allegiances to the new party upon creation. In two local elections in March 2013, it won 11% of the vote in Carinthia, and 10% of the vote in Lower Austria. It dissolved in 2017.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Ewald Stadler, a former member of FPÖ (and later of BZÖ) was very Eurosceptic, but in 2011 became a member of the European Parliament due to the Lisbon Treaty. Before Stadler accepted the seat, this led to heavy critics by Jörg Leichtfried (SPÖ) \"Stadler wants to just rescue his political career\" because Stadler before mentioned he would never accept a seat as MEP if this was only due to the Lisbon Treaty. On 23 December 2013 he founded a conservative and Eurosceptic party called The Reform Conservatives, although it has been inactive since June 2016.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In the 2014 European Parliament election, the FPÖ increased its vote to 19.7% (up 7.0%), gaining 2 new MEPs, making a total of 4; the party came third, behind the ÖVP and the SPÖ. EU-STOP (the electoral alliance of the EU Withdrawal Party and the Neutral Free Austria Federation) polled 2.8%, gaining no seats, and the Reform Conservatives 1.2%, with Team Stronach putting up no candidates.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, the FPÖ came 3rd with 17.2% of the vote which was only slightly down on 2014 despite a scandal allegedly promising public contracts to a woman posing as a Russian backer. This precipitated the collapse of the ruling coalition and a new election being called.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "According to Eurostat, in the fall of 2018, 44% of Belgium people stated that they did not trust the European Union. The main Eurosceptic party in Belgium is Vlaams Belang which is active in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. In the 2014 European Parliament election, Belgium's Vlaams Belang lost over half of its previous vote share, polling 4.3% (down 5.5%) and losing 1 of its 2 members of the European Parliament. Despite the presence of Eurosceptic parties in Belgium, their weight is relatively low, as Belgium is predominantly Europeanist.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 2019, Vlaams Belang stated in its program for the 2019 European Parliament election that it opposes the creation of a European state, would like to change the Economic and Monetary Union of the EU, and to end the Schengen Area, and refuses the accession of Turkey to the EU. More widely, the euro-sceptic arguments of the Vlaams Belang are based on four pillars:",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) is a soft Eurosceptic party in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Before 2010, the N-VA was pro-European and supported the idea of a democratic European confederation, but has since altered this policy to a more sceptical stance on further European integration and now calls for more democratic transparency within the EU, changes to the EU's common asylum policy and economic reforms to the Eurozone. The N-VA has obtained 26.8% of the votes or 4 seats of the Dutch-language college out of 12 (21 MEPs for Belgium) in the 2014 European Parliament election. In April 2019, it stood in European Conservatives and Reformists of the European Parliament, and can be considered a moderate Eurosceptic party.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the French-speaking part of Belgium (Walloons), there are four Eurosceptic parties. The first one is Nation Movement, a far-right party which was a member of the Alliance for Peace and Freedom in the European Parliament. The second one is National Front, also a far right party which criticizes the European bureaucracy, intends to guarantee and preserve national independence and freedom in a liberated Europe; it also reaffirms the Christian roots of Europe. The third one is the People's Party, classified as right or extreme right. In its program for the European election of 2019 the People's Party proposes to abolish the European Commission, reduce the number of European parliamentarians and fight against the worker-posted directive. For this party, the EU must be led by a president elected by universal suffrage with clear but limited competences. It also wants to renegotiate the European Union treaties, restrict the judicial activism of the European Court of Human Rights. It declares itself against the Global Compact for Migration. The last one is the Parti libertarien. In early 2019, the party aims to reduce the powers of the European Commission, to abolish the Common Agricultural Policy, to abandon common defense projects, to simplify the exit procedure of the European Union, to reject federalism and to forbid the European Union to direct economic, fiscal or social policy, Finally, the Workers' Party of Belgium is an electoral and unitary party. It also intends to revise the European treaties considered too liberal. One of the Party's currencies is \"The left that stings, against the Europe of money\".",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are NFSB, Attack, and VMRO – BND, which is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists). Bulgaria's Minister of Finance, Simeon Djankov, stated in 2011 that ERM II membership to enter the Euro zone would be postponed until after the Eurozone crisis had stabilised.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In the 2014 European Parliament election Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU, with the Eurosceptic Attack party receiving 3% of the vote, down 9%, with the splinter group National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria taking 3; neither party secured any MEPs. A coalition between VMRO – BND and Bulgaria Without Censorship secured an MEP position for Angel Dzhambazki from IMRO, who is a hard Eurosceptic.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Followers of Eurosceptic Attack tore down and trampled the European flag on 3 March 2016 at a meeting of the party in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, dedicated to the commemoration of the 138th anniversary of the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, Bulgaria remained overwhelmingly pro-EU with the ruling centre-right Gerb party winning with 31%, against 26% for the socialist BSP.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Since the 2021–2023 Bulgarian political crisis, the far-right hard Eurosceptic party Revival has outplaced Attack, with it getting 14% on the most recent 2023 Bulgarian parliamentary election.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Parties with Eurosceptic views are mainly small right-wing parties like Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Party of Rights dr. Ante Starčević, Croatian Pure Party of Rights, Autochthonous Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Christian Democratic Party and Only Croatia – Movement for Croatia.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The only parliamentary party that is vocally Eurosceptic is the Human Shield that won 5 out of 151 seats at the 2016 parliamentary election. Their position is generally considered to waver between hard and soft Euroscepticism; it requests thorough reform of the EU so that all member states would be perfectly equal.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Human Shield gained its first seat in the European Parliament with 6% of the vote putting it in 5th place.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views in Cyprus are the Progressive Party of Working People and ELAM.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, there was little change politically – the conservatives won narrowly, the ruling DISY taking two seats with 29%, followed by socialist AKEL (27.5%, two seats) with no seats taken by Eurosceptic parties.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In May 2010, the Czech president Václav Klaus said that they \"needn't hurry to enter the Eurozone\".",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Petr Mach, an economist, a close associate of president Václav Klaus and a member of the Civic Democratic Party between 1997 and 2007, founded the Free Citizens Party in 2009. The party aims to mainly attract dissatisfied Civic Democratic Party voters. At the time of the Lisbon Treaty ratification, they were actively campaigning against it, supported by the president Vaclav Klaus, who demanded opt-outs such as were granted to the United Kingdom and Poland, unlike the governing Civic Democratic Party, who endorsed it in the Chamber of Deputies. After the treaty has been ratified, Mach's party is in favour of withdrawing from the European Union completely. In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Free Citizens Party won one mandate and allied with UKIP in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFD).",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The 2017 Czech legislative election brought into Parliament one soft eurosceptic party, the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) (11%), and two hard eurosceptic parties, the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) (11%) and the left-wing to far-left Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) (8%).",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "An April 2016 survey by the CVVM Institute indicated that 25% of Czechs were satisfied with EU membership, down from 32% the previous year.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Dividends worth CZK 270 billion were paid to the foreign owners of Czech companies in 2017, which has become a political issue in the Czech Republic.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Civic Democratic Party saw its vote share rise to 15% and its seats doubled from 2 to 4. The Freedom and Direct Democracy party took 2 seats with 9% of the vote. KSČM dropped 2 seats leaving it with only one and a vote share of 7%",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The People's Movement against the EU only takes part in European Parliament elections and has one member in the European Parliament. The soft Eurosceptic June Movement, originally a split-off from the People's Movement against the EU, existed from 1992 to 2009.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In the Danish Parliament, the Red-Green Alliance previously advocated withdrawal from the EU, but in March 2019, the party announced it would no longer campaign for a referendum to leave the EU, pointing to Brexit illustrating the need for clarity before withdrawal can be considered. The Danish People's Party also advocates withdrawal, but says it supports some EU structures such as the internal market, and supported the EU-positive Liberal-Conservative coalition between 2001 and 2011 and again from 2015 to 2019.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The Socialist People's Party, minorities within the Social Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party, and some smaller parties were against accession to the European Union in 1972. Still in 1986, these parties advocated a no vote in the Single European Act referendum. Later, the Social Liberal Party changed to a strongly EU-positive party, and EU opposition within the Social Democratic Party faded. The Socialist People's Party were against the Amsterdam Treaty in 1998 and Denmark's joining the euro in 2000, but has become increasingly EU-positive, for example when MEP Margrete Auken left the European United Left–Nordic Green Left and joined The Greens–European Free Alliance in 2004.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In the 2014 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party came first by a large margin with 27% of the vote, gaining 2 extra seats for a total of 4 MEPs. The People's Movement against the EU polled 8%, retaining its single MEP.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Danish People's Party lost around two-thirds of their previous vote share dropping from 4 seats to just 1. The People's Movement against the EU lost their seat and the Red-Green Alliance got one seat.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The 2019 Danish general election saw the emergence of a new hard Eurosceptic party Nye Borgerlige which supports Denmark leaving the EU. The party won four seats in parliament.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The Independence Party and Centre Party were against accession to the EU, but only the Independence Party still wants Estonia to withdraw from the EU. The Conservative People's Party (EKRE) also has some Eurosceptic policies and increased its vote share from 4% in 2014 to 13% in the 2019 European Elections winning one seat.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The largest Eurosceptic party in Finland is the Finns Party. In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Finns Party increased their vote share by 3% to 13%, adding a second MEP. With their 39 seats, the Finns Party are also the second-biggest party in the 200-seat Finnish Eduskunta.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In Eurobarometer 77 (fieldwork in Spring 2012), 41% of Finns trusted the European Union (EU-27 average: 31%), 51% trusted The European Parliament (EU-27average: 40%), and 74% were in favour of the euro currency (EU-27 average: 52%).",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Finns Party increased their vote share slightly from 13% to 14% and retained their 2 seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In its latest party platform written in 2019, the Finns Party is strongly opposed to further EU integration. The party proposes introducing a parallel currency within Finland in tandem with the Euro in order to phase out Finnish membership of the Eurozone and argues that while Finland is needed in the short-term in the European Parliament to defend Finland's interests, the country should also enact policies to help gradually withdraw Finland from the EU. During the 2018 Finnish presidential election, the Finns Party candidate Laura Huhtasaari stated that her campaign would support exiting the EU.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In France there are multiple parties that are Eurosceptic to different degrees, varying from advocating less EU intervention in national affairs, to advocating outright withdrawal from the EU and the Eurozone. These parties belong to all sides of the political spectrum, so the reasons for their Euroscepticism may differ. In the past many French people appeared to be uninterested in such matters, with only 40% of the French electorate voting in the 2009 European Parliament elections.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Right-wing Eurosceptic parties include the Gaullist Debout la République, and Mouvement pour la France, which was part of Libertas, a pan-European Eurosceptic party. In the 2009 European Parliament elections, Debout la République received 1.8% of the national vote, and Libertas 4.8%. In a similar way to some moderate parties, the French right and far-right in general are naturally opposed to the EU, as they criticise France's loss of political and economic sovereignty to a supranational entity. Some of these hard Eurosceptic parties include the Popular Republican Union and formerly the Front National (FN). Popular Republican Union seek France's withdrawal from the EU and the euro as well as France's withdrawal from NATO. The FN received 33.9% of the votes in the 2017 French presidential election, making it the largest Eurosceptic party in France. In June 2018, the National Front was renamed as National Rally (RN) and in 2019 dropped support for France leaving the European Union and the Eurozone from its manifesto, instead calling for \"reform from within\" the union.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Eurosceptic parties on the left in France tend to criticise what they see as the neoliberal agenda of the EU, as well as the elements of its structure which are undemocratic and seen as top-down. These parties include the Parti de Gauche and the French Communist Party, which formed the Front de Gauche for the 2009 European Parliament elections and received 6.3% of the votes. The leader of the Left Front defends a complete reform of the Monetary Union, rather than the withdrawal of France from the Eurozone. Some of the major far-left Eurosceptic parties in France include the New Anticapitalist Party which received 4.8% and Lutte Ouvrière which received 1.2%. The Citizen and Republican Movement, a left-wing Eurosceptic and souverainist party, have not participated in any elections for the European Parliament.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The party Chasse, Pêche, Nature & Traditions, is an agrarianist Eurosceptic party that says it is neither left nor right.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2014, the National Front won the elections with 24.9% of the vote, a swing of 18.6%, winning 24 seats, up from 3 previously. The former French President François Hollande had called for the EU to be reformed and for a scaling back of its power.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2019, the renamed National Rally won the elections with 23.3% of the vote, winning 22 seats, down from 23 previously when their vote share was 24.9%.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is Germany's largest Eurosceptic party. It was elected into the German Parliament with 94 seats in September 2017. Initially the AfD was a soft Eurosceptic party, that considered itself pro-Europe and pro-EU, but opposed the euro, which it believed had undermined European integration, and called for reforms to the Eurozone.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Alternative for Germany came 5th with 7% of the vote, winning 7 seats and is a member of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists. The Alternative for Germany went on to take seats in three state legislatures in the Autumn of 2014.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "The party became purely Eurosceptic in 2015, when an internal split occurred, leading to Frauke Petry's leadership and a more hard-line approach to the European Union, including its calling for an end for German Eurozone membership, withdrawal from EU common asylum policies and significantly reducing the power of the EU with some AfD members supporting a complete exit from the EU altogether.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In July 2015 an AfD splinter group created a new soft Eurosceptic party called Alliance for Progress and Renewal.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Alternative for Germany increased their vote share from 7% and 7 seats to 11% and 11 seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In the 2021 German Federal Election, AfD won 10.3% of the vote and 94 seats whereas in 2017, they received 12.6% of the vote and 83 seats; this meant they moved from third place to fifth place, falling behind the Green Party and FDP, both of which had been less popular than the AfD in 2017. Despite their overall electoral decline, the AfD still emerged as the largest in the states of Saxony and Thuringia, and saw a strong performance in eastern Germany.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Golden Dawn, Communist Party of Greece (KKE), Greek Solution, ANEL, Course of Freedom, Popular Unity, and LAOS have been the main Eurosceptic parties in Greece. According to the London School of Economics, Greece used to be the second most Eurosceptic country in the European Union, with 50% of Greeks thinking that their country has not benefited at all from the EU (only behind the UK). Meanwhile, 33% of Greeks viewed Greek membership in EU as a good thing, marginally ahead of the UK. 81% of Greeks felt that the EU was going in the wrong direction. These figures represented a major increase in Euroscepticism in Greece since 2009.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "In June 2012, the Eurosceptic parties in Greece that were represented in the parliament before the Election in January 2015 (ANEL, Golden Dawn, KKE) got 45.8% of the votes and 40.3% of the seats in the parliament. In the legislative election of January 2015 the pro-European (left and right-wing) parties (ND, PASOK, Potami, KIDISO, EK and Prasinoi-DIMAR) got 43.3% of the votes. The Eurosceptic parties got 54.6%. The Eurosceptic left (KKE, ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (M–L)/M–L KKE) got 42.6% of the votes and the Eurosceptic right (Golden Dawn, ANEL and LAOS) got 12.1% of the votes, with Syriza ahead with 36.3%. The Eurosceptic parties got 194 seats in the new parliament and the pro-EU parties got 106 seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "According to the polls conducted in June and July 2015 (12 polls), the Eurosceptic left would get on average 48.0% (excluding extraparliamentary parties as ANTARSYA-MARS and KKE (m–l)/ML-KKE), the parliamentary pro-EU parties (Potami, New Democracy and PASOK) would get 33.8%, the extra-parliamentary (not represented in the Hellenic Parliament) pro-EU parties (KIDISO and EK) would get 4.4% and the Eurosceptic right would get 10.2% (excluding extraparliamentary parties, such as LAOS, not displayed on recent opinion polls). The soft Eurosceptic parties would get 42.3%, the hard Eurosceptic parties (including KKE, ANEL and Golden Dawn) would get 15.9%, and the pro-EU parties (including extra-parliamentary parties displayed on opinion polls) would get 38.3% of the votes.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2014, Syriza won the election with 26.6% of the vote (a swing of 21.9%) taking 6 seats (up 5), with Golden Dawn coming 3rd taking 3 seats, the Communist Party taking 2 seats and the Independent Greeks gaining their first ever seat. Syriza's leader Tsipras said he's not anti-European and does not want to leave the euro. According to The Economist, Tsipras is willing to negotiate with Greece's European partners, and it is believed a Syriza victory could encourage radical leftist parties across Europe. Alexis Tsipras vowed to reverse many of the austerity measures adopted by Greece since a series of bailouts began in 2010, at odds with the Eurogroup's positions. The government coalition in Greece was composed by Syriza and ANEL (right-wing hard Eurosceptic party, led by Panos Kammenos, who is the current Minister of Defence).",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Euroscepticism has softened in Greece as the economy improved. According to a research in early 2018, 68% of Greeks judge as positive the participation of Greece in the EU (instead of 53.5% in 2017).",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2019, the New Democracy movement, beat the ruling left-wing Syriza formation with 33.1% and 23.8% of the vote respectively, maintaining Syriza's 6 seats and prompting the Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to call a legislative election on 7 July 2019. In this election, which was won by ND, the pro-European parties (ND, SYRIZA, KINAL, MeRA25, and the extra-parliamentary Union of Centrists and Recreate Greece) got 84.9% of the vote and the Eurosceptic parties (KKE, Greek Solution, the extraparliamentary Golden Dawn and a host of other small mainly left-wing parties) got 15.1%. That drastic change in the balance is mostly the result of SYRIZA abandoning Euroscepticism.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Viktor Orbán is the soft Eurosceptic Prime Minister of Hungary for the national-conservative Fidesz Party. Another Eurosceptic party that was present in Hungary was Jobbik, which until around 2016, it was identified as a radical and far-right party. Those far-right factions, who left Jobbik, they decided to form the Our Homeland Movement party.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In Hungary 39% of the population have a positive image of the EU, 20% have a negative image, and 40% neutral (1% \"Don't know\").",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In the 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election, Fidesz got 44.5% of the votes, Jobbik got 20.5% of the votes and the communist Hungarian Workers' Party got 0.6% of the votes. Thus at the time, Eurosceptic parties in Hungary obtained 65.7% of the votes, one of the highest figures in Europe.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The green-liberal Politics Can Be Different (Lehet Más a Politika, LMP) classifies as a soft or reformist Eurosceptic party given its self-professed euro-critical stance. During the European parliamentary campaign of 2014 party Co-president András Schiffer described LMP as having a pronounced pro-integration position on environmental, wage and labour policy as supporting member state autonomy on the self-determination of local communities concerning land resources. So as to combat the differentiated integration of the multi-speed Europe which discriminates against Eastern and Southern member states, LMP would like to initiate an eco-social market economy within the union.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2019, Fidesz consolidated their position by increasing their vote share to 51.5% and adding a seat to take their tally to 13. Former Eurosceptic (now pro-European) Jobbik dropped to 6.3% of the votes, losing 2 of its 3 seats. The Momentum Movement, a newly created pro-European party, came 3rd with 9.3% of the vote, with the strongly pro-European Democratic Coalition coming second with 16.1% of the vote. Our Homeland Movement got to 3.3% of the votes, gaining no seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Euroscepticism is a minority view in Ireland, with opinion polls from 2016 to 2018 indicating growing support for EU membership, moving from 70% to 92% in that time.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The Irish people initially voted against ratifying the Nice and Lisbon Treaties. Following renegotiations, second referendums on both were passed with approximately 2:1 majorities in both cases. Some commentators and smaller political groups questioned the validity of the Irish Government's decision to call second referendums.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The left-wing Irish republican party Sinn Féin expresses soft Eurosceptic positions on the current structure of the European Union and the direction in which it is moving. The party expresses, \"support for Europe-wide measures that promote and enhance human rights, equality and the all-Ireland agenda\", but has a \"principled opposition\" to a European superstate. In its manifesto for the 2015 UK general election, Sinn Féin pledged that the party would campaign for the UK to stay within the EU. In the 2019 European Parliament election, Sinn Féin won one seat and 11.7% of the vote, down 7.8%.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The Socialist Party, a Trotskyist organisation, supports Ireland leaving the EU and supported the Brexit result. It argues that the European Union is institutionally capitalist and neoliberal. The Socialist Party campaigned against the Lisbon and Nice Treaties and favours the foundation of an alternative Socialist European Union.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The Five Star Movement (M5S), an anti-establishment movement founded by comedian Beppe Grillo, originally set itself out as a Eurosceptic party. The M5S received 25.5% of vote in the 2013 general election, becoming the largest anti-establishment and Eurosceptic party in Europe. The party used to advocate a non-binding referendum on the withdrawal of Italy from the Eurozone (but not from the European Union) and the return to the lira. Since then, the party has toned down its eurosceptic rhetoric and such policy was rejected in 2018, and the M5S's leader has since stated that the \"European Union is the Five Star Movement's home\", clarifying that the party wants Italy to stay in the EU, even though it remains critical of some of its treaties. The M5S's popular support is distributed all across Italy: in the 2018 general election the party won 32.7% of the popular vote nationwide, and was particularly successful in central and southern Italy.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "A party that retains a Eurosceptic identity is the Northern League (LN), a regionalist movement led by Matteo Salvini favouring Italy's exit from the Eurozone and the re-introduction of the lira. When in government, Lega approved the Treaty of Lisbon. The party won 6.2% of the vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections, but two of its leading members are presidents of Lombardy and Veneto (where Lega gained 40.9% of the vote in 2015).",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "In the 2014 European Parliament election the Five Star Movement came second, with 17 seats and 21.2% of the vote after contesting EP seats for the first time. Northern League had five seats and The Other Europe with Tsipras had three seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Other minor Eurosceptic organizations include right-wing political parties (e.g., Brothers of Italy, Tricolour Flame, New Force, National Front, CasaPound, National Movement for Sovereignty, the No Euro Movement), far-left political parties (e.g., the Communist Party of Marco Rizzo, the Italian Communist Party and the political movement Power to the People) and other political movements (e.g., the Sovereignist Front, MMT Italy). In addition, the European Union is criticized (especially for the austerity and the creation of the euro) by some left-wing thinkers, like the trade unionist Giorgio Cremaschi and the journalist Paolo Barnard, and some academics, such as the economists Alberto Bagnai and Vladimiro Giacché, the philosopher Diego Fusaro and the mathematician Marino Badiale.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "According to the Standard Eurobarometer 87 conducted by the European Commission in spring 2017, 48% of Italians tend not to trust the European Union compared to 36% of Italians who do.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "In the 2019 European election, the Italian Eurosceptic and souverainist right-wing, represented in large part by the League, increased its number of seats in the EP, but was not assigned any presidency in the committees of the European Parliament. Despite its national political alliance with the League during the Conte Cabinet, the Five Star Movement voted for Ursula von der Leyen, member of pro-EU Christian Democratic Union of Germany, as President of the European Commission.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In July 2020, senator Gianluigi Paragone formed Italexit, a new political party with a main goal to withdraw Italy from the European Union.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The National Alliance (For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK/All for Latvia!), Union of Greens and Farmers and For Latvia from the Heart are parties that are described by some political commentators as bearing soft Eurosceptic views. A small hard Eurosceptic party Eurosceptic Party of Action exists, but it has failed to gain any administrative seats throughout history of its existence.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "The Order and Justice party had mainly Eurosceptic views.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The Alternative Democratic Reform Party is a soft Eurosceptic party. It is a member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The Labour Party was not in favour of Malta entering the European Union. It was in favour of a partnership with the EU. After a long battle, the Nationalist Party led by Eddie Fenech Adami won the referendum and the following election, making Malta one of the states to enter the European Union on 1 May 2004. The party is now pro-European. Nowadays the People's Party often adopts Eurosceptic views.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Historically, the Netherlands have been a very pro-European country, being one of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, and campaigning with much effort to include the United Kingdom into the Community in the 1970s and others after that. It has become slightly more Eurosceptic in the 2000s, rejecting the European Constitution in 2005 and complaining about the relatively high financial investment into the Union or the democratic deficit amongst other issues.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "A number of hard and soft eurosceptic parties have politicians elected to the Dutch House of Representatives and European Parliament which include:",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "A prominent former Eurosceptic party in the Netherlands was the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF) established by politician and academic Pim Fortuyn in 2002. The party campaigned to reduce Dutch financial contributions to the EU, was against Turkish membership and opposed what it saw as the excessive bureaucracy and threat to national sovereignty posed by the EU. During the 2002 general election, the LPF polled in second place with 17% of the vote. Following the assassination of Fortuyn in the run-up to the election, support for the party declined soon after and it was disbanded in 2008 with many of is former supporters transferring to the Party for Freedom.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Despite these concerns, in 2014 the majority of the Dutch electorate continued to support parties that favour ongoing European integration: the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals, but most of all the (Liberal) Democrats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In 2016, a substantial majority in a low-turnout referendum rejected the ratification of an EU trade and association treaty with Ukraine.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, Eurosceptic parties had mixed results with Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom losing all 4 of its seats taking only 3.5% of the vote. The new Forum for Democracy established in late 2016 took 11.0% of the vote and entered the European Parliament with 3 seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "The main parties with Eurosceptic views are Law and Justice (PiS), United Poland (SP) and the Confederation Liberty and Independence and the main Eurosceptic politicians include Ryszard Bender, Andrzej Grzesik, Krzysztof Bosak, Dariusz Grabowski, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Marian Kowalski, Paweł Kukiz, Zbigniew Ziobro, Anna Sobecka, Robert Winnicki, Artur Zawisza, and Stanisław Żółtek.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Former president of Poland Lech Kaczyński resisted giving his signature on behalf of Poland to the Treaty of Lisbon, objecting specifically to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Subsequently, Poland got an opt-out from this charter. As Polish President, Kaczyński also opposed the Polish government's intentions to join the euro.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "In 2015, it was reported that Euroscepticism was growing in Poland, which was thought to be due to the \"economic crisis, concern over perceived interference from Brussels and migration\". Polish president Andrzej Duda indicated that he wished for Poland to step back from further EU integration. He suggested that the country should \"hold a referendum on joining the euro, resist further integration and fight the EU's green policies\", despite getting the largest share of EU cash.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Law and Justice party won the largest number of seats, with a vote share increase up from 31.8% to 45.4%, increasing its seats from 19 to 27.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In 2019, the former MEP Stanisław Żółtek created a political party called PolEXIT, whose flagship ideology is euroscepticism. Its candidate for president of Poland in the 2020 elections was the party's leader, Żółtek, who got 45 419 votes (0.23%), ranking 7th out of 11 candidates and did not qualify to the second round.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The main Eurosceptic parties in Portugal are Chega, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), and Left Bloc (BE). Opinion polling in Portugal in 2015 indicated that 48 per cent tended not to trust the EU, while 79 per cent tended not to trust the Portuguese government (then led by Portugal Ahead). Eurosceptic political parties hold a combined total of 23 seats out of 230 in Portugal's parliament (BE 5, PCP 6, PNR 0, CHEGA 12) and a combined total of 4 out of Portugal's 21 seats in the European Parliament (PCP 2, BE 2, PNR 0, CHEGA 0).",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "In the last 2014 European Parliament election, the Portuguese Communist Party won three seats and the Left Bloc won one seat.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, Left Bloc took 9.8% and gained 1 seat, Portuguese Communist Party working in coalition with Ecologist Party \"The Greens\" took 6.9% and 2 seats and National Renovator Party (PNR) polled just 0.5%, with no seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "2019 saw the emergence of a new Eurosceptic political party, Chega, who gained a seat in that year's legislative election. The party did not capture any seats in the 2019 European Parliament elections, but saw its leader André Ventura finish third in the 2021 presidential election, securing 11.9% of those voting.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "In the 2022 Portuguese snap election, Chega got 7.2% of the vote and 12 out of the 230 seats in the Assembly of the Republic.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Several parties espousing Eurosceptic views exist on the right, such as the New Republic, the Greater Romania Party and Noua Dreaptă, but as of June 2020 none of these parties are represented in European Parliament. Euroscepticism is relatively unpopular in Romania, a 2015 survey found 65% of Romanians had a positive view of the country's EU membership.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "The Eurosceptic parties remained unrepresented in the 2019 European Parliament election.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "The soft Eurosceptic Alliance for the Union of Romanians, which was founded in September 2019, entered the Romanian parliament in 2020.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "Parties with Eurosceptic views are the Slovak National Party, Republic, We Are Family, People's Party Our Slovakia. Prominent Slovak Eurosceptic politicians include Andrej Danko, Milan Uhrík, Boris Kollár, Marian Kotleba.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, People's Party Our Slovakia came 3rd securing 12.1% and winning their first 2 seats in the European Parliament, whereas the Slovak National Party and We Are Family did not win any seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are Slovenian National Party and The Left. Neither won seats in the 2019 European Parliament election in Slovenia.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "The process of Europeanization changed during the years in Spain. In 1986 Spain entered in the European Community. Since then, Spain has been one of the most Europeanist countries. Therefore, when Spain became part of the European Community, the country had a strong pro-Europeanist feeling, according to Eurobarometer, as it reflected a 60% of the population. In Spain different reasons explain its entrance to the European Community. On the one hand, democracy has just been established in Spain after Francisco Franco dictatorship. On the other hand, the main objectives of Spain were to achieve economic development, and also a social modernization. Spain was one of the few countries to vote Yes for the European Constitution in a referendum in February 2005, though by a lower margin in Catalonia and the Basque Country. In 2008, after the financial crisis reached Spain, the percentage of pro European persons started to fall. Thus, during the five years of the economic crisis, the Eurobarometer shows how the trust in the EU increasingly fell in Spain, and the confidence of the Spanish citizens in the European Union decreased for more than 50 points. Spain became one of the most Eurosceptic countries among all European Union Members, as it happened in pretty much European countries, where nationalist and eurosceptic characterised parties became stronger.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "The historical two-parties system, composed by the conservative Partido Popular and the social-democratic Partido Socialista Obrero Español, collapsed. In the 2000s, the liberal Ciudadanos and leftist party Podemos became part of the political context, gaining electoral consensus, followed years later by ultranationalist party Vox. The new parties were the effect of the disaffection of most Spaniards towards politics and politicians, that increased for several reasons: firstly, corruption at all political levels, reaching the Royal Family too; secondly, recession intensified distrust of the population towards national government; thirdly, a phase of renovation of the autonomous regions which extended the distance between the National government and the Regional ones. Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, a left-wing to far-left political party with about 1,300 members advocates independence for Catalonia outside of the European Union. Up to 2014 European elections, there were no Spanish parties present in the Eurosceptic groups at the European Parliament. In the 2015 Spanish general election, Podemos became the first left-wing Eurosceptic political party to win seats in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 69 seats, and in the 2019 Spanish general election, Vox became the first far-right Eurosceptic political party to win seats in the Congress of Deputies, obtaining 24 seats.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "The Left Party of Sweden is against accession to the eurozone and previously wanted Sweden to leave the European Union until 2019.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "The nationalist and right-wing populist party Sweden Democrats support closer political, economic and military cooperation with neighboring Nordic and certain Northern European countries, but strongly oppose further EU integration and further transfers of Swedish sovereignty to the EU as a whole. The party is also against Swedish accession to the eurozone, the creation of a combined EU military budget and want to renegotiate Swedish membership of the Schengen Agreement.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "The June List, a Eurosceptic list consisting of members from both the political right and left won three seats in the 2004 Elections to the European Parliament and sat in the EU-critical IND/DEM group in the European Parliament. The movement Folkrörelsen Nej till EU [sv] favours a withdrawal from the EU.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Around 75% of the Riksdag members represent parties that officially supports the Sweden membership.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2014, the Sweden Democrats gained 2 seats with 9.7% of the vote, up 6.4%, and the Left Party took one seat with 6.3% of the vote.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "In the European Parliament election, 2019, the Sweden Democrats increased from 2 to 3 seats with 15.3% of the vote, up from 9.7%, and the Left Party retained its one seat with 6.8% of the vote.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "In winter 2019–2020, in connection with the request from \"poor\" member countries of much higher membership fees for \"rich\" member countries, for the reason of keeping support levels so \"poor\" countries wouldn't suffer from Brexit, where a \"rich\" country left the union in part due to high membership fees, a media and social media debate for a \"Swexit\" increased. This was still rejected by parties representing a majority of the parliament, with the COVID-19 pandemic quickly taking over the debate.",
"title": "In EU member states"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Prosperous Armenia represents the main Eurosceptic party in Armenia. Following the 2018 Armenian parliamentary election, the party gained 26 seats in the National Assembly, becoming the official opposition. Following the 2021 Armenian parliamentary election, the party lost all political representation and currently acts as an extra-parliamentary force. The party was a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats is a Bosnian Serb political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Founded in 1996, it is the governing party in Bosnia and Herzegovina's entity called Republika Srpska, with its leader being Milorad Dodik.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Georgian March is the main Eurosceptic party in Georgia. The party supports a slight distancing of Georgia from the West, as well as rejecting the country's entrance into NATO.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "In March 2022, Georgia submitted a formal application for membership of the EU.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "The three main Eurosceptic parties in Iceland are the Independence Party, Left-Green Movement and the Progressive Party. The Independence Party and the Progressive Party won the parliamentary election in April 2013 and they have halted the current negotiations with the European Union regarding Icelandic membership and tabled a parliamentary resolution on 21 February 2014 to withdraw the application completely.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "In 2017, Iceland's newly elected government announced that it would hold a vote in parliament on whether to hold a referendum on resuming EU membership negotiations. In November 2017 that government was replaced by a coalition of the Independence Party, the Left Green Movement and the Progressive Party; all of whom oppose membership. Only 11 out of 63 MPs are in favour of EU membership.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "The main Eurosceptic parties in Moldova are the left-wing Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, which officially declared its main purpose to be the integration of Moldova in the Eurasian Economic Union, the Revival Party, and the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, even if nowadays its leader speech became more soft on the issue of Euroscepticism. As of March 2022 all the parties are represented in Moldovan Parliament, with 37 MPs out of a total of 101 MPs.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "In March 2022, Moldova submitted a formal application for membership of the EU.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "The right-wing Democratic Front alliance are the main moderate eurosceptic subject in the Parliament of Montenegro, although its initially declaratively supported country's bid for accession to the European Union, all other parliamentary subjects officially advocates Montenegrin access to EU. The only parties that advocates Montenegro's rejecting the European integration are the extra-parliamentary right-wing populist to far-right parties, such as True Montenegro, Party of Serb Radicals, Democratic Party of Unity and the Serb List, all four are known for their close cooperation with the parliamentary Democratic Front.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Since having come into national opposition, and amid disagreements in the Macedonia naming dispute, the VMRO-DPMNE – which does not endorse the name of North Macedonia, instead continuing to refer to Republic of Macedonia without qualifiers – no longer supports the country's candidacy for EU membership. It has subsequently declared its aspirations towards Russia.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "Norway has rejected EU membership in two referendums, 1972 and 1994. The Centre Party, Christian Democratic Party, Socialist Left Party and Liberal Party were against EU membership in both referendums. The Liberal Party was particularly divided on the issue, and a large pro-EEC minority split off from the party before the 1972 referendum. In 2020, the Liberal Party officially reversed its position and since then, supports Norwegian EU membership.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "Among the established political parties of Norway, the Centre Party, Socialist Left Party, and Red Party are also against Norway's current membership of the European Economic Area. In addition, the libertarian Capitalist Party and Christian-conservative The Christians, both of whom have never held a seat in the Norwegian parliament, are also against Norway's membership in the EEA.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are the ruling United Russia, and opposition parties the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "Following the 2014 Crimean crisis, the European Union issued sanctions on the Russian Federation in response to what it regards as the \"illegal\" annexation of Crimea and \"deliberate destabilisation\" of a neighbouring sovereign country. In response to this, Alexey Borodavkin – Russia's permanent representative with the UN – said \"The EU is committing a direct violation of human rights by its actions against Russia. The unilateral sanctions introduced against us are not only illegitimate according to international law, they also undermine Russian citizens' freedom of travel, freedom of development, freedom of work and others\". In the same year, Russian president Vladimir Putin said: \"What are the so-called European values? Maintaining the coup, the armed seizure of power and the suppression of dissent with the help of the armed forces?\"",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "A February 2014 poll conducted by the Levada Center, Russia's largest independent polling organization, found that nearly 80% of Russian respondents had a \"good\" impression of the EU. This changed dramatically in 2014 with the Ukrainian crisis resulting in 70% taking a hostile view of the EU compared to 20% viewing it positively.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "A Levada poll released in August 2018 found that 68% of Russians polled believe that Russia needs to dramatically improve relations with Western countries. 42% of Russian respondents said they had a positive view of the EU, up from 28% in May 2018.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "A referendum was held in the landlocked microstate on 20 October 2013 in which the citizens were asked whether the country should submit an application to join the European Union. The proposal was rejected because of a low turnout, even though 50.3% of voters approved it. The \"Yes\" campaign was supported by the main left-wing parties (Socialist Party, United Left) and the Union for the Republic whereas the Sammarinese Christian Democratic Party suggested voting with a blank ballot, the Popular Alliance declared itself neutral, and We Sammarinese and the RETE movement supported the \"No\" campaign. The Citizens' Rights Directive, which defines the right of free movement for the European citizens, may have been an important reason for those voting no.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "In Serbia, political parties with eurosceptic views tend to be right-orientated. The most notable examples are the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) which since its inception has opposed entering the European Union and the right-wing populist Dveri. Political parties such as the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) had pro-Western views and was initially supportive of the accession into the European Union but under the late 2000s leadership of Vojislav Koštunica they turned eurosceptic, and the Enough is Enough (DJB) political party, initially a liberal centrist party that also supported the accession turned towards the right-wing eurosceptic position shortly after 2018.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "Historically, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and the Yugoslav Left (JUL) were the only two left-leaning political parties that imposed eurosceptic and anti-Western views. The ruling coalition in Serbia, For Our Children, which is predominantly pro-European orientated is also composed of two minor eurosceptic parties, the right-wing Serbian People's Party that advocates closer ties to Russia, and the left-leaning Movement of Socialists which was formed as the eurosceptic split from SPS in the 2000s.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "Other minor political parties in Serbia that have eurosceptic views are Healthy Serbia, People's Freedom Movement, Russian Party, Love, Faith, Hope, Serbian Party Oathkeepers, Serbian Right and Leviathan Movement.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "Switzerland has long been known for its neutrality in international politics. Swiss voters rejected EEA membership in 1992, and EU membership in 2001. Despite the passing of several referendums calling for closer relations between Switzerland and the European Union such as the adoption of bilateral treaties and the joining of the Schengen Area, a second referendum of the joining of the EEA or the EU is not expected, and the general public remains opposed to joining.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "In February 2014, the Swiss voters narrowly approved a referendum limiting the freedom of movement of EU citizens to Switzerland.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "Eurosceptic political parties include the Swiss People's Party, which is the largest political party in Switzerland, with 29.4% of the popular vote as of the 2015 federal election. Smaller Eurosceptic parties include, but are not limited to, the Federal Democratic Union, the Ticino League, and the Geneva Citizens' Movement, all of which are considered right-wing parties.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "In addition, the Campaign for an Independent and Neutral Switzerland is a political organisation in Switzerland that is strongly opposed to Swiss membership of or further integration otherwise with the European Union.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "Regionally, the German-speaking majority as well as the Italian-speaking areas are the most Eurosceptic, while French-speaking Switzerland tends to be more pro-European integration. In the 2001 referendum, the majority of French-speakers voted against EU membership. According to a 2016 survey conducted by M.I.S Trend and published in L'Hebdo, 69 percent of the Swiss population supports systematic border controls, and 53 percent want restrictions on the EU accord of the free movements of peoples and 14 percent want it completely abolished. 54% of the Swiss population said that if necessary, they would ultimately keep the freedom of movement of people's accord.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "The two main Eurosceptic parties are the far-right ultranationalist, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which secured 11.1% of votes, and 49 seats in the Parliament at the last election, and the Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi), a far-right Sunni Islamist party, which has no seats in the Parliament, as it only secured 0.7% of the votes in the last election, far below the 10% threshold necessary to be represented in the Parliament.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "Many left-wing nationalist and far-left parties hold no seats at parliament but they control many activist and student movements in Turkey. The Patriotic Party (formerly called Workers' Party) consider the European Union as a front-runner of global imperialism.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "Founded on 26 August 2021 under the leadership of Ümit Özdağ, Victory Party (Turkey) is a Turkish nationalist and anti-immigrant political party. It is represented by two deputies in the Turkish Grand National Assembly. \"The European Union does not want to negotiate with Turkey. We will not humiliate Turkey anymore.\" Özdağ said.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "Parties with mainly Eurosceptic views are Opposition Platform – For Life, Opposition Bloc, Party of Shariy and Right Sector.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "The far-right Ukrainian group Right Sector opposes joining the European Union. It regards the EU as an \"oppressor\" of European nations.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "In the 2019 parliamentary election the Opposition Platform – For Life won 37 seats on the nationwide party list and 6 constituency seats.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 165,
"text": "The leader of the Party of Shariy Anatoly Shariy is one of the closest associates of Viktor Medvedchuk, whom Ukraine's special services suspect of financing terrorism.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 166,
"text": "Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom has been a significant element in British politics ever since the inception of the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor to the EU. The European Union strongly divides the British public, political parties, media and civil society.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 167,
"text": "The UK Independence Party has backed the idea of the UK unilaterally leaving the European Union (Brexit) since its foundation in 1993. During the 23 June 2016 referendum on the issue, whilst the Conservatives had no official position, although its leader David Cameron was in favour of remaining in the EU albeit after some renegotiation of the terms of membership, the party remained profoundly split, as it always had been. The Labour Party officially supported remaining in the EU, although party leader Jeremy Corbyn did suggest early on in the campaign that he would consider withdrawal, a position he had personally advocated from the far left for many years, in fact throughout his period as a Labour MP. The Liberal Democrats were the most adamantly pro-EU party, and since the referendum, pro-Europeanism has been their main policy.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 168,
"text": "The referendum resulted in an overall vote to leave the EU, as opposed to remaining an EU member, by 51.9% to 48.1%, on a turnout of 72.2%. The vote was split between the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, with a majority in England and Wales voting to leave, and a majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as Gibraltar (a British Overseas Territory), voting to remain. As a result of the referendum, the UK Government notified the EU of its intention to withdraw on 29 March 2017 by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 169,
"text": "On 12 April 2019, a new Eurosceptic party, the Brexit Party was officially launched by former UK Independence Party Leader Nigel Farage.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 170,
"text": "In the 2019 European Parliament election, the Brexit Party topped the national poll by a large margin with 31.7% gaining 29 seats by running on a single policy of leaving the EU, versus the second-placed Liberal Democrats with 18.5% and 16 seats who promoted themselves as the party of Remain (the total vote for Remain-supporting parties was approximately the same as that for parties supporting a 'no-deal' Brexit). The Conservative Party suffered their lowest ever national vote share of 9.1% with just 4 seats following 3 years of Theresa May's unsuccessful Brexit negotiations. The Labour Party's ambiguous position on Brexit led to their vote share dropping significantly to 14.1% resulting in the loss of half their seats, down from 20 to 10. The rapid growth of the Brexit Party was a contributing factor to Theresa May announcing on 24 May that she would step down as Prime Minister on 7 June 2019. After the elections, the Eurosceptic Blue Collar Conservative caucus of Conservative MPs was formed.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 171,
"text": "Historically, the Conservative Party has expressed divided sentiments on the issue of EU membership, with the official stance changing with party leadership and individual MPs within the party variously favouring total withdrawal and remaining in the EU, while others adopted a position of soft Euroscepticism being supportive of membership but opposed to joining the eurozone and pursuing further integration. Until the 1980s, the Conservative Party was somewhat more pro-EU than the Labour Party: for example, in the 1971 House of Commons vote on whether the UK should join the European Economic Community, only 39 of the then 330 Conservative MPs were opposed to membership. When Margaret Thatcher came into power in 1979, the Conservative parties view on the EU saw a big shift from supporting the EU to becoming skeptical, thus campaigning against increasing its powers. Thatcher was seen as the \"spiritual mother\" of Euroscepticism and was one of the most important Eurosceptic voices in the United Kingdom, ultimately changing the Conservative parties view on the EU throughout the 1980s. In 2009 the Conservative Party actively campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty, which it believes would give away too much sovereignty to Brussels. Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague stated that, should the treaty be in force by the time of an incoming Conservative government, he would \"not let matters rest there\". Following the election of Boris Johnson as leader in 2019, the Conservative Party became a strong supporter of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union and its platform was changed to unanimously support EU withdrawal. In the 2019 general election the Conservative Party adopted a clear pro-Brexit platform in its manifesto.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 172,
"text": "Although often associated with being a cause on the right in the twenty-first century with the contemporary Labour Party supporting EU membership, there have been notable Eurosceptic politicians on the left of British politics, such as former Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn who held a longstanding opposition to British membership of the EU throughout his career. Other Labour MPs who have supported eurosceptic sentiments and British withdrawal have included Kate Hoey, Frank Field, Graham Stringer, Ian Austin, Tom Harris, Gisela Stuart and Austin Mitchell. Other figures on the left have included George Galloway and socialist politician and trade unionist Arthur Scargill who both endorsed Britain's exit from the European Union.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 173,
"text": "On 23 January 2020, the Parliament of the United Kingdom ratified a withdrawal agreement from the European Union, which was ratified by the EU Parliament on 30 January. On 31 January, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union after 47 years. During a transition period until 31 December 2020, the UK still followed EU rules and continued free trade and free movement for people within the European Union.",
"title": "In other European countries"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 174,
"text": "Ben Chu, writing for The Independent, argued against the left-wing notion that the EU is a neoliberal organization, pointing to \"high levels of social protection, state-owned rail companies, nationalised utilities and banks, various price controls and industrial interventions\".",
"title": "Counter-criticism"
}
]
| Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies, and seek reform, to those who oppose EU membership and see the EU as unreformable. The opposite of Euroscepticism is known as pro-Europeanism, or European Unionism. The main drivers of Euroscepticism have been beliefs that integration undermines national sovereignty and the nation state, that the EU is elitist and lacks democratic legitimacy and transparency, that it is too bureaucratic and wasteful, that it encourages high levels of immigration, or perceptions that it is a neoliberal organisation serving the big business elite at the expense of the working class, that it is responsible for austerity, and drives privatization. Euroscepticism is found in groups across the political spectrum, both left-wing and right-wing, and is often found in populist parties. Although they criticise the EU for many of the same reasons, Eurosceptic left-wing populists focus more on economic issues, such as the European debt crisis and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, while Eurosceptic right-wing populists focus more on nationalism and immigration, such as the European migrant crisis. The rise in radical-right parties since the 2000s is strongly linked to a rise in Euroscepticism. Eurobarometer surveys of EU citizens show that trust in the EU and its institutions declined strongly from 2007 to 2015. In that period, it was consistently below 50%. A 2009 survey showed that support for EU membership was lowest in the United Kingdom (UK), Latvia, and Hungary. By 2016, the countries viewing the EU most unfavourably were the UK, Greece, France, and Spain. The 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum resulted in a 51.9% vote in favour of leaving the EU (Brexit), a decision that came into effect on 31 January 2020. Since 2015, trust in the EU has risen in most EU countries as a result of falling unemployment rates and the end of the migrant crisis. A post-2019 election Eurobarometer survey showed that 68% of citizens support the EU, the highest level since 1983; however, sentiment that things are not going in the right direction in the EU had increased to 50%. Trust in the EU had increased significantly at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with levels varying across member states. | 2001-11-08T20:48:48Z | 2023-12-06T17:15:21Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroscepticism |
10,043 | Estimator | In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule (the estimator), the quantity of interest (the estimand) and its result (the estimate) are distinguished. For example, the sample mean is a commonly used estimator of the population mean.
There are point and interval estimators. The point estimators yield single-valued results. This is in contrast to an interval estimator, where the result would be a range of plausible values. "Single value" does not necessarily mean "single number", but includes vector valued or function valued estimators.
Estimation theory is concerned with the properties of estimators; that is, with defining properties that can be used to compare different estimators (different rules for creating estimates) for the same quantity, based on the same data. Such properties can be used to determine the best rules to use under given circumstances. However, in robust statistics, statistical theory goes on to consider the balance between having good properties, if tightly defined assumptions hold, and having less good properties that hold under wider conditions.
An "estimator" or "point estimate" is a statistic (that is, a function of the data) that is used to infer the value of an unknown parameter in a statistical model. A common way of phrasing it is "the estimator is the method selected to obtain an estimate of an unknown parameter". The parameter being estimated is sometimes called the estimand. It can be either finite-dimensional (in parametric and semi-parametric models), or infinite-dimensional (semi-parametric and non-parametric models). If the parameter is denoted θ {\displaystyle \theta } then the estimator is traditionally written by adding a circumflex over the symbol: θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} . Being a function of the data, the estimator is itself a random variable; a particular realization of this random variable is called the "estimate". Sometimes the words "estimator" and "estimate" are used interchangeably.
The definition places virtually no restrictions on which functions of the data can be called the "estimators". The attractiveness of different estimators can be judged by looking at their properties, such as unbiasedness, mean square error, consistency, asymptotic distribution, etc. The construction and comparison of estimators are the subjects of the estimation theory. In the context of decision theory, an estimator is a type of decision rule, and its performance may be evaluated through the use of loss functions.
When the word "estimator" is used without a qualifier, it usually refers to point estimation. The estimate in this case is a single point in the parameter space. There also exists another type of estimator: interval estimators, where the estimates are subsets of the parameter space.
The problem of density estimation arises in two applications. Firstly, in estimating the probability density functions of random variables and secondly in estimating the spectral density function of a time series. In these problems the estimates are functions that can be thought of as point estimates in an infinite dimensional space, and there are corresponding interval estimation problems.
Suppose a fixed parameter θ {\displaystyle \theta } needs to be estimated. Then an "estimator" is a function that maps the sample space to a set of sample estimates. An estimator of θ {\displaystyle \theta } is usually denoted by the symbol θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} . It is often convenient to express the theory using the algebra of random variables: thus if X is used to denote a random variable corresponding to the observed data, the estimator (itself treated as a random variable) is symbolised as a function of that random variable, θ ^ ( X ) {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}(X)} . The estimate for a particular observed data value x {\displaystyle x} (i.e. for X = x {\displaystyle X=x} ) is then θ ^ ( x ) {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}(x)} , which is a fixed value. Often an abbreviated notation is used in which θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is interpreted directly as a random variable, but this can cause confusion.
The following definitions and attributes are relevant.
For a given sample x {\displaystyle x} , the "error" of the estimator θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is defined as
where θ {\displaystyle \theta } is the parameter being estimated. The error, e, depends not only on the estimator (the estimation formula or procedure), but also on the sample.
The mean squared error of θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is defined as the expected value (probability-weighted average, over all samples) of the squared errors; that is,
It is used to indicate how far, on average, the collection of estimates are from the single parameter being estimated. Consider the following analogy. Suppose the parameter is the bull's-eye of a target, the estimator is the process of shooting arrows at the target, and the individual arrows are estimates (samples). Then high MSE means the average distance of the arrows from the bull's eye is high, and low MSE means the average distance from the bull's eye is low. The arrows may or may not be clustered. For example, even if all arrows hit the same point, yet grossly miss the target, the MSE is still relatively large. However, if the MSE is relatively low then the arrows are likely more highly clustered (than highly dispersed) around the target.
For a given sample x {\displaystyle x} , the sampling deviation of the estimator θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is defined as
where E ( θ ^ ( X ) ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }}(X))} is the expected value of the estimator. The sampling deviation, d, depends not only on the estimator, but also on the sample.
The variance of θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is the expected value of the squared sampling deviations; that is, Var ( θ ^ ) = E [ ( θ ^ − E [ θ ^ ] ) 2 ] {\displaystyle \operatorname {Var} ({\widehat {\theta }})=\operatorname {E} [({\widehat {\theta }}-\operatorname {E} [{\widehat {\theta }}])^{2}]} . It is used to indicate how far, on average, the collection of estimates are from the expected value of the estimates. (Note the difference between MSE and variance.) If the parameter is the bull's-eye of a target, and the arrows are estimates, then a relatively high variance means the arrows are dispersed, and a relatively low variance means the arrows are clustered. Even if the variance is low, the cluster of arrows may still be far off-target, and even if the variance is high, the diffuse collection of arrows may still be unbiased. Finally, even if all arrows grossly miss the target, if they nevertheless all hit the same point, the variance is zero.
The bias of θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is defined as B ( θ ^ ) = E ( θ ^ ) − θ {\displaystyle B({\widehat {\theta }})=\operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }})-\theta } . It is the distance between the average of the collection of estimates, and the single parameter being estimated. The bias of θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is a function of the true value of θ {\displaystyle \theta } so saying that the bias of θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is b {\displaystyle b} means that for every θ {\displaystyle \theta } the bias of θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is b {\displaystyle b} .
There are two kinds of estimators: biased estimators and unbiased estimators. Whether an estimator is biased or not can be identified by the relationship between E ( θ ^ ) − θ {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }})-\theta } and 0:
The bias is also the expected value of the error, since E ( θ ^ ) − θ = E ( θ ^ − θ ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }})-\theta =\operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }}-\theta )} . If the parameter is the bull's eye of a target and the arrows are estimates, then a relatively high absolute value for the bias means the average position of the arrows is off-target, and a relatively low absolute bias means the average position of the arrows is on target. They may be dispersed, or may be clustered. The relationship between bias and variance is analogous to the relationship between accuracy and precision.
The estimator θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is an unbiased estimator of θ {\displaystyle \theta } if and only if B ( θ ^ ) = 0 {\displaystyle B({\widehat {\theta }})=0} . Bias is a property of the estimator, not of the estimate. Often, people refer to a "biased estimate" or an "unbiased estimate", but they really are talking about an "estimate from a biased estimator", or an "estimate from an unbiased estimator". Also, people often confuse the "error" of a single estimate with the "bias" of an estimator. That the error for one estimate is large, does not mean the estimator is biased. In fact, even if all estimates have astronomical absolute values for their errors, if the expected value of the error is zero, the estimator is unbiased. Also, an estimator's being biased does not preclude the error of an estimate from being zero in a particular instance. The ideal situation is to have an unbiased estimator with low variance, and also try to limit the number of samples where the error is extreme (that is, have few outliers). Yet unbiasedness is not essential. Often, if just a little bias is permitted, then an estimator can be found with lower mean squared error and/or fewer outlier sample estimates.
An alternative to the version of "unbiased" above, is "median-unbiased", where the median of the distribution of estimates agrees with the true value; thus, in the long run half the estimates will be too low and half too high. While this applies immediately only to scalar-valued estimators, it can be extended to any measure of central tendency of a distribution: see median-unbiased estimators.
In a practical problem, θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} can always have functional relationship with θ {\displaystyle \theta } . For example, A genetic theory states there is a type of leave, starchy green, occur with probability p 1 = 1 / 4 ⋅ ( θ + 2 ) {\displaystyle p_{1}=1/4\cdot (\theta +2)} , with 0 < θ < 1 {\displaystyle 0<\theta <1} . For n {\displaystyle n} leaves, the random variable N 1 {\displaystyle N_{1}} , the number of starchy green leaves, can be modeled with a B i n ( n , p 1 ) {\displaystyle Bin(n,p_{1})} distribution. The number can be used to express the following estimator for θ {\displaystyle \theta } : θ ^ = 4 / n ⋅ N 1 − 2 {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}=4/n\cdot N_{1}-2} . One can show that θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} is an unbiased estimator for θ {\displaystyle \theta } : E [ θ ^ ] = E [ 4 / n ⋅ N 1 − 2 ] {\displaystyle E[{\widehat {\theta }}]=E[4/n\cdot N_{1}-2]} = 4 / n ⋅ E [ N 1 ] − 2 {\displaystyle =4/n\cdot E[N_{1}]-2} = 4 / n ⋅ n p 1 − 2 {\displaystyle =4/n\cdot np_{1}-2} = 4 ⋅ p 1 − 2 {\displaystyle =4\cdot p_{1}-2} = 4 ⋅ 1 / 4 ⋅ ( θ + 2 ) − 2 {\displaystyle =4\cdot 1/4\cdot (\theta +2)-2} = θ + 2 − 2 {\displaystyle =\theta +2-2} = θ {\displaystyle =\theta } .
A desired property for estimators is the unbiased trait where an estimator is shown to have no systematic tendency to produce estimates larger or smaller than the provided probability. Additionally, unbiased estimators with smaller variances are preferred over larger variances because it will be closer to the "true" value of the parameter. The unbiased estimator with the smallest variance is known as the Minimum-variance unbiased estimator(MVUE).
To find if your estimator is unbiased it is easy to follow along the equation E ( θ ^ ) − θ = 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }})-\theta =0} , θ ^ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\theta }}} . With estimator T with and parameter of interest θ {\displaystyle \theta } solving the previous equation so it is shown as E [ T ] = θ {\displaystyle E[T]=\theta } the estimator is unbiased. Looking at the figure to the right despite θ 2 {\displaystyle \theta _{2}} being the only unbiased estimator. If the distributions overlapped and were both centered around θ {\displaystyle \theta } then distribution θ 1 {\displaystyle \theta _{1}} would actually be the preferred unbiased estimator.
Expectation When looking at quantities in the interest of expectation for the model distribution there is an unbiased estimator which should satisfy the two equations below.
Variance Similarly, when looking at quantities in the interest of variance as the model distribution there is also an unbiased estimator that should satisfy the two equations below.
Note we are dividing by n - 1 because if we divided with n we would obtain an estimator with a negative bias which would thus produce estimates that are too small for σ 2 {\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}} . It should also be mentioned that even though S n 2 {\displaystyle S_{n}^{2}} is unbiased for σ 2 {\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}} the reverse is not true.
The sampling distribution can be shown by the estimator S = h ( X 1 , X 2 , . . . , X n ) {\displaystyle S=h(X_{1},X_{2},...,X_{n})} . represented by the random sample : X 1 , X 2 , . . . , X n {\displaystyle X_{1},X_{2},...,X_{n}} . The sampling distribution is equivalent to the probability distribution of the estimator S which can also be represented by the equation:
where Y is the number of X i {\displaystyle X_{i}} equal to zero and n is the number of trials. To understand why the expectation value is dependent on the probability ( p 0 {\displaystyle p_{0}} ) we need to understand the distribution. For example, in the sampling distribution for each i in the random dataset X it can be considered a success when X = 0. This makes Y is equal to the success of X = 0 in n trials. With the concept of Y either being a success or not it can be thought of as a binomial distribution with constant probability p 0 {\displaystyle p_{0}} . Therefore, the sampling distribution S can be seen as the distribution B i n ( n , p 0 ) {\displaystyle Bin(n,p_{0})} making S a discrete random variable. As a result, the expectation for the sampling distribution can be thought of as
proving that the property holds regardless of what the value of p 0 {\displaystyle p_{0}} is. This shows that despite p 0 {\displaystyle p_{0}} values fluctuating between samples estimators can be on target regardless of the differences.
A consistent sequence of estimators is a sequence of estimators that converge in probability to the quantity being estimated as the index (usually the sample size) grows without bound. In other words, increasing the sample size increases the probability of the estimator being close to the population parameter.
Mathematically, a sequence of estimators {tn; n ≥ 0} is a consistent estimator for parameter θ if and only if, for all ε > 0, no matter how small, we have
The consistency defined above may be called weak consistency. The sequence is strongly consistent, if it converges almost surely to the true value.
An estimator that converges to a multiple of a parameter can be made into a consistent estimator by multiplying the estimator by a scale factor, namely the true value divided by the asymptotic value of the estimator. This occurs frequently in estimation of scale parameters by measures of statistical dispersion.
An estimator can be considered Fisher Consistent as long as the estimator is the same functional of the empirical distribution function as the true distribution function. Following the formula:
Where T n {\displaystyle T_{n}} and T θ {\displaystyle T_{\theta }} is the empirical distribution function and theoretical distribution functions respectively. An easy example to see if something is fisher consistent is to check the mean consistency and the variance. For example, to check consistency for the mean μ ^ = X ¯ {\displaystyle {\widehat {\mu }}={\bar {X}}} and to check for variance confirm that σ ^ 2 = S S D / n {\displaystyle {\widehat {\sigma }}^{2}=SSD/n} .
An asymptotically normal estimator is a consistent estimator whose distribution around the true parameter θ approaches a normal distribution with standard deviation shrinking in proportion to 1 / n {\displaystyle 1/{\sqrt {n}}} as the sample size n grows. Using → D {\displaystyle {\xrightarrow {D}}} to denote convergence in distribution, tn is asymptotically normal if
for some V.
In this formulation V/n can be called the asymptotic variance of the estimator. However, some authors also call V the asymptotic variance. Note that convergence will not necessarily have occurred for any finite "n", therefore this value is only an approximation to the true variance of the estimator, while in the limit the asymptotic variance (V/n) is simply zero. To be more specific, the distribution of the estimator tn converges weakly to a dirac delta function centered at θ {\displaystyle \theta } .
The central limit theorem implies asymptotic normality of the sample mean X ¯ {\displaystyle {\bar {X}}} as an estimator of the true mean. More generally, maximum likelihood estimators are asymptotically normal under fairly weak regularity conditions — see the asymptotics section of the maximum likelihood article. However, not all estimators are asymptotically normal; the simplest examples are found when the true value of a parameter lies on the boundary of the allowable parameter region.
The efficiency of an estimator is used to estimate the quantity of interest in a "minimum error" manner. In reality, there is not an explicit best estimator; there can only be a better estimator. The good or not of the efficiency of an estimator is based on the choice of a particular loss function, and it is reflected by two naturally desirable properties of estimators: to be unbiased E ( θ ^ ) − θ = 0 {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }})-\theta =0} and have minimal mean squared error (MSE) E [ ( θ ^ − θ ) 2 ] {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} [({\widehat {\theta }}-\theta )^{2}]} . These cannot in general both be satisfied simultaneously: an unbiased estimator may have a lower mean squared error than any biased estimator (see estimator bias). A function relates the mean squared error with the estimator bias.
E [ ( θ ^ − θ ) 2 ] = ( E ( θ ^ ) − θ ) 2 + Var ( θ ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {E} [({\widehat {\theta }}-\theta )^{2}]=(\operatorname {E} ({\widehat {\theta }})-\theta )^{2}+\operatorname {Var} (\theta )\ }
The first term represents the mean squared error; the second term represents the square of the estimator bias; and the third term represents the variance of the sample. The quality of the estimator can be identified from the comparison between the variance, the square of the estimator bias, or the MSE. The variance of the good estimator (good efficiency) would be smaller than the variance of the bad estimator (bad efficiency). The square of a estimator bias with a good estimator would be smaller than the estimator bias with a bad estimator. The MSE of a good estimator would be smaller than the MSE of the bad estimator. Suppose there are two estimator, θ 1 {\displaystyle \theta _{1}} is the good estimator and θ 2 {\displaystyle \theta _{2}} is the bad estimator. The above relationship can be expressed by the following formulas.
Var ( θ 1 ) < Var ( θ 2 ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {Var} (\theta _{1})<\operatorname {Var} (\theta _{2})}
| E ( θ 1 ) − θ | < | E ( θ 2 ) − θ | {\displaystyle |\operatorname {E} ({\theta }_{1})-\theta |<|\operatorname {E} ({\theta _{2}})-\theta |}
MSE ( θ 1 ) < MSE ( θ 2 ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {MSE} (\theta _{1})<\operatorname {MSE} (\theta _{2})}
Besides using formula to identify the efficiency of the estimator, it can also be identified through the graph. If an estimator is efficient, in the frequency vs. value graph, there will be a curve with high frequency at the center and low frequency on the two sides. For example:
If an estimator is not efficient, the frequency vs. value graph, there will be a relatively more gentle curve.
To put it simply, the good estimator has a narrow curve, while the bad estimator has a large curve. Plotting these two curves on one graph with a shared y-axis, the difference becomes more obvious.
Among unbiased estimators, there often exists one with the lowest variance, called the minimum variance unbiased estimator (MVUE). In some cases an unbiased efficient estimator exists, which, in addition to having the lowest variance among unbiased estimators, satisfies the Cramér–Rao bound, which is an absolute lower bound on variance for statistics of a variable.
Concerning such "best unbiased estimators", see also Cramér–Rao bound, Gauss–Markov theorem, Lehmann–Scheffé theorem, Rao–Blackwell theorem. | [
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{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "An \"estimator\" or \"point estimate\" is a statistic (that is, a function of the data) that is used to infer the value of an unknown parameter in a statistical model. A common way of phrasing it is \"the estimator is the method selected to obtain an estimate of an unknown parameter\". The parameter being estimated is sometimes called the estimand. It can be either finite-dimensional (in parametric and semi-parametric models), or infinite-dimensional (semi-parametric and non-parametric models). If the parameter is denoted θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } then the estimator is traditionally written by adding a circumflex over the symbol: θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} . Being a function of the data, the estimator is itself a random variable; a particular realization of this random variable is called the \"estimate\". Sometimes the words \"estimator\" and \"estimate\" are used interchangeably.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The definition places virtually no restrictions on which functions of the data can be called the \"estimators\". The attractiveness of different estimators can be judged by looking at their properties, such as unbiasedness, mean square error, consistency, asymptotic distribution, etc. The construction and comparison of estimators are the subjects of the estimation theory. In the context of decision theory, an estimator is a type of decision rule, and its performance may be evaluated through the use of loss functions.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "When the word \"estimator\" is used without a qualifier, it usually refers to point estimation. The estimate in this case is a single point in the parameter space. There also exists another type of estimator: interval estimators, where the estimates are subsets of the parameter space.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The problem of density estimation arises in two applications. Firstly, in estimating the probability density functions of random variables and secondly in estimating the spectral density function of a time series. In these problems the estimates are functions that can be thought of as point estimates in an infinite dimensional space, and there are corresponding interval estimation problems.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Suppose a fixed parameter θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } needs to be estimated. Then an \"estimator\" is a function that maps the sample space to a set of sample estimates. An estimator of θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } is usually denoted by the symbol θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} . It is often convenient to express the theory using the algebra of random variables: thus if X is used to denote a random variable corresponding to the observed data, the estimator (itself treated as a random variable) is symbolised as a function of that random variable, θ ^ ( X ) {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}(X)} . The estimate for a particular observed data value x {\\displaystyle x} (i.e. for X = x {\\displaystyle X=x} ) is then θ ^ ( x ) {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}(x)} , which is a fixed value. Often an abbreviated notation is used in which θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is interpreted directly as a random variable, but this can cause confusion.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The following definitions and attributes are relevant.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "For a given sample x {\\displaystyle x} , the \"error\" of the estimator θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is defined as",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "where θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } is the parameter being estimated. The error, e, depends not only on the estimator (the estimation formula or procedure), but also on the sample.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The mean squared error of θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is defined as the expected value (probability-weighted average, over all samples) of the squared errors; that is,",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It is used to indicate how far, on average, the collection of estimates are from the single parameter being estimated. Consider the following analogy. Suppose the parameter is the bull's-eye of a target, the estimator is the process of shooting arrows at the target, and the individual arrows are estimates (samples). Then high MSE means the average distance of the arrows from the bull's eye is high, and low MSE means the average distance from the bull's eye is low. The arrows may or may not be clustered. For example, even if all arrows hit the same point, yet grossly miss the target, the MSE is still relatively large. However, if the MSE is relatively low then the arrows are likely more highly clustered (than highly dispersed) around the target.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "For a given sample x {\\displaystyle x} , the sampling deviation of the estimator θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is defined as",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "where E ( θ ^ ( X ) ) {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }}(X))} is the expected value of the estimator. The sampling deviation, d, depends not only on the estimator, but also on the sample.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The variance of θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is the expected value of the squared sampling deviations; that is, Var ( θ ^ ) = E [ ( θ ^ − E [ θ ^ ] ) 2 ] {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Var} ({\\widehat {\\theta }})=\\operatorname {E} [({\\widehat {\\theta }}-\\operatorname {E} [{\\widehat {\\theta }}])^{2}]} . It is used to indicate how far, on average, the collection of estimates are from the expected value of the estimates. (Note the difference between MSE and variance.) If the parameter is the bull's-eye of a target, and the arrows are estimates, then a relatively high variance means the arrows are dispersed, and a relatively low variance means the arrows are clustered. Even if the variance is low, the cluster of arrows may still be far off-target, and even if the variance is high, the diffuse collection of arrows may still be unbiased. Finally, even if all arrows grossly miss the target, if they nevertheless all hit the same point, the variance is zero.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The bias of θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is defined as B ( θ ^ ) = E ( θ ^ ) − θ {\\displaystyle B({\\widehat {\\theta }})=\\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }})-\\theta } . It is the distance between the average of the collection of estimates, and the single parameter being estimated. The bias of θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is a function of the true value of θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } so saying that the bias of θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is b {\\displaystyle b} means that for every θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } the bias of θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is b {\\displaystyle b} .",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There are two kinds of estimators: biased estimators and unbiased estimators. Whether an estimator is biased or not can be identified by the relationship between E ( θ ^ ) − θ {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }})-\\theta } and 0:",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The bias is also the expected value of the error, since E ( θ ^ ) − θ = E ( θ ^ − θ ) {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }})-\\theta =\\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }}-\\theta )} . If the parameter is the bull's eye of a target and the arrows are estimates, then a relatively high absolute value for the bias means the average position of the arrows is off-target, and a relatively low absolute bias means the average position of the arrows is on target. They may be dispersed, or may be clustered. The relationship between bias and variance is analogous to the relationship between accuracy and precision.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The estimator θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is an unbiased estimator of θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } if and only if B ( θ ^ ) = 0 {\\displaystyle B({\\widehat {\\theta }})=0} . Bias is a property of the estimator, not of the estimate. Often, people refer to a \"biased estimate\" or an \"unbiased estimate\", but they really are talking about an \"estimate from a biased estimator\", or an \"estimate from an unbiased estimator\". Also, people often confuse the \"error\" of a single estimate with the \"bias\" of an estimator. That the error for one estimate is large, does not mean the estimator is biased. In fact, even if all estimates have astronomical absolute values for their errors, if the expected value of the error is zero, the estimator is unbiased. Also, an estimator's being biased does not preclude the error of an estimate from being zero in a particular instance. The ideal situation is to have an unbiased estimator with low variance, and also try to limit the number of samples where the error is extreme (that is, have few outliers). Yet unbiasedness is not essential. Often, if just a little bias is permitted, then an estimator can be found with lower mean squared error and/or fewer outlier sample estimates.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "An alternative to the version of \"unbiased\" above, is \"median-unbiased\", where the median of the distribution of estimates agrees with the true value; thus, in the long run half the estimates will be too low and half too high. While this applies immediately only to scalar-valued estimators, it can be extended to any measure of central tendency of a distribution: see median-unbiased estimators.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In a practical problem, θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} can always have functional relationship with θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } . For example, A genetic theory states there is a type of leave, starchy green, occur with probability p 1 = 1 / 4 ⋅ ( θ + 2 ) {\\displaystyle p_{1}=1/4\\cdot (\\theta +2)} , with 0 < θ < 1 {\\displaystyle 0<\\theta <1} . For n {\\displaystyle n} leaves, the random variable N 1 {\\displaystyle N_{1}} , the number of starchy green leaves, can be modeled with a B i n ( n , p 1 ) {\\displaystyle Bin(n,p_{1})} distribution. The number can be used to express the following estimator for θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } : θ ^ = 4 / n ⋅ N 1 − 2 {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}=4/n\\cdot N_{1}-2} . One can show that θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} is an unbiased estimator for θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } : E [ θ ^ ] = E [ 4 / n ⋅ N 1 − 2 ] {\\displaystyle E[{\\widehat {\\theta }}]=E[4/n\\cdot N_{1}-2]} = 4 / n ⋅ E [ N 1 ] − 2 {\\displaystyle =4/n\\cdot E[N_{1}]-2} = 4 / n ⋅ n p 1 − 2 {\\displaystyle =4/n\\cdot np_{1}-2} = 4 ⋅ p 1 − 2 {\\displaystyle =4\\cdot p_{1}-2} = 4 ⋅ 1 / 4 ⋅ ( θ + 2 ) − 2 {\\displaystyle =4\\cdot 1/4\\cdot (\\theta +2)-2} = θ + 2 − 2 {\\displaystyle =\\theta +2-2} = θ {\\displaystyle =\\theta } .",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A desired property for estimators is the unbiased trait where an estimator is shown to have no systematic tendency to produce estimates larger or smaller than the provided probability. Additionally, unbiased estimators with smaller variances are preferred over larger variances because it will be closer to the \"true\" value of the parameter. The unbiased estimator with the smallest variance is known as the Minimum-variance unbiased estimator(MVUE).",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "To find if your estimator is unbiased it is easy to follow along the equation E ( θ ^ ) − θ = 0 {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }})-\\theta =0} , θ ^ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\theta }}} . With estimator T with and parameter of interest θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } solving the previous equation so it is shown as E [ T ] = θ {\\displaystyle E[T]=\\theta } the estimator is unbiased. Looking at the figure to the right despite θ 2 {\\displaystyle \\theta _{2}} being the only unbiased estimator. If the distributions overlapped and were both centered around θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } then distribution θ 1 {\\displaystyle \\theta _{1}} would actually be the preferred unbiased estimator.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Expectation When looking at quantities in the interest of expectation for the model distribution there is an unbiased estimator which should satisfy the two equations below.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Variance Similarly, when looking at quantities in the interest of variance as the model distribution there is also an unbiased estimator that should satisfy the two equations below.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Note we are dividing by n - 1 because if we divided with n we would obtain an estimator with a negative bias which would thus produce estimates that are too small for σ 2 {\\displaystyle \\sigma ^{2}} . It should also be mentioned that even though S n 2 {\\displaystyle S_{n}^{2}} is unbiased for σ 2 {\\displaystyle \\sigma ^{2}} the reverse is not true.",
"title": "Quantified properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The sampling distribution can be shown by the estimator S = h ( X 1 , X 2 , . . . , X n ) {\\displaystyle S=h(X_{1},X_{2},...,X_{n})} . represented by the random sample : X 1 , X 2 , . . . , X n {\\displaystyle X_{1},X_{2},...,X_{n}} . The sampling distribution is equivalent to the probability distribution of the estimator S which can also be represented by the equation:",
"title": "Sampling Distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "where Y is the number of X i {\\displaystyle X_{i}} equal to zero and n is the number of trials. To understand why the expectation value is dependent on the probability ( p 0 {\\displaystyle p_{0}} ) we need to understand the distribution. For example, in the sampling distribution for each i in the random dataset X it can be considered a success when X = 0. This makes Y is equal to the success of X = 0 in n trials. With the concept of Y either being a success or not it can be thought of as a binomial distribution with constant probability p 0 {\\displaystyle p_{0}} . Therefore, the sampling distribution S can be seen as the distribution B i n ( n , p 0 ) {\\displaystyle Bin(n,p_{0})} making S a discrete random variable. As a result, the expectation for the sampling distribution can be thought of as",
"title": "Sampling Distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "proving that the property holds regardless of what the value of p 0 {\\displaystyle p_{0}} is. This shows that despite p 0 {\\displaystyle p_{0}} values fluctuating between samples estimators can be on target regardless of the differences.",
"title": "Sampling Distribution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "A consistent sequence of estimators is a sequence of estimators that converge in probability to the quantity being estimated as the index (usually the sample size) grows without bound. In other words, increasing the sample size increases the probability of the estimator being close to the population parameter.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Mathematically, a sequence of estimators {tn; n ≥ 0} is a consistent estimator for parameter θ if and only if, for all ε > 0, no matter how small, we have",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The consistency defined above may be called weak consistency. The sequence is strongly consistent, if it converges almost surely to the true value.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "An estimator that converges to a multiple of a parameter can be made into a consistent estimator by multiplying the estimator by a scale factor, namely the true value divided by the asymptotic value of the estimator. This occurs frequently in estimation of scale parameters by measures of statistical dispersion.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "An estimator can be considered Fisher Consistent as long as the estimator is the same functional of the empirical distribution function as the true distribution function. Following the formula:",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Where T n {\\displaystyle T_{n}} and T θ {\\displaystyle T_{\\theta }} is the empirical distribution function and theoretical distribution functions respectively. An easy example to see if something is fisher consistent is to check the mean consistency and the variance. For example, to check consistency for the mean μ ^ = X ¯ {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\mu }}={\\bar {X}}} and to check for variance confirm that σ ^ 2 = S S D / n {\\displaystyle {\\widehat {\\sigma }}^{2}=SSD/n} .",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "An asymptotically normal estimator is a consistent estimator whose distribution around the true parameter θ approaches a normal distribution with standard deviation shrinking in proportion to 1 / n {\\displaystyle 1/{\\sqrt {n}}} as the sample size n grows. Using → D {\\displaystyle {\\xrightarrow {D}}} to denote convergence in distribution, tn is asymptotically normal if",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "for some V.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In this formulation V/n can be called the asymptotic variance of the estimator. However, some authors also call V the asymptotic variance. Note that convergence will not necessarily have occurred for any finite \"n\", therefore this value is only an approximation to the true variance of the estimator, while in the limit the asymptotic variance (V/n) is simply zero. To be more specific, the distribution of the estimator tn converges weakly to a dirac delta function centered at θ {\\displaystyle \\theta } .",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The central limit theorem implies asymptotic normality of the sample mean X ¯ {\\displaystyle {\\bar {X}}} as an estimator of the true mean. More generally, maximum likelihood estimators are asymptotically normal under fairly weak regularity conditions — see the asymptotics section of the maximum likelihood article. However, not all estimators are asymptotically normal; the simplest examples are found when the true value of a parameter lies on the boundary of the allowable parameter region.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The efficiency of an estimator is used to estimate the quantity of interest in a \"minimum error\" manner. In reality, there is not an explicit best estimator; there can only be a better estimator. The good or not of the efficiency of an estimator is based on the choice of a particular loss function, and it is reflected by two naturally desirable properties of estimators: to be unbiased E ( θ ^ ) − θ = 0 {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }})-\\theta =0} and have minimal mean squared error (MSE) E [ ( θ ^ − θ ) 2 ] {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {E} [({\\widehat {\\theta }}-\\theta )^{2}]} . These cannot in general both be satisfied simultaneously: an unbiased estimator may have a lower mean squared error than any biased estimator (see estimator bias). A function relates the mean squared error with the estimator bias.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "E [ ( θ ^ − θ ) 2 ] = ( E ( θ ^ ) − θ ) 2 + Var ( θ ) {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {E} [({\\widehat {\\theta }}-\\theta )^{2}]=(\\operatorname {E} ({\\widehat {\\theta }})-\\theta )^{2}+\\operatorname {Var} (\\theta )\\ }",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The first term represents the mean squared error; the second term represents the square of the estimator bias; and the third term represents the variance of the sample. The quality of the estimator can be identified from the comparison between the variance, the square of the estimator bias, or the MSE. The variance of the good estimator (good efficiency) would be smaller than the variance of the bad estimator (bad efficiency). The square of a estimator bias with a good estimator would be smaller than the estimator bias with a bad estimator. The MSE of a good estimator would be smaller than the MSE of the bad estimator. Suppose there are two estimator, θ 1 {\\displaystyle \\theta _{1}} is the good estimator and θ 2 {\\displaystyle \\theta _{2}} is the bad estimator. The above relationship can be expressed by the following formulas.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Var ( θ 1 ) < Var ( θ 2 ) {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {Var} (\\theta _{1})<\\operatorname {Var} (\\theta _{2})}",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "| E ( θ 1 ) − θ | < | E ( θ 2 ) − θ | {\\displaystyle |\\operatorname {E} ({\\theta }_{1})-\\theta |<|\\operatorname {E} ({\\theta _{2}})-\\theta |}",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "MSE ( θ 1 ) < MSE ( θ 2 ) {\\displaystyle \\operatorname {MSE} (\\theta _{1})<\\operatorname {MSE} (\\theta _{2})}",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Besides using formula to identify the efficiency of the estimator, it can also be identified through the graph. If an estimator is efficient, in the frequency vs. value graph, there will be a curve with high frequency at the center and low frequency on the two sides. For example:",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "If an estimator is not efficient, the frequency vs. value graph, there will be a relatively more gentle curve.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "To put it simply, the good estimator has a narrow curve, while the bad estimator has a large curve. Plotting these two curves on one graph with a shared y-axis, the difference becomes more obvious.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Among unbiased estimators, there often exists one with the lowest variance, called the minimum variance unbiased estimator (MVUE). In some cases an unbiased efficient estimator exists, which, in addition to having the lowest variance among unbiased estimators, satisfies the Cramér–Rao bound, which is an absolute lower bound on variance for statistics of a variable.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Concerning such \"best unbiased estimators\", see also Cramér–Rao bound, Gauss–Markov theorem, Lehmann–Scheffé theorem, Rao–Blackwell theorem.",
"title": "Behavioral properties"
}
]
| In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule, the quantity of interest and its result are distinguished. For example, the sample mean is a commonly used estimator of the population mean. There are point and interval estimators. The point estimators yield single-valued results. This is in contrast to an interval estimator, where the result would be a range of plausible values. "Single value" does not necessarily mean "single number", but includes vector valued or function valued estimators. Estimation theory is concerned with the properties of estimators; that is, with defining properties that can be used to compare different estimators for the same quantity, based on the same data. Such properties can be used to determine the best rules to use under given circumstances. However, in robust statistics, statistical theory goes on to consider the balance between having good properties, if tightly defined assumptions hold, and having less good properties that hold under wider conditions. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-27T11:01:01Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimator |
10,045 | Emerald | Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl (Be3Al2(SiO3)6) colored green by trace amounts of chromium or sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the Mohs scale. Most emeralds have lots of material trapped inside during the gem's formation, so their toughness (resistance to breakage) is classified as generally poor. Emerald is a cyclosilicate.
The word "emerald" is derived (via Old French: esmeraude and Middle English: emeraude), from Vulgar Latin: esmaralda/esmaraldus, a variant of Latin smaragdus, which was via Ancient Greek: σμάραγδος (smáragdos; "green gem") from a Semitic language. According to Webster's Dictionary the term emerald was first used in the 14th century.
Emeralds, like all colored gemstones, are graded using four basic parameters known as "the four Cs": color, clarity, cut and carat weight. Normally, in the grading of colored gemstones, color is by far the most important criterion. However, in the grading of emeralds, clarity is considered a close second. A fine emerald must possess not only a pure verdant green hue as described below, but also a high degree of transparency to be considered a top gemstone.
This member of the beryl family ranks among the traditional "big four" gems along with diamonds, rubies and sapphires.
In the 1960s, the American jewelry industry changed the definition of emerald to include the green vanadium-bearing beryl. As a result, vanadium emeralds purchased as emeralds in the United States are not recognized as such in the United Kingdom and Europe. In America, the distinction between traditional emeralds and the new vanadium kind is often reflected in the use of terms such as "Colombian emerald".
In gemology, color is divided into three components: hue, saturation, and tone. Emeralds occur in hues ranging from yellow-green to blue-green, with the primary hue necessarily being green. Yellow and blue are the normal secondary hues found in emeralds. Only gems that are medium to dark in tone are considered emeralds; light-toned gems are known instead by the species name green beryl. The finest emeralds are approximately 75% tone on a scale where 0% tone is colorless and 100% is opaque black. In addition, a fine emerald will be saturated and have a hue that is bright (vivid). Gray is the normal saturation modifier or mask found in emeralds; a grayish-green hue is a dull-green hue.
Emeralds tend to have numerous inclusions and surface-breaking fissures. Unlike diamonds, where the loupe standard (i.e., 10× magnification) is used to grade clarity, emeralds are graded by eye. Thus, if an emerald has no visible inclusions to the eye (assuming normal visual acuity) it is considered flawless. Stones that lack surface breaking fissures are extremely rare and therefore almost all emeralds are treated ("oiled", see below) to enhance the apparent clarity. The inclusions and fissures within an emerald are sometimes described as jardin (French for garden), because of their mossy appearance. Imperfections are unique for each emerald and can be used to identify a particular stone. Eye-clean stones of a vivid primary green hue (as described above), with no more than 15% of any secondary hue or combination (either blue or yellow) of a medium-dark tone, command the highest prices. The relative non-uniformity motivates the cutting of emeralds in cabochon form, rather than faceted shapes. Faceted emeralds are most commonly given an oval cut, or the signature emerald cut, a rectangular cut with facets around the top edge.
Most emeralds are oiled as part of the post-lapidary process, in order to fill in surface-reaching cracks so that clarity and stability are improved. Cedar oil, having a similar refractive index, is often used in this widely adopted practice. Other liquids, including synthetic oils and polymers with refractive indexes close to that of emeralds, such as Opticon, are also used. The least expensive emeralds are often treated with epoxy resins, which are effective for filling stones with many fractures. These treatments are typically applied in a vacuum chamber under mild heat, to open the pores of the stone and allow the fracture-filling agent to be absorbed more effectively. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission requires the disclosure of this treatment when an oil-treated emerald is sold. The use of oil is traditional and largely accepted by the gem trade, although oil-treated emeralds are worth much less than untreated emeralds of similar quality. Untreated emeralds must also be accompanied by a certificate from a licensed, independent gemology laboratory. Other treatments, for example the use of green-tinted oil, are not acceptable in the trade. Gems are graded on a four-step scale; none, minor, moderate and highly enhanced. These categories reflect levels of enhancement, not clarity. A gem graded none on the enhancement scale may still exhibit visible inclusions. Laboratories apply these criteria differently. Some gemologists consider the mere presence of oil or polymers to constitute enhancement. Others may ignore traces of oil if the presence of the material does not improve the look of the gemstone.
Emeralds in antiquity were mined in Ancient Egypt at locations on Mount Smaragdus since 1500 BC, and India and Austria since at least the 14th century AD. The Egyptian mines were exploited on an industrial scale by the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and later by Islamic conquerors. Mining in Egypt ceased with the discovery of the Colombian deposits. Today, only ruins remain in Egypt.
Colombia is by far the world's largest producer of emeralds, constituting 50–95% of the world production, with the number depending on the year, source and grade. Emerald production in Colombia has increased drastically in the last decade, increasing by 78% from 2000 to 2010. The three main emerald mining areas in Colombia are Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor. Rare "trapiche" emeralds are found in Colombia, distinguished by ray-like spokes of dark impurities.
Zambia is the world's second biggest producer, with its Kafubu River area deposits (Kagem Mines) about 45 km (28 mi) southwest of Kitwe responsible for 20% of the world's production of gem-quality stones in 2004. In the first half of 2011, the Kagem Mines produced 3.74 tons of emeralds.
Emeralds are found all over the world in countries such as Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In the US, emeralds have been found in Connecticut, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In 1998, emeralds were discovered in the Yukon Territory of Canada.
Since the onset of concerns regarding diamond origins, research has been conducted to determine if the mining location could be determined for an emerald already in circulation. Traditional research used qualitative guidelines such as an emerald's color, style and quality of cutting, type of fracture filling, and the anthropological origins of the artifacts bearing the mineral to determine the emerald's mine location. More recent studies using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy methods have uncovered trace chemical element differences between emeralds, including ones mined in close proximity to one another. American gemologist David Cronin and his colleagues have extensively examined the chemical signatures of emeralds resulting from fluid dynamics and subtle precipitation mechanisms, and their research demonstrated the chemical homogeneity of emeralds from the same mining location and the statistical differences that exist between emeralds from different mining locations, including those between the three locations: Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor, in Colombia, South America.
Both hydrothermal and flux-growth synthetics have been produced, and a method has been developed for producing an emerald overgrowth on colorless beryl. The first commercially successful emerald synthesis process was that of Carroll Chatham, likely involving a lithium vanadate flux process, as Chatham's emeralds do not have any water and contain traces of vanadate, molybdenum and vanadium. The other large producer of flux emeralds was Pierre Gilson Sr., whose products have been on the market since 1964. Gilson's emeralds are usually grown on natural colorless beryl seeds, which are coated on both sides. Growth occurs at the rate of 1 mm per month, a typical seven-month growth run produces emerald crystals 7 mm thick.
Hydrothermal synthetic emeralds have been attributed to IG Farben, Nacken, Tairus, and others, but the first satisfactory commercial product was that of Johann Lechleitner of Innsbruck, Austria, which appeared on the market in the 1960s. These stones were initially sold under the names "Emerita" and "Symeralds", and they were grown as a thin layer of emerald on top of natural colorless beryl stones. Later, from 1965 to 1970, the Linde Division of Union Carbide produced completely synthetic emeralds by hydrothermal synthesis. According to their patents (attributable to E.M. Flanigen), acidic conditions are essential to prevent the chromium (which is used as the colorant) from precipitating. Also, it is important that the silicon-containing nutrient be kept away from the other ingredients to prevent nucleation and confine growth to the seed crystals. Growth occurs by a diffusion-reaction process, assisted by convection. The largest producer of hydrothermal emeralds today is Tairus, which has succeeded in synthesizing emeralds with chemical composition similar to emeralds in alkaline deposits in Colombia, and whose products are thus known as “Colombian created emeralds” or “Tairus created emeralds”. Luminescence in ultraviolet light is considered a supplementary test when making a natural versus synthetic determination, as many, but not all, natural emeralds are inert to ultraviolet light. Many synthetics are also UV inert.
Synthetic emeralds are often referred to as "created", as their chemical and gemological composition is the same as their natural counterparts. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has very strict regulations as to what can and what cannot be called a "synthetic" stone. The FTC says: "§ 23.23(c) It is unfair or deceptive to use the word "laboratory-grown", "laboratory-created", "[manufacturer name]-created", or "synthetic" with the name of any natural stone to describe any industry product unless such industry product has essentially the same optical, physical, and chemical properties as the stone named."
Emerald is regarded as the traditional birthstone for May as well as the traditional gemstone for the astrological sign of Cancer (June/July)
Traditional alchemical lore ascribes several uses and characteristics to emeralds:
The virtue of the Emerald is to counteract poison. They say that if a venomous animal should look at it, it will become blinded. The gem also acts as a preservative against epilepsy; it cures leprosy, strengthens sight and memory, checks copulation, during which act it will break, if worn at the time on the finger.
According to French writer Brantôme (c. 1540-1614) Hernán Cortés had one of the emeralds which he had looted from Mexico text engraved, Inter Natos Mulierum non surrexit major ("Among those born of woman there hath not arisen a greater," Matthew 11:11), in reference to John the Baptist. Brantôme considered engraving such a beautiful and simple product of nature sacrilegious and considered this act the cause for Cortez's loss in 1541 of an extremely precious pearl (to which he dedicated a work, A beautiful and incomparable pearl), and even for the death of King Charles IX of France, who died (1574) soon afterward.
In American author L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the 1939 MGM film adaptation, the protagonist must travel to an Emerald City to meet the eponymous character, the Wizard.
The chief deity of one of India's most famous temples, the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, is the goddess Meenakshi, whose idol is traditionally thought to be made of emerald. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl (Be3Al2(SiO3)6) colored green by trace amounts of chromium or sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the Mohs scale. Most emeralds have lots of material trapped inside during the gem's formation, so their toughness (resistance to breakage) is classified as generally poor. Emerald is a cyclosilicate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The word \"emerald\" is derived (via Old French: esmeraude and Middle English: emeraude), from Vulgar Latin: esmaralda/esmaraldus, a variant of Latin smaragdus, which was via Ancient Greek: σμάραγδος (smáragdos; \"green gem\") from a Semitic language. According to Webster's Dictionary the term emerald was first used in the 14th century.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Emeralds, like all colored gemstones, are graded using four basic parameters known as \"the four Cs\": color, clarity, cut and carat weight. Normally, in the grading of colored gemstones, color is by far the most important criterion. However, in the grading of emeralds, clarity is considered a close second. A fine emerald must possess not only a pure verdant green hue as described below, but also a high degree of transparency to be considered a top gemstone.",
"title": "Properties determining value"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "This member of the beryl family ranks among the traditional \"big four\" gems along with diamonds, rubies and sapphires.",
"title": "Properties determining value"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In the 1960s, the American jewelry industry changed the definition of emerald to include the green vanadium-bearing beryl. As a result, vanadium emeralds purchased as emeralds in the United States are not recognized as such in the United Kingdom and Europe. In America, the distinction between traditional emeralds and the new vanadium kind is often reflected in the use of terms such as \"Colombian emerald\".",
"title": "Properties determining value"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In gemology, color is divided into three components: hue, saturation, and tone. Emeralds occur in hues ranging from yellow-green to blue-green, with the primary hue necessarily being green. Yellow and blue are the normal secondary hues found in emeralds. Only gems that are medium to dark in tone are considered emeralds; light-toned gems are known instead by the species name green beryl. The finest emeralds are approximately 75% tone on a scale where 0% tone is colorless and 100% is opaque black. In addition, a fine emerald will be saturated and have a hue that is bright (vivid). Gray is the normal saturation modifier or mask found in emeralds; a grayish-green hue is a dull-green hue.",
"title": "Properties determining value"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Emeralds tend to have numerous inclusions and surface-breaking fissures. Unlike diamonds, where the loupe standard (i.e., 10× magnification) is used to grade clarity, emeralds are graded by eye. Thus, if an emerald has no visible inclusions to the eye (assuming normal visual acuity) it is considered flawless. Stones that lack surface breaking fissures are extremely rare and therefore almost all emeralds are treated (\"oiled\", see below) to enhance the apparent clarity. The inclusions and fissures within an emerald are sometimes described as jardin (French for garden), because of their mossy appearance. Imperfections are unique for each emerald and can be used to identify a particular stone. Eye-clean stones of a vivid primary green hue (as described above), with no more than 15% of any secondary hue or combination (either blue or yellow) of a medium-dark tone, command the highest prices. The relative non-uniformity motivates the cutting of emeralds in cabochon form, rather than faceted shapes. Faceted emeralds are most commonly given an oval cut, or the signature emerald cut, a rectangular cut with facets around the top edge.",
"title": "Properties determining value"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Most emeralds are oiled as part of the post-lapidary process, in order to fill in surface-reaching cracks so that clarity and stability are improved. Cedar oil, having a similar refractive index, is often used in this widely adopted practice. Other liquids, including synthetic oils and polymers with refractive indexes close to that of emeralds, such as Opticon, are also used. The least expensive emeralds are often treated with epoxy resins, which are effective for filling stones with many fractures. These treatments are typically applied in a vacuum chamber under mild heat, to open the pores of the stone and allow the fracture-filling agent to be absorbed more effectively. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission requires the disclosure of this treatment when an oil-treated emerald is sold. The use of oil is traditional and largely accepted by the gem trade, although oil-treated emeralds are worth much less than untreated emeralds of similar quality. Untreated emeralds must also be accompanied by a certificate from a licensed, independent gemology laboratory. Other treatments, for example the use of green-tinted oil, are not acceptable in the trade. Gems are graded on a four-step scale; none, minor, moderate and highly enhanced. These categories reflect levels of enhancement, not clarity. A gem graded none on the enhancement scale may still exhibit visible inclusions. Laboratories apply these criteria differently. Some gemologists consider the mere presence of oil or polymers to constitute enhancement. Others may ignore traces of oil if the presence of the material does not improve the look of the gemstone.",
"title": "Properties determining value"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Emeralds in antiquity were mined in Ancient Egypt at locations on Mount Smaragdus since 1500 BC, and India and Austria since at least the 14th century AD. The Egyptian mines were exploited on an industrial scale by the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and later by Islamic conquerors. Mining in Egypt ceased with the discovery of the Colombian deposits. Today, only ruins remain in Egypt.",
"title": "Emerald mines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Colombia is by far the world's largest producer of emeralds, constituting 50–95% of the world production, with the number depending on the year, source and grade. Emerald production in Colombia has increased drastically in the last decade, increasing by 78% from 2000 to 2010. The three main emerald mining areas in Colombia are Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor. Rare \"trapiche\" emeralds are found in Colombia, distinguished by ray-like spokes of dark impurities.",
"title": "Emerald mines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Zambia is the world's second biggest producer, with its Kafubu River area deposits (Kagem Mines) about 45 km (28 mi) southwest of Kitwe responsible for 20% of the world's production of gem-quality stones in 2004. In the first half of 2011, the Kagem Mines produced 3.74 tons of emeralds.",
"title": "Emerald mines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Emeralds are found all over the world in countries such as Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In the US, emeralds have been found in Connecticut, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In 1998, emeralds were discovered in the Yukon Territory of Canada.",
"title": "Emerald mines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Since the onset of concerns regarding diamond origins, research has been conducted to determine if the mining location could be determined for an emerald already in circulation. Traditional research used qualitative guidelines such as an emerald's color, style and quality of cutting, type of fracture filling, and the anthropological origins of the artifacts bearing the mineral to determine the emerald's mine location. More recent studies using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy methods have uncovered trace chemical element differences between emeralds, including ones mined in close proximity to one another. American gemologist David Cronin and his colleagues have extensively examined the chemical signatures of emeralds resulting from fluid dynamics and subtle precipitation mechanisms, and their research demonstrated the chemical homogeneity of emeralds from the same mining location and the statistical differences that exist between emeralds from different mining locations, including those between the three locations: Muzo, Coscuez, and Chivor, in Colombia, South America.",
"title": "Emerald mines"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Both hydrothermal and flux-growth synthetics have been produced, and a method has been developed for producing an emerald overgrowth on colorless beryl. The first commercially successful emerald synthesis process was that of Carroll Chatham, likely involving a lithium vanadate flux process, as Chatham's emeralds do not have any water and contain traces of vanadate, molybdenum and vanadium. The other large producer of flux emeralds was Pierre Gilson Sr., whose products have been on the market since 1964. Gilson's emeralds are usually grown on natural colorless beryl seeds, which are coated on both sides. Growth occurs at the rate of 1 mm per month, a typical seven-month growth run produces emerald crystals 7 mm thick.",
"title": "Synthetic emerald"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hydrothermal synthetic emeralds have been attributed to IG Farben, Nacken, Tairus, and others, but the first satisfactory commercial product was that of Johann Lechleitner of Innsbruck, Austria, which appeared on the market in the 1960s. These stones were initially sold under the names \"Emerita\" and \"Symeralds\", and they were grown as a thin layer of emerald on top of natural colorless beryl stones. Later, from 1965 to 1970, the Linde Division of Union Carbide produced completely synthetic emeralds by hydrothermal synthesis. According to their patents (attributable to E.M. Flanigen), acidic conditions are essential to prevent the chromium (which is used as the colorant) from precipitating. Also, it is important that the silicon-containing nutrient be kept away from the other ingredients to prevent nucleation and confine growth to the seed crystals. Growth occurs by a diffusion-reaction process, assisted by convection. The largest producer of hydrothermal emeralds today is Tairus, which has succeeded in synthesizing emeralds with chemical composition similar to emeralds in alkaline deposits in Colombia, and whose products are thus known as “Colombian created emeralds” or “Tairus created emeralds”. Luminescence in ultraviolet light is considered a supplementary test when making a natural versus synthetic determination, as many, but not all, natural emeralds are inert to ultraviolet light. Many synthetics are also UV inert.",
"title": "Synthetic emerald"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Synthetic emeralds are often referred to as \"created\", as their chemical and gemological composition is the same as their natural counterparts. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has very strict regulations as to what can and what cannot be called a \"synthetic\" stone. The FTC says: \"§ 23.23(c) It is unfair or deceptive to use the word \"laboratory-grown\", \"laboratory-created\", \"[manufacturer name]-created\", or \"synthetic\" with the name of any natural stone to describe any industry product unless such industry product has essentially the same optical, physical, and chemical properties as the stone named.\"",
"title": "Synthetic emerald"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Emerald is regarded as the traditional birthstone for May as well as the traditional gemstone for the astrological sign of Cancer (June/July)",
"title": "In culture and lore"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Traditional alchemical lore ascribes several uses and characteristics to emeralds:",
"title": "In culture and lore"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The virtue of the Emerald is to counteract poison. They say that if a venomous animal should look at it, it will become blinded. The gem also acts as a preservative against epilepsy; it cures leprosy, strengthens sight and memory, checks copulation, during which act it will break, if worn at the time on the finger.",
"title": "In culture and lore"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "According to French writer Brantôme (c. 1540-1614) Hernán Cortés had one of the emeralds which he had looted from Mexico text engraved, Inter Natos Mulierum non surrexit major (\"Among those born of woman there hath not arisen a greater,\" Matthew 11:11), in reference to John the Baptist. Brantôme considered engraving such a beautiful and simple product of nature sacrilegious and considered this act the cause for Cortez's loss in 1541 of an extremely precious pearl (to which he dedicated a work, A beautiful and incomparable pearl), and even for the death of King Charles IX of France, who died (1574) soon afterward.",
"title": "In culture and lore"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In American author L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the 1939 MGM film adaptation, the protagonist must travel to an Emerald City to meet the eponymous character, the Wizard.",
"title": "In culture and lore"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The chief deity of one of India's most famous temples, the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, is the goddess Meenakshi, whose idol is traditionally thought to be made of emerald.",
"title": "In culture and lore"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Emerald is a gemstone and a variety of the mineral beryl (Be3Al2(SiO3)6) colored green by trace amounts of chromium or sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the Mohs scale. Most emeralds have lots of material trapped inside during the gem's formation, so their toughness (resistance to breakage) is classified as generally poor. Emerald is a cyclosilicate. | 2001-11-06T19:25:00Z | 2023-11-07T17:28:36Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald |
10,046 | Erie Canal | The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. In effect, the canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York State. It has been called "The Nation's First Superhighway."
A canal from the Hudson to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The New York State Legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal, and of its lead supporter New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, denigrated the project as "Clinton's Folly" and "Clinton's Big Ditch". Nonetheless, the canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the state's construction debt within the first year of operation. The westward connection gave New York City a strong advantage over all other U.S. ports and brought major growth to canal cities such as Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.
The construction of the Erie Canal was a landmark civil engineering achievement in the early history of the United States. When built, the 363-mile (584 km) canal was the second-longest in the world (after the Grand Canal in China). Initially 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, the canal was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918 when the "Barge Canal" was built and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern Barge Canal measures 351 miles (565 km) long, 120 feet (37 m) wide, and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep. It has 34 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States. When leaving the canal, boats must also traverse the Black Rock Lock to reach Lake Erie or the Troy Federal Lock to reach the tidal Hudson. The overall elevation difference is about 565 feet (172 m).
The Erie's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th century due to competition from trucking and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994.
Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It connects the three other canals in the New York State Canal System: the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga–Seneca. Some long-distance boaters take the Erie as part of the Great Loop. The canal has also become a tourist attraction in its own right—a number of parks and museums are dedicated to its history. The Erie Canalway Trail is a popular cycling path that follows the canal across the state. In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to protect and promote the system.
The waterway today referred to as the Erie Canal is quite different from the nineteenth-century Erie Canal. More than half of the original Erie Canal was destroyed or abandoned during construction of the New York State Barge Canal in the early 20th century. The sections of the original route remaining in use were widened significantly, mostly west of Syracuse, with bridges rebuilt and locks replaced. It was called the Barge Canal at the time, but that name fell into disuse with the disappearance of commercial traffic and the increase of recreational travel in the later 20th century.
Prior to the advent of railroads, water transport was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods. A mule can only carry about 250 pounds (110 kg), but can draw a barge weighing as much as 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg) along a towpath. In total, a canal could cut transport costs by about 95 percent.
In the early years of the United States, transportation of goods between the coastal ports and the interior was slow and difficult. Close to the seacoast, rivers provided easy inland transport up to the fall line, since floating vessels encounter much less friction than land vehicles. However, the Appalachian Mountains were a great obstacle to further transportation or settlement, stretching 1,500 miles (2,400 km) from Maine to Alabama, with just five places where mule trains or wagon roads could be routed. Passengers and freight bound for the western parts of the country had to travel overland, a journey made more difficult by the rough condition of the roads. In 1800, it typically took 2½ weeks to travel overland from New York to Cleveland, Ohio, (460 miles (740 km)) and 4 weeks to Detroit (612 miles (985 km)).
The principal exportable product of the Ohio Valley was grain, which was a high-volume, low-priced commodity, bolstered by supplies from the coast. Frequently it was not worth the cost of transporting it to far-away population centers. This was a factor leading to farmers in the west turning their grains into whiskey for easier transport and higher sales, and later the Whiskey Rebellion. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it became clear to coastal residents that the city or state that succeeded in developing a cheap, reliable route to the West would enjoy economic success, and the port at the seaward end of such a route would see business increase greatly. In time, projects were devised in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and relatively deep into the coastal states.
The Mohawk River (a tributary of the Hudson River) rises near Lake Ontario and runs in a glacial meltwater channel just north of the Catskill range of the Appalachian Mountains, separating them from the geologically distinct Adirondacks to the north. The Mohawk and Hudson valleys form the only cut across the Appalachians north of Alabama. A navigable canal through the Mohawk Valley would allow an almost complete water route from New York City in the south to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie in the west. Via the canal and these lakes, other Great Lakes, and to a lesser degree, related rivers, a large part of the continent's interior (and many settlements) would be made well connected to the Eastern seaboard.
The idea of a canal to tie the East Coast to the new western settlements was discussed as early as 1724: New York provincial official Cadwallader Colden made a passing reference (in a report on fur trading) to improving the natural waterways of western New York.
Gouverneur Morris and Elkanah Watson were early proponents of a canal along the Mohawk River. Their efforts led to the creation of the "Western and Northern Inland Lock Navigation Companies" in 1792, which took the first steps to improve navigation on the Mohawk and construct a canal between the Mohawk and Lake Ontario, but it was soon discovered that private financing was insufficient. Christopher Colles (who was familiar with the Bridgewater Canal) surveyed the Mohawk Valley, and made a presentation to the New York state legislature in 1784, proposing a shorter canal from Lake Ontario. The proposal drew attention and some action but was never implemented.
Jesse Hawley had envisioned encouraging the growing of large quantities of grain on the western New York plains (then largely unsettled) for sale on the Eastern seaboard. However, he went bankrupt trying to ship grain to the coast. While in Canandaigua debtors' prison, Hawley began pressing for the construction of a canal along the 90-mile (140 km)-long Mohawk River valley with support from Joseph Ellicott (agent for the Holland Land Company in Batavia). Ellicott realized that a canal would add value to the land he was selling in the western part of the state. He later became the first canal commissioner.
New York legislators became interested in the possibility of building a canal across New York in the first decade of the 19th century. Shipping goods west from Albany was a costly and tedious affair; there was no railroad yet, and to cover the distance from Buffalo to New York City by stagecoach took two weeks. The problem was that the land rises about 600 feet (180 m) from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Locks at the time could handle up to 12 feet (3.7 m) of lift, so even with the heftiest cuttings and viaducts, fifty locks would be required along the 360-mile (580 km) canal. Such a canal would be expensive to build even with modern technology; in 1800, the expense was barely imaginable. President Thomas Jefferson called it "little short of madness" and rejected it.
Eventually, Hawley interested New York Governor DeWitt Clinton in the project. There was much opposition, and the project was ridiculed as "Clinton's folly" and "Clinton's ditch". In 1817, though, Clinton received approval from the legislature for $7 million for construction.
The original canal was 363 miles (584 km) long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo on Lake Erie. The channel was cut 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, with removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a walkway known as a towpath. Its construction, through limestone and mountains, proved a daunting task. To move earth, animals pulled a "slip scraper" (similar to a bulldozer). The sides of the canal were lined with stone set in clay, and the bottom was also lined with clay. The Canal was built by Irish laborers and German stonemasons. All labor on the canal depended upon human and animal power or the force of water. Engineering techniques developed during its construction included the building of aqueducts to redirect water; one aqueduct was 950 feet (290 m) long to span 800 feet (240 m) of river. As the canal progressed, the crews and engineers working on the project developed expertise and became a skilled labor force.
The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices as surveyors and as engineers. There were no civil engineers in the United States. James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, who laid out the route, were judges whose experience in surveying was in settling boundary disputes. Geddes had only used a surveying instrument for a few hours before his work on the Canal. Canvass White was a 27-year-old amateur engineer who persuaded Clinton to let him go to Britain at his own expense to study the canal system there. Nathan Roberts was a mathematics teacher and land speculator. Yet these men "carried the Erie Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit Creek, spanned the Genesee River on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady—and all of those venturesome designs worked precisely as planned".
Construction began on July 4, 1817, at Rome, New York. The first 15 miles (24 km), from Rome to Utica, opened in 1819. At that rate, the canal would not be finished for 30 years. The main delays were caused by felling trees to clear a path through virgin forest and moving excavated soil, which took longer than expected, but the builders devised ways to solve these problems. To fell a tree, they threw rope over the top branches and winched it down. They pulled out the stumps with an innovative stump puller. Two huge wheels were mounted loose on the ends of an axle. A third wheel, slightly smaller than the others, was fixed to the center of the axle. A chain was wrapped around the axle and hooked to the stump. A rope was wrapped around the center wheel and hooked to a team of oxen. The mechanical advantage (torque) obtained ripped the stumps out of the soil. Soil to be moved was shoveled into large wheelbarrows that were dumped into mule-pulled carts. Using a scraper and a plow, a three-man team with oxen, horses and mules could build a mile in a year.
The remaining problem was finding labor; increased immigration helped fill the need. Many of the laborers working on the canal were Irish, who had recently come to the United States as a group of about 5,000. Most of them were Roman Catholic, a religion that raised much suspicion in early America because of its hierarchic structure, and many laborers on the canal suffered violent assault as the result of misjudgment and xenophobia.
Construction continued at an increased rate as new workers arrived. When the canal reached Montezuma Marsh (at the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse), it was rumored that over 1,000 workers died of "swamp fever" (malaria), and construction was temporarily stopped. However, recent research has revealed that the death toll was likely much lower, as no contemporary reports mention significant worker mortality, and mass graves from the period have never been found in the area. Work continued on the downhill side towards the Hudson, and the crews worked on the section across the swampland when it froze in winter.
The middle section from Utica to Salina (Syracuse) was completed in 1820, and traffic on that section started up immediately. Expansion to the east and west proceeded simultaneously, and the whole eastern section, 250 miles (400 km) from Brockport to Albany, opened on September 10, 1823, to great fanfare. The Champlain Canal, a separate but connected 64-mile (103 km) north–south route from Watervliet on the Hudson to Lake Champlain, opened on the same date.
After Montezuma Marsh, the next difficulties were crossing Irondequoit Creek and the Genesee River near Rochester. The former ultimately required building the 1,320-foot (400 m) long "Great Embankment", to carry the canal at a height of 76 feet (23 m) above the level of the creek, which ran through a 245-foot (75 m) culvert underneath. The canal crossed the river on a stone aqueduct, 802 feet (244 m) long and 17 feet (5.2 m) wide, supported by 11 arches.
In 1823 construction reached the Niagara Escarpment, an 80-foot (24 m)-high wall of hard dolomitic limestone. The route followed the channel of a creek that had cut a ravine steeply down the escarpment. The construction and operation of two sets of five locks along a 3-mile (4.8 km) corridor soon gave rise to the community of Lockport. The 12-foot (3.7 m) lift-locks had a total lift of 60 feet (18 m), exiting into a deeply cut channel. The final leg had to be cut 30 feet (9.1 m) deep through another limestone mass, the Onondaga ridge. Much of that section was blasted with black powder, and the inexperience of the crews often led to accidents, and sometimes to rocks falling on nearby homes.
Two villages competed to be the terminus: Black Rock, on the Niagara River, and Buffalo, at the eastern tip of Lake Erie. Buffalo expended great energy to widen and deepen Buffalo Creek to make it navigable and to create a harbor at its mouth. Buffalo won over Black Rock, and grew into a large city, eventually encompassing its former rival.
In 1824, before the canal was completed, a detailed Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveler, Along the Line of the Canals, and the Interior Commerce of the State of New York, was published for the benefit of travelers and land speculators.
The entire canal was officially completed on October 26, 1825. The event was marked by a statewide "Grand Celebration", culminating in a series of cannon shots along the length of the canal and the Hudson, a 90-minute cannonade from Buffalo to New York City. A flotilla of boats, led by Governor Dewitt Clinton aboard Seneca Chief, sailed from Buffalo to New York City over ten days. Clinton then ceremonially poured Lake Erie water into New York Harbor to mark the "Wedding of the Waters". On its return trip, Seneca Chief brought back a keg of Atlantic Ocean water, which was poured into Lake Erie by Buffalo's Judge Samuel Wilkeson, who would later become mayor.
The Erie Canal was thus completed in eight years at a total length of 353 miles (568 km) and cost $7.143 million (equivalent to $185 million in 2022). It was acclaimed as an engineering marvel that united the country and helped New York City develop as an international trade center.
Problems developed but were quickly solved. Leaks developed along the entire length of the canal, but these were sealed using cement that hardened underwater (hydraulic cement). Erosion on the clay bottom proved to be a problem and the speed was limited to 4 mph (6.4 km/h).
Additional feeder canals soon extended the Erie Canal into a system. These included the Cayuga-Seneca Canal south to the Finger Lakes, the Oswego Canal from Three Rivers north to Lake Ontario at Oswego, and the Champlain Canal from Troy north to Lake Champlain. From 1833 to 1877, the short Crooked Lake Canal connected Keuka Lake and Seneca Lake. The Chemung Canal connected the south end of Seneca Lake to Elmira in 1833, and was an important route for Pennsylvania coal and timber into the canal system. The Chenango Canal in 1836 connected the Erie Canal at Utica to Binghamton and caused a business boom in the Chenango River valley. The Chenango and Chemung canals linked the Erie with the Susquehanna River system. The Black River Canal connected the Black River to the Erie Canal at Rome and remained in operation until the 1920s. The Genesee Valley Canal was run along the Genesee River to connect with the Allegheny River at Olean, but the Allegheny section, which would have connected to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, was never built. The Genesee Valley Canal was later abandoned and became the route of the Genesee Valley Canal Railroad.
The original design planned for an annual tonnage of 1.5 million tons (1.36 million metric tons), but this was exceeded immediately. An ambitious program to improve the canal began in 1834. During this massive series of construction projects, known as the First Enlargement, the canal was widened from 40 to 70 feet (12 to 21 m) and deepened from 4 to 7 feet (1.2 to 2.1 m). Locks were widened and/or rebuilt in new locations, and many new navigable aqueducts were constructed. The canal was straightened and slightly re-routed in some stretches, resulting in the abandonment of short segments of the original 1825 canal. The First Enlargement was completed in 1862, with further minor enlargements in later decades.
The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad opened in 1837, providing a bypass to the slowest part of the canal between Albany and Schenectady. Other railroads were soon chartered and built to continue the line west to Buffalo, and in 1842 a continuous line (which later became the New York Central Railroad and its Auburn Road in 1853) was open the whole way to Buffalo. As the railroad served the same general route as the canal, but provided for faster travel, passengers soon switched to it. However, as late as 1852, the canal carried thirteen times more freight tonnage than all the railroads in New York State combined. The New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway was completed in 1884, as a route running closely parallel to both the canal and the New York Central Railroad. However, it went bankrupt and was acquired the next year by the New York Central. The canal continued to compete well with the railroads through 1902, when tolls were abolished.
In 1903 the New York State legislature authorized construction of the New York State Barge Canal as the "Improvement of the Erie, the Oswego, the Champlain, and the Cayuga and Seneca Canals". In 1905, construction of the Barge Canal began, which was completed in 1918, at a cost of $96.7 million.
This new canal replaced much of the original route, leaving many abandoned sections (most notably between Syracuse and Rome). New digging and flood control technologies allowed engineers to canalize rivers that the original canal had sought to avoid, such as the Mohawk, Seneca, and Clyde rivers, and Oneida Lake. In sections that did not consist of canalized rivers (particularly between Rochester and Buffalo), the original Erie Canal channel was enlarged to 120 feet (37 m) wide and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep. The expansion allowed barges up to 2,000 short tons (1,800 t) to use the Canal. This expensive project was politically unpopular in parts of the state not served by the canal, and failed to save it from becoming obsolete for commercial shipping.
Freight traffic reached a total of 5.2 million short tons (4.7 million metric tons) by 1951. The growth of railroads and highways across the state, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, caused commercial traffic on the canal to decline dramatically during the second half of the 20th century. Since the 1990s, the canal system has been used primarily by recreational traffic.
In 1992, the New York State Barge Canal was renamed the New York State Canal System (including the Erie, Cayuga-Seneca, Oswego, and Champlain canals) and placed under the newly created New York State Canal Corporation, a subsidiary of the New York State Thruway Authority. While part of the Thruway, the canal system was operated using money generated by Thruway tolls. In 2017, the New York State Canal Corporation was transferred from the New York State Thruway to the New York Power Authority.
In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, covering 524 miles (843 km) of navigable water from Lake Champlain to the Capital Region and west to Buffalo. The area has a population of 2.7 million; about 75% of Central and Western New York's population lives within 25 miles (40 km) of the Erie Canal.
There were some 42 commercial shipments on the canal in 2008, compared to 15 such shipments in 2007 and more than 33,000 shipments in 1855, the canal's peak year. The new growth in commercial traffic is due to the rising cost of diesel fuel. Canal barges can carry a short ton of cargo 514 miles (827 km) on one gallon of diesel fuel, while a gallon allows a train to haul the same amount of cargo 202 miles (325 km) and a truck 59 miles (95 km). Canal barges can carry loads up to 3,000 short tons (2,700 long tons), and are used to transport objects that would be too large for road or rail shipment. In 2012, the New York State Canal System as a whole was used to ship 42,000 tons of cargo.
Travel on the canal's middle section (particularly in the Mohawk Valley) was severely hampered by flooding in late June and early July 2006. Flood damage to the canal and its facilities was estimated as at least $15 million.
The Erie made use of the favorable conditions of New York's unique topography, which provided that area with the only break in the Appalachians south of the St. Lawrence River. The Hudson is tidal to Troy, and Albany is west of the Appalachians. It allowed for east–west navigation from the coast to the Great Lakes within US territory.
The canal began on the west side of the Hudson River at Albany, and ran north to Watervliet, where the Champlain Canal branched off. At Cohoes, it climbed the escarpment on the west side of the Hudson River—16 locks rising 140 feet (43 m)—and then turned west along the south shore of the Mohawk River, crossing to the north side at Crescent and again to the south at Rexford. The canal continued west near the south shore of the Mohawk River all the way to Rome, where the Mohawk turns north.
At Rome, the canal continued west parallel to Wood Creek, which flows westward into Oneida Lake, and turned southwest and west cross-country to avoid the lake. From Canastota west, it ran roughly along the north (lower) edge of the Onondaga Escarpment, passing through Syracuse, Onondaga Lake, and Rochester. Before reaching Rochester, the canal uses a series of natural ridges to cross the deep valley of Irondequoit Creek. At Lockport the canal turned southwest to rise to the top of the Niagara Escarpment, using the ravine of Eighteen Mile Creek.
The canal continued south-southwest to Pendleton, where it turned west and southwest, mainly using the channel of Tonawanda Creek. From the Tonawanda south toward Buffalo, it ran just east of the Niagara River, where it reached its "Western Terminus" at Little Buffalo Creek (later it became the Commercial Slip), which discharged into the Buffalo River just above its confluence with Lake Erie. With Buffalo's re-excavation of the Commercial Slip, completed in 2008, the Canal's original terminus is now re-watered and again accessible by boats. With several miles of the Canal inland of this location still lying under 20th-century fill and urban construction, the effective western navigable terminus of the Erie Canal is found at Tonawanda.
The new alignment began on the Hudson River at the border between Cohoes and Waterford, where it ran northwest with five locks (the so-called "Waterford Flight"), running into the Mohawk River east of Crescent. The Waterford Flight is claimed to be one of the steepest series of locks in the world.
While the old Canal ran next to the Mohawk all the way to Rome, the new canal ran through the river, which was straightened or widened where necessary. At Ilion, the new canal left the river for good, but continued to run on a new alignment parallel to both the river and the old canal to Rome. From Rome, the new route continued almost due west, merging with Fish Creek just east of its entry into Oneida Lake.
From Oneida Lake, the new canal ran west along the Oneida River, with cutoffs to shorten the route. At Three Rivers, the Oneida River turns northwest, and was deepened for the Oswego Canal to Lake Ontario. The new Erie Canal turned south there along the Seneca River, which turns west near Syracuse and continues west to a point in the Montezuma Marsh. There the Cayuga and Seneca Canal continued south with the Seneca River, and the new Erie Canal again ran parallel to the old canal along the bottom of the Niagara Escarpment, in some places running along the Clyde River, and in some places replacing the old canal. At Pittsford, southeast of Rochester, the canal turned west to run around the south side of Rochester, rather than through downtown. The canal crosses the Genesee River at the Genesee Valley Park, then rejoins the old path near North Gates.
From there it was again roughly an upgrade to the original canal, running west to Lockport. This reach of 64.2 miles (103.3 km) from Henrietta to Lockport is called "the 60‑mile level" since there are no locks and the water level rises only two feet (0.61 m) over the entire segment. Diversions from and to adjacent natural streams along the way are used to maintain the canal's level. It runs southwest to Tonawanda, where the new alignment discharges into the Niagara River, which is navigable upstream to the New York Barge Canal's Black Rock Lock and thence to the Canal's original "Western Terminus" at Buffalo's Inner Harbor.
Canal boats up to 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in draft were pulled by horses and mules walking on the towpath. The canal had one towpath, generally on the north side. When canal boats met, the boat with the right of way remained on the towpath side of the canal. The other boat steered toward the berm (or heelpath) side of the canal. The driver (or "hoggee", pronounced HO-gee) of the privileged boat kept his towpath team by the canalside edge of the towpath, while the hoggee of the other boat moved to the outside of the towpath and stopped his team. His towline would be unhitched from the horses, go slack, fall into the water and sink to the bottom, while his boat coasted with its remaining momentum. The privileged boat's team would step over the other boat's towline, with its horses pulling the boat over the sunken towline without stopping. Once clear, the other boat's team would continue on its way.
Pulled by teams of horses, canal boats moved slowly, but methodically, shrinking time and distance. Efficiently, the smooth, nonstop method of transportation cut the travel time between Albany and Buffalo nearly in half, moving by day and by night. Migrants took passage on freight boats, camping on deck or on top of crates.
Packet boats, serving passengers exclusively, reached speeds of up to five miles per hour (8.0 km/h) and ran at much more frequent intervals than the cramped, bumpy stagecoach wagons. These boats, measuring up to 78 feet (24 m) long and 14.5 feet (4.4 m) wide, made ingenious use of space, accommodating up to 40 passengers at night and up to three times as many in the daytime. The best examples, furnished with carpeted floors, stuffed chairs, and mahogany tables stocked with books and current newspapers, served as sitting rooms during the days. At mealtimes, crews transformed the cabin into a dining room. Drawing a curtain across the width of the room divided the cabin into ladies' and gentlemen's sleeping quarters at night. Pull-down tiered beds folded from the walls, and additional cots could be hung from hooks in the ceiling. Some captains hired musicians and held dances.
The New York State Legislature debated closing the locks of the Erie Canal on Sundays, when they convened in 1858. However, George Jeremiah and Dwight Bacheller, two of the bill's opponents, argued that the state had no right to stop canal traffic on the grounds that the Erie Canal and its tributaries had ceased to be wards of the state. The canal at its inception had been imagined as an extension of nature, an artificial river where there had been none. The canal succeeded by sharing more in common with lakes and seas than it had with public roads. Jeremiah and Bacheller argued, successfully, that just as it was unthinkable to halt oceangoing navigation on Sunday, so it was with the canal.
The Erie Canal greatly lowered the cost of shipping between the Midwest and the Northeast, bringing much lower food costs to Eastern cities and allowing the East to ship machinery and manufactured goods to the Midwest more economically. To give an example, the cost to transport barrel of flour from Rochester to Albany dropped from $3 (before the canal) to 75¢ on the canal. The canal also made an immense contribution to the wealth and importance of New York City, Buffalo and New York State. Its impact went much further, increasing trade throughout the nation by opening eastern and overseas markets to Midwestern farm products and by enabling migration to the West. The port of New York became essentially the Atlantic home port for all of the Midwest. Because of this vital connection and others to follow, such as the railroads, New York would become known as the "Empire State" or "the great Empire State".
The Erie Canal was an immediate success. Tolls collected on freight had already exceeded the state's construction debt in its first year of official operation. By 1828, import duties collected at the New York Customs House supported federal government operations and provided funds for all the expenses in Washington except the interest on the national debt. Additionally, New York State's initial loan for the original canal had been paid by 1837. Although it had been envisioned as primarily a commercial channel for freight boats, passengers also traveled on the canal's packet boats. In 1825 more than 40,000 passengers took advantage of the convenience and beauty of canal travel. The canal's steady flow of tourists, businessmen and settlers lent it to uses never imagined by its initial sponsors. Evangelical preachers made their circuits of the upstate region, and the canal served as the last leg of the Underground Railroad ferrying runaway slaves to Buffalo near the Canada–US border. Aspiring merchants found that tourists were reliable customers. Vendors moved from boat to boat peddling items such as books, watches and fruit, while less scrupulous "confidence men" sold remedies for foot corns or passed off counterfeit bills. Tourists were carried along the "northern tour," which ultimately led to the popular honeymoon destination Niagara Falls, just north of Buffalo.
As the canal brought travelers to New York City, it took business away from other ports such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. Those cities and their states started projects to compete with the Erie Canal. In Pennsylvania, the Main Line of Public Works was a combined canal and railroad running west from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh on the Ohio River, opened in 1834. In Maryland, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran west to Wheeling, West Virginia, then a part of Virginia, also on the Ohio River, and was completed in 1853.
The canal played a major role in the growth of Standard Oil, as founder John D. Rockefeller used the canal as a cheaper form of transportation – in the summer months when it was not frozen – to get his refined oil from Cleveland to New York City. In the winter months his only options were the three trunk lines: the Erie Railroad, the New York Central Railroad, or the Pennsylvania Railroad.
New ethnic Irish communities formed in some towns along its route after completion, as Irish immigrants were a large portion of the construction labor force. A plaque honoring the canal's construction is located in Battery Park in southern Manhattan.
Because so many immigrants traveled on the canal, many genealogists have sought copies of canal passenger lists. Apart from the years 1827–1829, canal boat operators were not required to record passenger names or report them to the New York government. Some passenger lists survive today in the New York State Archives, and other sources of traveler information are sometimes available.
The canal allowed Buffalo to grow from just 200 settlers in 1820 to more than 18,000 people by 1840.
The Canal also helped bind the still-new nation closer to Britain and Europe. Repeal of Britain's Corn Law resulted in a huge increase in exports of Midwestern wheat to Britain. Trade between the United States and Canada also increased as a result of the repeal and a reciprocity (free-trade) agreement signed in 1854. Much of this trade flowed along the Erie.
Its success also prompted imitation: a rash of canal-building followed. Also, the many technical hurdles that had to be overcome made heroes of those whose innovations made the canal possible. This led to an increased public esteem for practical education. Chicago, among other Great Lakes cities, recognized the importance of the canal to its economy, and two West Loop streets are named "Canal" and "Clinton" (for canal proponent DeWitt Clinton).
Concern that erosion caused by logging in the Adirondacks could silt up the canal contributed to the creation in 1885 of another New York National Historic Landmark, the Adirondack Park.
Many notable authors wrote about the canal, including Herman Melville, Frances Trollope, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, and many tales and songs were written about life on the canal. The popular song "Low Bridge, Everybody Down" by Thomas S. Allen was written in 1905 to memorialize the canal's early heyday, when barges were pulled by mules rather than engines.
Consisting of a massive stone aqueduct that carried boats over incredible cascades, Little Falls was one of the most popular stops for American and foreign tourists. This is shown in Scene 4 of William Dunlap's play A Trip to Niagara, where he depicts the general preference of tourists to travel by canal so that they could experience a combination of artificial and natural sights. Canal travel was, for many, an opportunity to take in the sublime and commune with nature. The play also reflects the less enthusiastic view of some who saw movement on the canal as tedious.
The Erie Canal changed property law in New York. Most importantly, it expanded the government's right to take private property. Cases surrounding the newly built Erie Canal expanded condemnation theory to permit canal builders to appropriate private land and broadened the meaning of "public use" in the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The canal also had an impact on water access jurisprudence as well as nuisance law.
Today, the Erie Canal is used primarily by recreational vessels, though it remains served by several commercial barge-towing companies.
The canal is open to small craft and some larger vessels from May through November each year. During winter, water is drained from parts of the canal for maintenance. The Champlain Canal, Lake Champlain, and the Chambly Canal, and Richelieu River in Canada form the Lakes to Locks Passage, making a tourist attraction of the former waterway linking eastern Canada to the Erie Canal. In 2006 recreational boating fees were eliminated to attract more visitors.
The Erie Canal is a destination for tourists from all over the world, and has inspired guidebooks dedicated to exploration of the waterway. An Erie Canal Cruise company, based in Herkimer, operates from mid-May until mid-October with daily cruises. The cruise goes through the history of the canal and also takes passengers through Lock 18.
Aside from transportation, numerous businesses, farms, factories and communities alongside its banks still utilize the canal's waters for other purposes such as irrigation for farmland, hydroelectricity, research, industry, and even drinking. Use of the canal system has an estimated total economic impact of $6.2 billion annually.
Today, the reconfiguration of the canal created during the First Enlargement is commonly referred to as the "Improved Erie Canal" or the "Old Erie Canal", to distinguish it from the canal's modern-day course. Existing remains of the 1825 canal abandoned during the Enlargement are officially referred to today as "Clinton's Ditch" (which was also the popular nickname for the entire Erie Canal project during its original 1817–1825 construction).
Sections of the Old Erie Canal not used after 1918 are owned by New York State, or have been ceded to or purchased by counties or municipalities. Many stretches of the old canal have been filled in to create roads such as Erie Boulevard in Syracuse and Schenectady, and Broad Street and the Rochester Subway in Rochester. A 36‑mile (58 km) stretch of the old canal from the town of DeWitt, New York, east of Syracuse, to just outside Rome, New York, is preserved as the Old Erie Canal State Historic Park. In 1960 the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, a section of the canal in Montgomery County, was one of the first sites recognized as a National Historic Landmark.
Some municipalities have preserved sections as town or county canal parks, or have plans to do so. Camillus Erie Canal Park preserves a 7-mile (11 km) stretch and has restored Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct, built in 1841 as part of the First Enlargement of the canal. In some communities, the old canal has refilled with overgrowth and debris. Proposals have been made to rehydrate the old canal through downtown Rochester or Syracuse as a tourist attraction. In Syracuse, the location of the old canal is represented by a reflecting pool in downtown's Clinton Square and the downtown hosts a canal barge and weigh lock structure, now dry. Buffalo's Commercial Slip is the restored and re-watered segment of the canal which formed its "Western Terminus".
In 2004, the administration of New York Governor George Pataki was criticized when officials of New York State Canal Corporation attempted to sell private development rights to large stretches of the Old Erie Canal to a single developer for $30,000, far less than the land was worth on the open market. After an investigation by the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper, the Pataki administration nullified the deal.
Parks and museums related to the Old Erie Canal include (listed from east to west):
Records of the planning, funding, design, construction, and administration of the Erie Canal are vast and can be found in the New York State Archives. Except for two years (1827–1829), the State of New York did not require canal boat operators to maintain or submit passenger lists.
The following list of locks is provided for the current canal, from east to west. There are a total of 36 (35 numbered) locks on the Erie Canal.
All locks on the New York State Canal System are single-chamber; the dimensions are 328 feet (100 m) long and 45 feet (14 m) wide with a minimum 12-foot (3.7 m) depth of water over the miter sills at the upstream gates upon lift. They can accommodate a vessel up to 300 feet (91 m) long and 43.5 feet (13.3 m) wide. Overall sidewall height will vary by lock, ranging between 28 and 61 feet (8.5 and 18.6 m) depending on the lift and navigable stages. Lock E17 at Little Falls has the tallest sidewall height at 80 feet (24 m).
Distance is based on position markers from an interactive canal map provided online by the New York State Canal Corporation and may not exactly match specifications on signs posted along the canal. Mean surface elevations are comprised from a combination of older canal profiles and history books as well as specifications on signs posted along the canal. The margin of error should normally be within 6 inches (15 cm).
The Waterford Flight series of locks (comprising Locks E2 through E6) is one of the steepest in the world, lifting boats 169 feet (52 m) in less than 2 miles (3.2 km).
All surface elevations are approximate.
* Denotes federally managed locks.
There is a 2-foot (0.61 m) natural rise between locks E33 and E34 as well as a 1.5-foot (0.46 m) natural rise between Lock E35 and the Niagara River.
There is no Lock E1 or Lock E31 on the Erie Canal. The place of "Lock E1" on the passage from the lower Hudson River to Lake Erie is taken by the Troy Federal Lock, located just north of Troy, New York, and is not part of the Erie Canal System proper. It is operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The Erie Canal officially begins at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers at Waterford, New York.
Although the original alignment of the Erie Canal through Buffalo has been filled in, travel by water is still possible from Buffalo via the Black Rock Lock in the Niagara River to the canal's modern western terminus in Tonawanda, and eastward to Albany. The Black Rock Lock is operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Oneida Lake lies between locks E22 and E23, and has a mean surface elevation of 370 feet (110 m). Lake Erie has a mean surface elevation of 571 feet (174 m). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. In effect, the canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York State. It has been called \"The Nation's First Superhighway.\"",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "A canal from the Hudson to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The New York State Legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal, and of its lead supporter New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, denigrated the project as \"Clinton's Folly\" and \"Clinton's Big Ditch\". Nonetheless, the canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the state's construction debt within the first year of operation. The westward connection gave New York City a strong advantage over all other U.S. ports and brought major growth to canal cities such as Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The construction of the Erie Canal was a landmark civil engineering achievement in the early history of the United States. When built, the 363-mile (584 km) canal was the second-longest in the world (after the Grand Canal in China). Initially 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, the canal was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918 when the \"Barge Canal\" was built and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern Barge Canal measures 351 miles (565 km) long, 120 feet (37 m) wide, and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep. It has 34 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States. When leaving the canal, boats must also traverse the Black Rock Lock to reach Lake Erie or the Troy Federal Lock to reach the tidal Hudson. The overall elevation difference is about 565 feet (172 m).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Erie's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th century due to competition from trucking and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It connects the three other canals in the New York State Canal System: the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga–Seneca. Some long-distance boaters take the Erie as part of the Great Loop. The canal has also become a tourist attraction in its own right—a number of parks and museums are dedicated to its history. The Erie Canalway Trail is a popular cycling path that follows the canal across the state. In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to protect and promote the system.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The waterway today referred to as the Erie Canal is quite different from the nineteenth-century Erie Canal. More than half of the original Erie Canal was destroyed or abandoned during construction of the New York State Barge Canal in the early 20th century. The sections of the original route remaining in use were widened significantly, mostly west of Syracuse, with bridges rebuilt and locks replaced. It was called the Barge Canal at the time, but that name fell into disuse with the disappearance of commercial traffic and the increase of recreational travel in the later 20th century.",
"title": "Ambiguity in name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Prior to the advent of railroads, water transport was the most cost-effective way to ship bulk goods. A mule can only carry about 250 pounds (110 kg), but can draw a barge weighing as much as 60,000 pounds (27,000 kg) along a towpath. In total, a canal could cut transport costs by about 95 percent.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In the early years of the United States, transportation of goods between the coastal ports and the interior was slow and difficult. Close to the seacoast, rivers provided easy inland transport up to the fall line, since floating vessels encounter much less friction than land vehicles. However, the Appalachian Mountains were a great obstacle to further transportation or settlement, stretching 1,500 miles (2,400 km) from Maine to Alabama, with just five places where mule trains or wagon roads could be routed. Passengers and freight bound for the western parts of the country had to travel overland, a journey made more difficult by the rough condition of the roads. In 1800, it typically took 2½ weeks to travel overland from New York to Cleveland, Ohio, (460 miles (740 km)) and 4 weeks to Detroit (612 miles (985 km)).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The principal exportable product of the Ohio Valley was grain, which was a high-volume, low-priced commodity, bolstered by supplies from the coast. Frequently it was not worth the cost of transporting it to far-away population centers. This was a factor leading to farmers in the west turning their grains into whiskey for easier transport and higher sales, and later the Whiskey Rebellion. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it became clear to coastal residents that the city or state that succeeded in developing a cheap, reliable route to the West would enjoy economic success, and the port at the seaward end of such a route would see business increase greatly. In time, projects were devised in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and relatively deep into the coastal states.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Mohawk River (a tributary of the Hudson River) rises near Lake Ontario and runs in a glacial meltwater channel just north of the Catskill range of the Appalachian Mountains, separating them from the geologically distinct Adirondacks to the north. The Mohawk and Hudson valleys form the only cut across the Appalachians north of Alabama. A navigable canal through the Mohawk Valley would allow an almost complete water route from New York City in the south to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie in the west. Via the canal and these lakes, other Great Lakes, and to a lesser degree, related rivers, a large part of the continent's interior (and many settlements) would be made well connected to the Eastern seaboard.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The idea of a canal to tie the East Coast to the new western settlements was discussed as early as 1724: New York provincial official Cadwallader Colden made a passing reference (in a report on fur trading) to improving the natural waterways of western New York.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Gouverneur Morris and Elkanah Watson were early proponents of a canal along the Mohawk River. Their efforts led to the creation of the \"Western and Northern Inland Lock Navigation Companies\" in 1792, which took the first steps to improve navigation on the Mohawk and construct a canal between the Mohawk and Lake Ontario, but it was soon discovered that private financing was insufficient. Christopher Colles (who was familiar with the Bridgewater Canal) surveyed the Mohawk Valley, and made a presentation to the New York state legislature in 1784, proposing a shorter canal from Lake Ontario. The proposal drew attention and some action but was never implemented.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Jesse Hawley had envisioned encouraging the growing of large quantities of grain on the western New York plains (then largely unsettled) for sale on the Eastern seaboard. However, he went bankrupt trying to ship grain to the coast. While in Canandaigua debtors' prison, Hawley began pressing for the construction of a canal along the 90-mile (140 km)-long Mohawk River valley with support from Joseph Ellicott (agent for the Holland Land Company in Batavia). Ellicott realized that a canal would add value to the land he was selling in the western part of the state. He later became the first canal commissioner.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "New York legislators became interested in the possibility of building a canal across New York in the first decade of the 19th century. Shipping goods west from Albany was a costly and tedious affair; there was no railroad yet, and to cover the distance from Buffalo to New York City by stagecoach took two weeks. The problem was that the land rises about 600 feet (180 m) from the Hudson to Lake Erie. Locks at the time could handle up to 12 feet (3.7 m) of lift, so even with the heftiest cuttings and viaducts, fifty locks would be required along the 360-mile (580 km) canal. Such a canal would be expensive to build even with modern technology; in 1800, the expense was barely imaginable. President Thomas Jefferson called it \"little short of madness\" and rejected it.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Eventually, Hawley interested New York Governor DeWitt Clinton in the project. There was much opposition, and the project was ridiculed as \"Clinton's folly\" and \"Clinton's ditch\". In 1817, though, Clinton received approval from the legislature for $7 million for construction.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The original canal was 363 miles (584 km) long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo on Lake Erie. The channel was cut 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, with removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a walkway known as a towpath. Its construction, through limestone and mountains, proved a daunting task. To move earth, animals pulled a \"slip scraper\" (similar to a bulldozer). The sides of the canal were lined with stone set in clay, and the bottom was also lined with clay. The Canal was built by Irish laborers and German stonemasons. All labor on the canal depended upon human and animal power or the force of water. Engineering techniques developed during its construction included the building of aqueducts to redirect water; one aqueduct was 950 feet (290 m) long to span 800 feet (240 m) of river. As the canal progressed, the crews and engineers working on the project developed expertise and became a skilled labor force.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The men who planned and oversaw construction were novices as surveyors and as engineers. There were no civil engineers in the United States. James Geddes and Benjamin Wright, who laid out the route, were judges whose experience in surveying was in settling boundary disputes. Geddes had only used a surveying instrument for a few hours before his work on the Canal. Canvass White was a 27-year-old amateur engineer who persuaded Clinton to let him go to Britain at his own expense to study the canal system there. Nathan Roberts was a mathematics teacher and land speculator. Yet these men \"carried the Erie Canal up the Niagara escarpment at Lockport, maneuvered it onto a towering embankment to cross over Irondequoit Creek, spanned the Genesee River on an awesome aqueduct, and carved a route for it out of the solid rock between Little Falls and Schenectady—and all of those venturesome designs worked precisely as planned\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Construction began on July 4, 1817, at Rome, New York. The first 15 miles (24 km), from Rome to Utica, opened in 1819. At that rate, the canal would not be finished for 30 years. The main delays were caused by felling trees to clear a path through virgin forest and moving excavated soil, which took longer than expected, but the builders devised ways to solve these problems. To fell a tree, they threw rope over the top branches and winched it down. They pulled out the stumps with an innovative stump puller. Two huge wheels were mounted loose on the ends of an axle. A third wheel, slightly smaller than the others, was fixed to the center of the axle. A chain was wrapped around the axle and hooked to the stump. A rope was wrapped around the center wheel and hooked to a team of oxen. The mechanical advantage (torque) obtained ripped the stumps out of the soil. Soil to be moved was shoveled into large wheelbarrows that were dumped into mule-pulled carts. Using a scraper and a plow, a three-man team with oxen, horses and mules could build a mile in a year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The remaining problem was finding labor; increased immigration helped fill the need. Many of the laborers working on the canal were Irish, who had recently come to the United States as a group of about 5,000. Most of them were Roman Catholic, a religion that raised much suspicion in early America because of its hierarchic structure, and many laborers on the canal suffered violent assault as the result of misjudgment and xenophobia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Construction continued at an increased rate as new workers arrived. When the canal reached Montezuma Marsh (at the outlet of Cayuga Lake west of Syracuse), it was rumored that over 1,000 workers died of \"swamp fever\" (malaria), and construction was temporarily stopped. However, recent research has revealed that the death toll was likely much lower, as no contemporary reports mention significant worker mortality, and mass graves from the period have never been found in the area. Work continued on the downhill side towards the Hudson, and the crews worked on the section across the swampland when it froze in winter.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The middle section from Utica to Salina (Syracuse) was completed in 1820, and traffic on that section started up immediately. Expansion to the east and west proceeded simultaneously, and the whole eastern section, 250 miles (400 km) from Brockport to Albany, opened on September 10, 1823, to great fanfare. The Champlain Canal, a separate but connected 64-mile (103 km) north–south route from Watervliet on the Hudson to Lake Champlain, opened on the same date.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "After Montezuma Marsh, the next difficulties were crossing Irondequoit Creek and the Genesee River near Rochester. The former ultimately required building the 1,320-foot (400 m) long \"Great Embankment\", to carry the canal at a height of 76 feet (23 m) above the level of the creek, which ran through a 245-foot (75 m) culvert underneath. The canal crossed the river on a stone aqueduct, 802 feet (244 m) long and 17 feet (5.2 m) wide, supported by 11 arches.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1823 construction reached the Niagara Escarpment, an 80-foot (24 m)-high wall of hard dolomitic limestone. The route followed the channel of a creek that had cut a ravine steeply down the escarpment. The construction and operation of two sets of five locks along a 3-mile (4.8 km) corridor soon gave rise to the community of Lockport. The 12-foot (3.7 m) lift-locks had a total lift of 60 feet (18 m), exiting into a deeply cut channel. The final leg had to be cut 30 feet (9.1 m) deep through another limestone mass, the Onondaga ridge. Much of that section was blasted with black powder, and the inexperience of the crews often led to accidents, and sometimes to rocks falling on nearby homes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Two villages competed to be the terminus: Black Rock, on the Niagara River, and Buffalo, at the eastern tip of Lake Erie. Buffalo expended great energy to widen and deepen Buffalo Creek to make it navigable and to create a harbor at its mouth. Buffalo won over Black Rock, and grew into a large city, eventually encompassing its former rival.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1824, before the canal was completed, a detailed Pocket Guide for the Tourist and Traveler, Along the Line of the Canals, and the Interior Commerce of the State of New York, was published for the benefit of travelers and land speculators.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The entire canal was officially completed on October 26, 1825. The event was marked by a statewide \"Grand Celebration\", culminating in a series of cannon shots along the length of the canal and the Hudson, a 90-minute cannonade from Buffalo to New York City. A flotilla of boats, led by Governor Dewitt Clinton aboard Seneca Chief, sailed from Buffalo to New York City over ten days. Clinton then ceremonially poured Lake Erie water into New York Harbor to mark the \"Wedding of the Waters\". On its return trip, Seneca Chief brought back a keg of Atlantic Ocean water, which was poured into Lake Erie by Buffalo's Judge Samuel Wilkeson, who would later become mayor.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Erie Canal was thus completed in eight years at a total length of 353 miles (568 km) and cost $7.143 million (equivalent to $185 million in 2022). It was acclaimed as an engineering marvel that united the country and helped New York City develop as an international trade center.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Problems developed but were quickly solved. Leaks developed along the entire length of the canal, but these were sealed using cement that hardened underwater (hydraulic cement). Erosion on the clay bottom proved to be a problem and the speed was limited to 4 mph (6.4 km/h).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Additional feeder canals soon extended the Erie Canal into a system. These included the Cayuga-Seneca Canal south to the Finger Lakes, the Oswego Canal from Three Rivers north to Lake Ontario at Oswego, and the Champlain Canal from Troy north to Lake Champlain. From 1833 to 1877, the short Crooked Lake Canal connected Keuka Lake and Seneca Lake. The Chemung Canal connected the south end of Seneca Lake to Elmira in 1833, and was an important route for Pennsylvania coal and timber into the canal system. The Chenango Canal in 1836 connected the Erie Canal at Utica to Binghamton and caused a business boom in the Chenango River valley. The Chenango and Chemung canals linked the Erie with the Susquehanna River system. The Black River Canal connected the Black River to the Erie Canal at Rome and remained in operation until the 1920s. The Genesee Valley Canal was run along the Genesee River to connect with the Allegheny River at Olean, but the Allegheny section, which would have connected to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, was never built. The Genesee Valley Canal was later abandoned and became the route of the Genesee Valley Canal Railroad.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The original design planned for an annual tonnage of 1.5 million tons (1.36 million metric tons), but this was exceeded immediately. An ambitious program to improve the canal began in 1834. During this massive series of construction projects, known as the First Enlargement, the canal was widened from 40 to 70 feet (12 to 21 m) and deepened from 4 to 7 feet (1.2 to 2.1 m). Locks were widened and/or rebuilt in new locations, and many new navigable aqueducts were constructed. The canal was straightened and slightly re-routed in some stretches, resulting in the abandonment of short segments of the original 1825 canal. The First Enlargement was completed in 1862, with further minor enlargements in later decades.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad opened in 1837, providing a bypass to the slowest part of the canal between Albany and Schenectady. Other railroads were soon chartered and built to continue the line west to Buffalo, and in 1842 a continuous line (which later became the New York Central Railroad and its Auburn Road in 1853) was open the whole way to Buffalo. As the railroad served the same general route as the canal, but provided for faster travel, passengers soon switched to it. However, as late as 1852, the canal carried thirteen times more freight tonnage than all the railroads in New York State combined. The New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railway was completed in 1884, as a route running closely parallel to both the canal and the New York Central Railroad. However, it went bankrupt and was acquired the next year by the New York Central. The canal continued to compete well with the railroads through 1902, when tolls were abolished.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1903 the New York State legislature authorized construction of the New York State Barge Canal as the \"Improvement of the Erie, the Oswego, the Champlain, and the Cayuga and Seneca Canals\". In 1905, construction of the Barge Canal began, which was completed in 1918, at a cost of $96.7 million.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "This new canal replaced much of the original route, leaving many abandoned sections (most notably between Syracuse and Rome). New digging and flood control technologies allowed engineers to canalize rivers that the original canal had sought to avoid, such as the Mohawk, Seneca, and Clyde rivers, and Oneida Lake. In sections that did not consist of canalized rivers (particularly between Rochester and Buffalo), the original Erie Canal channel was enlarged to 120 feet (37 m) wide and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep. The expansion allowed barges up to 2,000 short tons (1,800 t) to use the Canal. This expensive project was politically unpopular in parts of the state not served by the canal, and failed to save it from becoming obsolete for commercial shipping.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Freight traffic reached a total of 5.2 million short tons (4.7 million metric tons) by 1951. The growth of railroads and highways across the state, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, caused commercial traffic on the canal to decline dramatically during the second half of the 20th century. Since the 1990s, the canal system has been used primarily by recreational traffic.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1992, the New York State Barge Canal was renamed the New York State Canal System (including the Erie, Cayuga-Seneca, Oswego, and Champlain canals) and placed under the newly created New York State Canal Corporation, a subsidiary of the New York State Thruway Authority. While part of the Thruway, the canal system was operated using money generated by Thruway tolls. In 2017, the New York State Canal Corporation was transferred from the New York State Thruway to the New York Power Authority.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, covering 524 miles (843 km) of navigable water from Lake Champlain to the Capital Region and west to Buffalo. The area has a population of 2.7 million; about 75% of Central and Western New York's population lives within 25 miles (40 km) of the Erie Canal.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "There were some 42 commercial shipments on the canal in 2008, compared to 15 such shipments in 2007 and more than 33,000 shipments in 1855, the canal's peak year. The new growth in commercial traffic is due to the rising cost of diesel fuel. Canal barges can carry a short ton of cargo 514 miles (827 km) on one gallon of diesel fuel, while a gallon allows a train to haul the same amount of cargo 202 miles (325 km) and a truck 59 miles (95 km). Canal barges can carry loads up to 3,000 short tons (2,700 long tons), and are used to transport objects that would be too large for road or rail shipment. In 2012, the New York State Canal System as a whole was used to ship 42,000 tons of cargo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Travel on the canal's middle section (particularly in the Mohawk Valley) was severely hampered by flooding in late June and early July 2006. Flood damage to the canal and its facilities was estimated as at least $15 million.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Erie made use of the favorable conditions of New York's unique topography, which provided that area with the only break in the Appalachians south of the St. Lawrence River. The Hudson is tidal to Troy, and Albany is west of the Appalachians. It allowed for east–west navigation from the coast to the Great Lakes within US territory.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The canal began on the west side of the Hudson River at Albany, and ran north to Watervliet, where the Champlain Canal branched off. At Cohoes, it climbed the escarpment on the west side of the Hudson River—16 locks rising 140 feet (43 m)—and then turned west along the south shore of the Mohawk River, crossing to the north side at Crescent and again to the south at Rexford. The canal continued west near the south shore of the Mohawk River all the way to Rome, where the Mohawk turns north.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "At Rome, the canal continued west parallel to Wood Creek, which flows westward into Oneida Lake, and turned southwest and west cross-country to avoid the lake. From Canastota west, it ran roughly along the north (lower) edge of the Onondaga Escarpment, passing through Syracuse, Onondaga Lake, and Rochester. Before reaching Rochester, the canal uses a series of natural ridges to cross the deep valley of Irondequoit Creek. At Lockport the canal turned southwest to rise to the top of the Niagara Escarpment, using the ravine of Eighteen Mile Creek.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The canal continued south-southwest to Pendleton, where it turned west and southwest, mainly using the channel of Tonawanda Creek. From the Tonawanda south toward Buffalo, it ran just east of the Niagara River, where it reached its \"Western Terminus\" at Little Buffalo Creek (later it became the Commercial Slip), which discharged into the Buffalo River just above its confluence with Lake Erie. With Buffalo's re-excavation of the Commercial Slip, completed in 2008, the Canal's original terminus is now re-watered and again accessible by boats. With several miles of the Canal inland of this location still lying under 20th-century fill and urban construction, the effective western navigable terminus of the Erie Canal is found at Tonawanda.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The new alignment began on the Hudson River at the border between Cohoes and Waterford, where it ran northwest with five locks (the so-called \"Waterford Flight\"), running into the Mohawk River east of Crescent. The Waterford Flight is claimed to be one of the steepest series of locks in the world.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "While the old Canal ran next to the Mohawk all the way to Rome, the new canal ran through the river, which was straightened or widened where necessary. At Ilion, the new canal left the river for good, but continued to run on a new alignment parallel to both the river and the old canal to Rome. From Rome, the new route continued almost due west, merging with Fish Creek just east of its entry into Oneida Lake.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "From Oneida Lake, the new canal ran west along the Oneida River, with cutoffs to shorten the route. At Three Rivers, the Oneida River turns northwest, and was deepened for the Oswego Canal to Lake Ontario. The new Erie Canal turned south there along the Seneca River, which turns west near Syracuse and continues west to a point in the Montezuma Marsh. There the Cayuga and Seneca Canal continued south with the Seneca River, and the new Erie Canal again ran parallel to the old canal along the bottom of the Niagara Escarpment, in some places running along the Clyde River, and in some places replacing the old canal. At Pittsford, southeast of Rochester, the canal turned west to run around the south side of Rochester, rather than through downtown. The canal crosses the Genesee River at the Genesee Valley Park, then rejoins the old path near North Gates.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "From there it was again roughly an upgrade to the original canal, running west to Lockport. This reach of 64.2 miles (103.3 km) from Henrietta to Lockport is called \"the 60‑mile level\" since there are no locks and the water level rises only two feet (0.61 m) over the entire segment. Diversions from and to adjacent natural streams along the way are used to maintain the canal's level. It runs southwest to Tonawanda, where the new alignment discharges into the Niagara River, which is navigable upstream to the New York Barge Canal's Black Rock Lock and thence to the Canal's original \"Western Terminus\" at Buffalo's Inner Harbor.",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "",
"title": "Route"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Canal boats up to 3.5 feet (1.1 m) in draft were pulled by horses and mules walking on the towpath. The canal had one towpath, generally on the north side. When canal boats met, the boat with the right of way remained on the towpath side of the canal. The other boat steered toward the berm (or heelpath) side of the canal. The driver (or \"hoggee\", pronounced HO-gee) of the privileged boat kept his towpath team by the canalside edge of the towpath, while the hoggee of the other boat moved to the outside of the towpath and stopped his team. His towline would be unhitched from the horses, go slack, fall into the water and sink to the bottom, while his boat coasted with its remaining momentum. The privileged boat's team would step over the other boat's towline, with its horses pulling the boat over the sunken towline without stopping. Once clear, the other boat's team would continue on its way.",
"title": "Operations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Pulled by teams of horses, canal boats moved slowly, but methodically, shrinking time and distance. Efficiently, the smooth, nonstop method of transportation cut the travel time between Albany and Buffalo nearly in half, moving by day and by night. Migrants took passage on freight boats, camping on deck or on top of crates.",
"title": "Operations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Packet boats, serving passengers exclusively, reached speeds of up to five miles per hour (8.0 km/h) and ran at much more frequent intervals than the cramped, bumpy stagecoach wagons. These boats, measuring up to 78 feet (24 m) long and 14.5 feet (4.4 m) wide, made ingenious use of space, accommodating up to 40 passengers at night and up to three times as many in the daytime. The best examples, furnished with carpeted floors, stuffed chairs, and mahogany tables stocked with books and current newspapers, served as sitting rooms during the days. At mealtimes, crews transformed the cabin into a dining room. Drawing a curtain across the width of the room divided the cabin into ladies' and gentlemen's sleeping quarters at night. Pull-down tiered beds folded from the walls, and additional cots could be hung from hooks in the ceiling. Some captains hired musicians and held dances.",
"title": "Operations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The New York State Legislature debated closing the locks of the Erie Canal on Sundays, when they convened in 1858. However, George Jeremiah and Dwight Bacheller, two of the bill's opponents, argued that the state had no right to stop canal traffic on the grounds that the Erie Canal and its tributaries had ceased to be wards of the state. The canal at its inception had been imagined as an extension of nature, an artificial river where there had been none. The canal succeeded by sharing more in common with lakes and seas than it had with public roads. Jeremiah and Bacheller argued, successfully, that just as it was unthinkable to halt oceangoing navigation on Sunday, so it was with the canal.",
"title": "Operations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Erie Canal greatly lowered the cost of shipping between the Midwest and the Northeast, bringing much lower food costs to Eastern cities and allowing the East to ship machinery and manufactured goods to the Midwest more economically. To give an example, the cost to transport barrel of flour from Rochester to Albany dropped from $3 (before the canal) to 75¢ on the canal. The canal also made an immense contribution to the wealth and importance of New York City, Buffalo and New York State. Its impact went much further, increasing trade throughout the nation by opening eastern and overseas markets to Midwestern farm products and by enabling migration to the West. The port of New York became essentially the Atlantic home port for all of the Midwest. Because of this vital connection and others to follow, such as the railroads, New York would become known as the \"Empire State\" or \"the great Empire State\".",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The Erie Canal was an immediate success. Tolls collected on freight had already exceeded the state's construction debt in its first year of official operation. By 1828, import duties collected at the New York Customs House supported federal government operations and provided funds for all the expenses in Washington except the interest on the national debt. Additionally, New York State's initial loan for the original canal had been paid by 1837. Although it had been envisioned as primarily a commercial channel for freight boats, passengers also traveled on the canal's packet boats. In 1825 more than 40,000 passengers took advantage of the convenience and beauty of canal travel. The canal's steady flow of tourists, businessmen and settlers lent it to uses never imagined by its initial sponsors. Evangelical preachers made their circuits of the upstate region, and the canal served as the last leg of the Underground Railroad ferrying runaway slaves to Buffalo near the Canada–US border. Aspiring merchants found that tourists were reliable customers. Vendors moved from boat to boat peddling items such as books, watches and fruit, while less scrupulous \"confidence men\" sold remedies for foot corns or passed off counterfeit bills. Tourists were carried along the \"northern tour,\" which ultimately led to the popular honeymoon destination Niagara Falls, just north of Buffalo.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "As the canal brought travelers to New York City, it took business away from other ports such as Philadelphia and Baltimore. Those cities and their states started projects to compete with the Erie Canal. In Pennsylvania, the Main Line of Public Works was a combined canal and railroad running west from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh on the Ohio River, opened in 1834. In Maryland, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ran west to Wheeling, West Virginia, then a part of Virginia, also on the Ohio River, and was completed in 1853.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The canal played a major role in the growth of Standard Oil, as founder John D. Rockefeller used the canal as a cheaper form of transportation – in the summer months when it was not frozen – to get his refined oil from Cleveland to New York City. In the winter months his only options were the three trunk lines: the Erie Railroad, the New York Central Railroad, or the Pennsylvania Railroad.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "New ethnic Irish communities formed in some towns along its route after completion, as Irish immigrants were a large portion of the construction labor force. A plaque honoring the canal's construction is located in Battery Park in southern Manhattan.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Because so many immigrants traveled on the canal, many genealogists have sought copies of canal passenger lists. Apart from the years 1827–1829, canal boat operators were not required to record passenger names or report them to the New York government. Some passenger lists survive today in the New York State Archives, and other sources of traveler information are sometimes available.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The canal allowed Buffalo to grow from just 200 settlers in 1820 to more than 18,000 people by 1840.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Canal also helped bind the still-new nation closer to Britain and Europe. Repeal of Britain's Corn Law resulted in a huge increase in exports of Midwestern wheat to Britain. Trade between the United States and Canada also increased as a result of the repeal and a reciprocity (free-trade) agreement signed in 1854. Much of this trade flowed along the Erie.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Its success also prompted imitation: a rash of canal-building followed. Also, the many technical hurdles that had to be overcome made heroes of those whose innovations made the canal possible. This led to an increased public esteem for practical education. Chicago, among other Great Lakes cities, recognized the importance of the canal to its economy, and two West Loop streets are named \"Canal\" and \"Clinton\" (for canal proponent DeWitt Clinton).",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Concern that erosion caused by logging in the Adirondacks could silt up the canal contributed to the creation in 1885 of another New York National Historic Landmark, the Adirondack Park.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Many notable authors wrote about the canal, including Herman Melville, Frances Trollope, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, and many tales and songs were written about life on the canal. The popular song \"Low Bridge, Everybody Down\" by Thomas S. Allen was written in 1905 to memorialize the canal's early heyday, when barges were pulled by mules rather than engines.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Consisting of a massive stone aqueduct that carried boats over incredible cascades, Little Falls was one of the most popular stops for American and foreign tourists. This is shown in Scene 4 of William Dunlap's play A Trip to Niagara, where he depicts the general preference of tourists to travel by canal so that they could experience a combination of artificial and natural sights. Canal travel was, for many, an opportunity to take in the sublime and commune with nature. The play also reflects the less enthusiastic view of some who saw movement on the canal as tedious.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Erie Canal changed property law in New York. Most importantly, it expanded the government's right to take private property. Cases surrounding the newly built Erie Canal expanded condemnation theory to permit canal builders to appropriate private land and broadened the meaning of \"public use\" in the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The canal also had an impact on water access jurisprudence as well as nuisance law.",
"title": "Impact"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Today, the Erie Canal is used primarily by recreational vessels, though it remains served by several commercial barge-towing companies.",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The canal is open to small craft and some larger vessels from May through November each year. During winter, water is drained from parts of the canal for maintenance. The Champlain Canal, Lake Champlain, and the Chambly Canal, and Richelieu River in Canada form the Lakes to Locks Passage, making a tourist attraction of the former waterway linking eastern Canada to the Erie Canal. In 2006 recreational boating fees were eliminated to attract more visitors.",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The Erie Canal is a destination for tourists from all over the world, and has inspired guidebooks dedicated to exploration of the waterway. An Erie Canal Cruise company, based in Herkimer, operates from mid-May until mid-October with daily cruises. The cruise goes through the history of the canal and also takes passengers through Lock 18.",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Aside from transportation, numerous businesses, farms, factories and communities alongside its banks still utilize the canal's waters for other purposes such as irrigation for farmland, hydroelectricity, research, industry, and even drinking. Use of the canal system has an estimated total economic impact of $6.2 billion annually.",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Today, the reconfiguration of the canal created during the First Enlargement is commonly referred to as the \"Improved Erie Canal\" or the \"Old Erie Canal\", to distinguish it from the canal's modern-day course. Existing remains of the 1825 canal abandoned during the Enlargement are officially referred to today as \"Clinton's Ditch\" (which was also the popular nickname for the entire Erie Canal project during its original 1817–1825 construction).",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Sections of the Old Erie Canal not used after 1918 are owned by New York State, or have been ceded to or purchased by counties or municipalities. Many stretches of the old canal have been filled in to create roads such as Erie Boulevard in Syracuse and Schenectady, and Broad Street and the Rochester Subway in Rochester. A 36‑mile (58 km) stretch of the old canal from the town of DeWitt, New York, east of Syracuse, to just outside Rome, New York, is preserved as the Old Erie Canal State Historic Park. In 1960 the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, a section of the canal in Montgomery County, was one of the first sites recognized as a National Historic Landmark.",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Some municipalities have preserved sections as town or county canal parks, or have plans to do so. Camillus Erie Canal Park preserves a 7-mile (11 km) stretch and has restored Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct, built in 1841 as part of the First Enlargement of the canal. In some communities, the old canal has refilled with overgrowth and debris. Proposals have been made to rehydrate the old canal through downtown Rochester or Syracuse as a tourist attraction. In Syracuse, the location of the old canal is represented by a reflecting pool in downtown's Clinton Square and the downtown hosts a canal barge and weigh lock structure, now dry. Buffalo's Commercial Slip is the restored and re-watered segment of the canal which formed its \"Western Terminus\".",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In 2004, the administration of New York Governor George Pataki was criticized when officials of New York State Canal Corporation attempted to sell private development rights to large stretches of the Old Erie Canal to a single developer for $30,000, far less than the land was worth on the open market. After an investigation by the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper, the Pataki administration nullified the deal.",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Parks and museums related to the Old Erie Canal include (listed from east to west):",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Records of the planning, funding, design, construction, and administration of the Erie Canal are vast and can be found in the New York State Archives. Except for two years (1827–1829), the State of New York did not require canal boat operators to maintain or submit passenger lists.",
"title": "The canal today"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The following list of locks is provided for the current canal, from east to west. There are a total of 36 (35 numbered) locks on the Erie Canal.",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "All locks on the New York State Canal System are single-chamber; the dimensions are 328 feet (100 m) long and 45 feet (14 m) wide with a minimum 12-foot (3.7 m) depth of water over the miter sills at the upstream gates upon lift. They can accommodate a vessel up to 300 feet (91 m) long and 43.5 feet (13.3 m) wide. Overall sidewall height will vary by lock, ranging between 28 and 61 feet (8.5 and 18.6 m) depending on the lift and navigable stages. Lock E17 at Little Falls has the tallest sidewall height at 80 feet (24 m).",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Distance is based on position markers from an interactive canal map provided online by the New York State Canal Corporation and may not exactly match specifications on signs posted along the canal. Mean surface elevations are comprised from a combination of older canal profiles and history books as well as specifications on signs posted along the canal. The margin of error should normally be within 6 inches (15 cm).",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Waterford Flight series of locks (comprising Locks E2 through E6) is one of the steepest in the world, lifting boats 169 feet (52 m) in less than 2 miles (3.2 km).",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "All surface elevations are approximate.",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "* Denotes federally managed locks.",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "There is a 2-foot (0.61 m) natural rise between locks E33 and E34 as well as a 1.5-foot (0.46 m) natural rise between Lock E35 and the Niagara River.",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "There is no Lock E1 or Lock E31 on the Erie Canal. The place of \"Lock E1\" on the passage from the lower Hudson River to Lake Erie is taken by the Troy Federal Lock, located just north of Troy, New York, and is not part of the Erie Canal System proper. It is operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The Erie Canal officially begins at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers at Waterford, New York.",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Although the original alignment of the Erie Canal through Buffalo has been filled in, travel by water is still possible from Buffalo via the Black Rock Lock in the Niagara River to the canal's modern western terminus in Tonawanda, and eastward to Albany. The Black Rock Lock is operated by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.",
"title": "Locks"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Oneida Lake lies between locks E22 and E23, and has a mean surface elevation of 370 feet (110 m). Lake Erie has a mean surface elevation of 571 feet (174 m).",
"title": "Locks"
}
]
| The Erie Canal is a historic canal in upstate New York that runs east–west between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Completed in 1825, the canal was the first navigable waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, vastly reducing the costs of transporting people and goods across the Appalachians. In effect, the canal accelerated the settlement of the Great Lakes region, the westward expansion of the United States, and the economic ascendancy of New York State. It has been called "The Nation's First Superhighway." A canal from the Hudson to the Great Lakes was first proposed in the 1780s, but a formal survey was not conducted until 1808. The New York State Legislature authorized construction in 1817. Political opponents of the canal, and of its lead supporter New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, denigrated the project as "Clinton's Folly" and "Clinton's Big Ditch". Nonetheless, the canal saw quick success upon opening on October 26, 1825, with toll revenue covering the state's construction debt within the first year of operation. The westward connection gave New York City a strong advantage over all other U.S. ports and brought major growth to canal cities such as Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. The construction of the Erie Canal was a landmark civil engineering achievement in the early history of the United States. When built, the 363-mile (584 km) canal was the second-longest in the world. Initially 40 feet (12 m) wide and 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, the canal was expanded several times, most notably from 1905 to 1918 when the "Barge Canal" was built and over half the original route was abandoned. The modern Barge Canal measures 351 miles (565 km) long, 120 feet (37 m) wide, and 12 feet (3.7 m) deep. It has 34 locks, including the Waterford Flight, the steepest locks in the United States. When leaving the canal, boats must also traverse the Black Rock Lock to reach Lake Erie or the Troy Federal Lock to reach the tidal Hudson. The overall elevation difference is about 565 feet (172 m). The Erie's peak year was 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments took place. It continued to be competitive with railroads until about 1902, when tolls were abolished. Commercial traffic declined heavily in the latter half of the 20th century due to competition from trucking and the 1959 opening of the larger St. Lawrence Seaway. The canal's last regularly scheduled hauler, the Day Peckinpaugh, ended service in 1994. Today, the Erie Canal is mainly used by recreational watercraft. It connects the three other canals in the New York State Canal System: the Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga–Seneca. Some long-distance boaters take the Erie as part of the Great Loop. The canal has also become a tourist attraction in its own right—a number of parks and museums are dedicated to its history. The Erie Canalway Trail is a popular cycling path that follows the canal across the state. In 2000, Congress designated the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to protect and promote the system. | 2001-11-06T15:18:16Z | 2023-12-07T22:38:06Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal |
10,048 | Ethanol | Ethanol (also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound with the chemical formula CH3CH2OH. It is an alcohol, with its formula also written as C2H5OH, C2H6O or EtOH, where Et stands for ethyl. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a characteristic wine-like odor and pungent taste. It is a psychoactive recreational drug, and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks.
Ethanol is naturally produced by the fermentation process of sugars by yeasts or via petrochemical processes such as ethylene hydration. Historically it was used as a general anesthetic, and has modern medical applications as an antiseptic, disinfectant, solvent for some medications, and antidote for methanol poisoning and ethylene glycol poisoning. It is used as a chemical solvent and in the synthesis of organic compounds, and as a fuel source. Ethanol also can be dehydrated to make ethylene, an important chemical feedstock. As of 2006, world production of ethanol was 51 gigalitres (1.3×10 US gallons), coming mostly from Brazil and the U.S.
Ethanol is the systematic name defined by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry for a compound consisting of an alkyl group with two carbon atoms (prefix "eth-"), having a single bond between them (infix "-an-") and an attached −OH functional group (suffix "-ol").
The "eth-" prefix and the qualifier "ethyl" in "ethyl alcohol" originally came from the name "ethyl" assigned in 1834 to the group C2H5− by Justus Liebig. He coined the word from the German name Aether of the compound C2H5−O−C2H5 (commonly called "ether" in English, more specifically called "diethyl ether"). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Ethyl is a contraction of the Ancient Greek αἰθήρ (aithḗr, "upper air") and the Greek word ὕλη (hýlē, "wood, raw material", hence "matter, substance").
The name ethanol was coined as a result of a resolution on naming alcohols and phenols that was adopted at the International Conference on Chemical Nomenclature that was held in April 1892 in Geneva, Switzerland.
The term alcohol now refers to a wider class of substances in chemistry nomenclature, but in common parlance it remains the name of ethanol. It is a medieval loan from Arabic al-kuḥl, a powdered ore of antimony used since antiquity as a cosmetic, and retained that meaning in Middle Latin. The use of 'alcohol' for ethanol (in full, "alcohol of wine") is modern and was first recorded in 1753. Before the late 18th century the term "alcohol" generally referred to any sublimated substance.
Ethanol is the oldest known sedative, used as an oral general anesthetic during surgery in ancient Mesopotamia and in medieval times. Mild intoxication starts at a blood alcohol concentration of 0.03-0.05% and induces anesthetic coma at 0.4%. However, this use carried the high risk of deadly alcohol intoxication and pulmonary aspiration on vomit, which led to use of alternatives in antiquity, such as opium and cannabis, and later diethyl ether starting in the 1840s.
Ethanol is used in medical wipes and most commonly in antibacterial hand sanitizer gels as an antiseptic for its bactericidal and anti-fungal effects. Ethanol kills microorganisms by dissolving their membrane lipid bilayer and denaturing their proteins, and is effective against most bacteria, fungi and viruses. However, it is ineffective against bacterial spores, but that can be alleviated by using hydrogen peroxide.
A solution of 70% ethanol is more effective than pure ethanol because ethanol relies on water molecules for optimal antimicrobial activity. Absolute ethanol may inactivate microbes without destroying them because the alcohol is unable to fully permeate the microbe's membrane. Ethanol can also be used as a disinfectant and antiseptic because it causes cell dehydration by disrupting the osmotic balance across the cell membrane, so water leaves the cell leading to cell death.
Ethanol may be administered as an antidote to ethylene glycol poisoning and methanol poisoning. Ethanol serves this process by acting as a competitive inhibitor against methanol and ethylene glycol for alcohol dehydrogenase. Though it has more side effects, ethanol is less expensive and more readily available than fomepizole, which is also used as an antidote for methanol and ethylene glycol poisoning.
Ethanol, often in high concentrations, is used to dissolve many water-insoluble medications and related compounds. Liquid preparations of pain medications, cough and cold medicines, and mouth washes, for example, may contain up to 25% ethanol and may need to be avoided in individuals with adverse reactions to ethanol such as alcohol-induced respiratory reactions. Ethanol is present mainly as an antimicrobial preservative in over 700 liquid preparations of medicine including acetaminophen, iron supplements, ranitidine, furosemide, mannitol, phenobarbital, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole and over-the-counter cough medicine.
In mammals, ethanol is primarily metabolized in the liver and stomach by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) enzymes. These enzymes catalyze the oxidation of ethanol into acetaldehyde (ethanal):
When present in significant concentrations, this metabolism of ethanol is additionally aided by the cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP2E1 in humans, while trace amounts are also metabolized by catalase.
The resulting intermediate, acetaldehyde, is a known carcinogen, and poses significantly greater toxicity in humans than ethanol itself. Many of the symptoms typically associated with alcohol intoxication—as well as many of the health hazards typically associated with the long-term consumption of ethanol—can be attributed to acetaldehyde toxicity in humans.
The subsequent oxidation of acetaldehyde into acetate is performed by aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) enzymes. A mutation in the ALDH2 gene that encodes for an inactive or dysfunctional form of this enzyme affects roughly 50% of east Asian populations, contributing to the characteristic alcohol flush reaction that can cause temporary reddening of the skin as well as a number of related, and often unpleasant, symptoms of acetaldehyde toxicity. This mutation is typically accompanied by another mutation in the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme ADH1B in roughly 80% of east Asians, which improves the catalytic efficiency of converting ethanol into acetaldehyde.
As a central nervous system depressant, ethanol is one of the most commonly consumed psychoactive drugs.
Despite alcohol's psychoactive, addictive, and carcinogenic properties, it is readily available and legal for sale in most countries. There are laws regulating the sale, exportation/importation, taxation, manufacturing, consumption, and possession of alcoholic beverages. The most common regulation is prohibition for minors.
The largest single use of ethanol is as an engine fuel and fuel additive. Brazil in particular relies heavily upon the use of ethanol as an engine fuel, due in part to its role as one of the world's leading producers of ethanol. Gasoline sold in Brazil contains at least 25% anhydrous ethanol. Hydrous ethanol (about 95% ethanol and 5% water) can be used as fuel in more than 90% of new gasoline-fueled cars sold in the country.
The US and many other countries primarily use E10 (10% ethanol, sometimes known as gasohol) and E85 (85% ethanol) ethanol/gasoline mixtures. Over time, it is believed that a material portion of the ≈150-billion-US-gallon (570,000,000 m) per year market for gasoline will begin to be replaced with fuel ethanol.
Australian law limits the use of pure ethanol from sugarcane waste to 10% in automobiles. Older cars (and vintage cars designed to use a slower burning fuel) should have the engine valves upgraded or replaced.
According to an industry advocacy group, ethanol as a fuel reduces harmful tailpipe emissions of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, oxides of nitrogen, and other ozone-forming pollutants. Argonne National Laboratory analyzed greenhouse gas emissions of many different engine and fuel combinations, and found that biodiesel/petrodiesel blend (B20) showed a reduction of 8%, conventional E85 ethanol blend a reduction of 17% and cellulosic ethanol 64%, compared with pure gasoline. Ethanol has a much greater research octane number (RON) than gasoline, meaning it is less prone to pre-ignition, allowing for better ignition advance which means more torque, and efficiency in addition to the lower carbon emissions.
Ethanol combustion in an internal combustion engine yields many of the products of incomplete combustion produced by gasoline and significantly larger amounts of formaldehyde and related species such as acetaldehyde. This leads to a significantly larger photochemical reactivity and more ground level ozone. This data has been assembled into The Clean Fuels Report comparison of fuel emissions and show that ethanol exhaust generates 2.14 times as much ozone as gasoline exhaust. When this is added into the custom Localized Pollution Index of The Clean Fuels Report, the local pollution of ethanol (pollution that contributes to smog) is rated 1.7, where gasoline is 1.0 and higher numbers signify greater pollution. The California Air Resources Board formalized this issue in 2008 by recognizing control standards for formaldehydes as an emissions control group, much like the conventional NOx and reactive organic gases (ROGs).
More than 20% of Brazilian cars are able to use 100% ethanol as fuel, which includes ethanol-only engines and flex-fuel engines. Flex-fuel engines in Brazil are able to work with all ethanol, all gasoline or any mixture of both. In the United States, flex-fuel vehicles can run on 0% to 85% ethanol (15% gasoline) since higher ethanol blends are not yet allowed or efficient. Brazil supports this fleet of ethanol-burning automobiles with large national infrastructure that produces ethanol from domestically grown sugarcane.
Ethanol's high miscibility with water makes it unsuitable for shipping through modern pipelines like liquid hydrocarbons. Mechanics have seen increased cases of damage to small engines (in particular, the carburetor) and attribute the damage to the increased water retention by ethanol in fuel.
Ethanol was commonly used as fuel in early bipropellant rocket (liquid-propelled) vehicles, in conjunction with an oxidizer such as liquid oxygen. The German A-4 ballistic rocket of World War II (better known by its propaganda name V-2), which is credited as having begun the space age, used ethanol as the main constituent of B-Stoff. Under such nomenclature, the ethanol was mixed with 25% water to reduce the combustion chamber temperature. The V-2's design team helped develop U.S. rockets following World War II, including the ethanol-fueled Redstone rocket, which launched the first U.S. satellite. Alcohols fell into general disuse as more energy-dense rocket fuels were developed, although ethanol is currently used in lightweight rocket-powered racing aircraft.
Commercial fuel cells operate on reformed natural gas, hydrogen or methanol. Ethanol is an attractive alternative due to its wide availability, low cost, high purity and low toxicity. There is a wide range of fuel cell concepts that have entered trials including direct-ethanol fuel cells, auto-thermal reforming systems and thermally integrated systems. The majority of work is being conducted at a research level although there are a number of organizations at the beginning of the commercialization of ethanol fuel cells.
Ethanol fireplaces can be used for home heating or for decoration. Ethanol can also be used as stove fuel for cooking.
Ethanol is an important industrial ingredient. It has widespread use as a precursor for other organic compounds such as ethyl halides, ethyl esters, diethyl ether, acetic acid, and ethyl amines.
Ethanol is considered a universal solvent, as its molecular structure allows for the dissolving of both polar, hydrophilic and nonpolar, hydrophobic compounds. As ethanol also has a low boiling point, it is easy to remove from a solution that has been used to dissolve other compounds, making it a popular extracting agent for botanical oils. Cannabis oil extraction methods often use ethanol as an extraction solvent, and also as a post-processing solvent to remove oils, waxes, and chlorophyll from solution in a process known as winterization.
Ethanol is found in paints, tinctures, markers, and personal care products such as mouthwashes, perfumes and deodorants. Polysaccharides precipitate from aqueous solution in the presence of alcohol, and ethanol precipitation is used for this reason in the purification of DNA and RNA.
Because of its low freezing point of −114 °C (−173 °F) and low toxicity, ethanol is sometimes used in laboratories (with dry ice or other coolants) as a cooling bath to keep vessels at temperatures below the freezing point of water. For the same reason, it is also used as the active fluid in alcohol thermometers.
Ethanol is a 2-carbon alcohol. Its molecular formula is CH3CH2OH. The structure of the molecule of ethanol is CH3−CH2−OH (an ethyl group linked to a hydroxyl group), which indicates that the carbon of a methyl group (CH3−) is attached to the carbon of a methylene group (−CH2–), which is attached to the oxygen of a hydroxyl group (−OH). It is a constitutional isomer of dimethyl ether. Ethanol is sometimes abbreviated as EtOH, using the common organic chemistry notation of representing the ethyl group (C2H5−) with Et.
Ethanol is a volatile, colorless liquid that has a slight odor. It burns with a smokeless blue flame that is not always visible in normal light. The physical properties of ethanol stem primarily from the presence of its hydroxyl group and the shortness of its carbon chain. Ethanol's hydroxyl group is able to participate in hydrogen bonding, rendering it more viscous and less volatile than less polar organic compounds of similar molecular weight, such as propane.
Ethanol's adiabatic flame temperature for combustion in air is 2082 °C or 3779 °F.
Ethanol is slightly more refractive than water, having a refractive index of 1.36242 (at λ=589.3 nm and 18.35 °C or 65.03 °F). The triple point for ethanol is 150 ± 20 K.
Ethanol is a versatile solvent, miscible with water and with many organic solvents, including acetic acid, acetone, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, diethyl ether, ethylene glycol, glycerol, nitromethane, pyridine, and toluene. Its main use as a solvent is in making tincture of iodine, cough syrups, etc. It is also miscible with light aliphatic hydrocarbons, such as pentane and hexane, and with aliphatic chlorides such as trichloroethane and tetrachloroethylene.
Ethanol's miscibility with water contrasts with the immiscibility of longer-chain alcohols (five or more carbon atoms), whose water miscibility decreases sharply as the number of carbons increases. The miscibility of ethanol with alkanes is limited to alkanes up to undecane: mixtures with dodecane and higher alkanes show a miscibility gap below a certain temperature (about 13 °C for dodecane). The miscibility gap tends to get wider with higher alkanes, and the temperature for complete miscibility increases.
Ethanol-water mixtures have less volume than the sum of their individual components at the given fractions. Mixing equal volumes of ethanol and water results in only 1.92 volumes of mixture. Mixing ethanol and water is exothermic, with up to 777 J/mol being released at 298 K.
Mixtures of ethanol and water form an azeotrope at about 89 mole-% ethanol and 11 mole-% water or a mixture of 95.6% ethanol by mass (or about 97% alcohol by volume) at normal pressure, which boils at 351 K (78 °C). This azeotropic composition is strongly temperature- and pressure-dependent and vanishes at temperatures below 303 K.
Hydrogen bonding causes pure ethanol to be hygroscopic to the extent that it readily absorbs water from the air. The polar nature of the hydroxyl group causes ethanol to dissolve many ionic compounds, notably sodium and potassium hydroxides, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, ammonium chloride, ammonium bromide, and sodium bromide. Sodium and potassium chlorides are slightly soluble in ethanol. Because the ethanol molecule also has a nonpolar end, it will also dissolve nonpolar substances, including most essential oils and numerous flavoring, coloring, and medicinal agents.
The addition of even a few percent of ethanol to water sharply reduces the surface tension of water. This property partially explains the "tears of wine" phenomenon. When wine is swirled in a glass, ethanol evaporates quickly from the thin film of wine on the wall of the glass. As the wine's ethanol content decreases, its surface tension increases and the thin film "beads up" and runs down the glass in channels rather than as a smooth sheet.
An ethanol–water solution will catch fire if heated above a temperature called its flash point and an ignition source is then applied to it. For 20% alcohol by mass (about 25% by volume), this will occur at about 25 °C (77 °F). The flash point of pure ethanol is 13 °C (55 °F), but may be influenced very slightly by atmospheric composition such as pressure and humidity. Ethanol mixtures can ignite below average room temperature. Ethanol is considered a flammable liquid (Class 3 Hazardous Material) in concentrations above 2.35% by mass (3.0% by volume; 6 proof).
Dishes using burning alcohol for culinary effects are called flambé.
Ethanol is a byproduct of the metabolic process of yeast. As such, ethanol will be present in any yeast habitat. Ethanol can commonly be found in overripe fruit. Ethanol produced by symbiotic yeast can be found in bertam palm blossoms. Although some animal species, such as the pentailed treeshrew, exhibit ethanol-seeking behaviors, most show no interest or avoidance of food sources containing ethanol. Ethanol is also produced during the germination of many plants as a result of natural anaerobiosis. Ethanol has been detected in outer space, forming an icy coating around dust grains in interstellar clouds. Minute quantity amounts (average 196 ppb) of endogenous ethanol and acetaldehyde were found in the exhaled breath of healthy volunteers. Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system.
Ethanol is produced both as a petrochemical, through the hydration of ethylene and, via biological processes, by fermenting sugars with yeast. Which process is more economical depends on prevailing prices of petroleum and grain feed stocks.
World production of ethanol in 2006 was 51 gigalitres (1.3×10 US gal), with 69% of the world supply coming from Brazil and the U.S. Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugarcane, which has relatively high yields (830% more fuel than the fossil fuels used to produce it) compared to some other energy crops. Sugarcane not only has a greater concentration of sucrose than corn (by about 30%), but is also much easier to extract. The bagasse generated by the process is not discarded, but burned by power plants to produce electricity. Bagasse burning accounts for around 9% of the electricity produced in Brazil.
In the 1970s most industrial ethanol in the U.S. was made as a petrochemical, but in the 1980s the U.S. introduced subsidies for corn-based ethanol. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, as of 30 October 2007, 131 grain ethanol bio-refineries in the U.S. have the capacity to produce 7×10^ US gal (26,000,000 m) of ethanol per year. An additional 72 construction projects underway (in the U.S.) can add 6.4 billion US gallons (24,000,000 m) of new capacity in the next 18 months.
In India ethanol is made from sugarcane. Sweet sorghum is another potential source of ethanol, and is suitable for growing in dryland conditions. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics is investigating the possibility of growing sorghum as a source of fuel, food, and animal feed in arid parts of Asia and Africa. Sweet sorghum has one-third the water requirement of sugarcane over the same time period. It also requires about 22% less water than corn. The world's first sweet sorghum ethanol distillery began commercial production in 2007 in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Ethanol can be produced from petrochemical feed stocks, primarily by the acid-catalyzed hydration of ethylene. It is often referred to as synthetic ethanol.
The catalyst is most commonly phosphoric acid, adsorbed onto a porous support such as silica gel or diatomaceous earth. This catalyst was first used for large-scale ethanol production by the Shell Oil Company in 1947. The reaction is carried out in the presence of high pressure steam at 300 °C (572 °F) where a 5:3 ethylene to steam ratio is maintained. This process was used on an industrial scale by Union Carbide Corporation and others. It is no longer practiced in the US as fermentation ethanol produced from corn is more economical.
In an older process, first practiced on the industrial scale in 1930 by Union Carbide but now almost entirely obsolete, ethylene was hydrated indirectly by reacting it with concentrated sulfuric acid to produce ethyl sulfate, which was hydrolyzed to yield ethanol and regenerate the sulfuric acid:
Ethanol has been produced in the laboratory by converting carbon dioxide via biological and electrochemical reactions.
Ethanol in alcoholic beverages and fuel is produced by fermentation. Certain species of yeast (e.g., Saccharomyces cerevisiae) metabolize sugar (namely polysaccharides), producing ethanol and carbon dioxide. The chemical equations below summarize the conversion:
Fermentation is the process of culturing yeast under favorable thermal conditions to produce alcohol. This process is carried out at around 35–40 °C (95–104 °F). Toxicity of ethanol to yeast limits the ethanol concentration obtainable by brewing; higher concentrations, therefore, are obtained by fortification or distillation. The most ethanol-tolerant yeast strains can survive up to approximately 18% ethanol by volume.
To produce ethanol from starchy materials such as cereals, the starch must first be converted into sugars. In brewing beer, this has traditionally been accomplished by allowing the grain to germinate, or malt, which produces the enzyme amylase. When the malted grain is mashed, the amylase converts the remaining starches into sugars.
Sugars for ethanol fermentation can be obtained from cellulose. Deployment of this technology could turn a number of cellulose-containing agricultural by-products, such as corncobs, straw, and sawdust, into renewable energy resources. Other agricultural residues such as sugarcane bagasse and energy crops such as switchgrass may also be fermentable sugar sources.
Breweries and biofuel plants employ two methods for measuring ethanol concentration. Infrared ethanol sensors measure the vibrational frequency of dissolved ethanol using the C−H band at 2900 cm. This method uses a relatively inexpensive solid-state sensor that compares the C−H band with a reference band to calculate the ethanol content. The calculation makes use of the Beer–Lambert law. Alternatively, by measuring the density of the starting material and the density of the product, using a hydrometer, the change in specific gravity during fermentation indicates the alcohol content. This inexpensive and indirect method has a long history in the beer brewing industry.
Ethylene hydration or brewing produces an ethanol–water mixture. For most industrial and fuel uses, the ethanol must be purified. Fractional distillation at atmospheric pressure can concentrate ethanol to 95.6% by weight (89.5 mole%). This mixture is an azeotrope with a boiling point of 78.1 °C (172.6 °F), and cannot be further purified by distillation. Addition of an entraining agent, such as benzene, cyclohexane, or heptane, allows a new ternary azeotrope comprising the ethanol, water, and the entraining agent to be formed. This lower-boiling ternary azeotrope is removed preferentially, leading to water-free ethanol.
Apart from distillation, ethanol may be dried by addition of a desiccant, such as molecular sieves, cellulose, or cornmeal. The desiccants can be dried and reused. Molecular sieves can be used to selectively absorb the water from the 95.6% ethanol solution. Molecular sieves of pore-size 3 Ångstrom, a type of zeolite, effectively sequester water molecules while excluding ethanol molecules. Heating the wet sieves drives out the water, allowing regeneration of their desiccant capability.
Membranes can also be used to separate ethanol and water. Membrane-based separations are not subject to the limitations of the water-ethanol azeotrope because the separations are not based on vapor-liquid equilibria. Membranes are often used in the so-called hybrid membrane distillation process. This process uses a pre-concentration distillation column as the first separating step. The further separation is then accomplished with a membrane operated either in vapor permeation or pervaporation mode. Vapor permeation uses a vapor membrane feed and pervaporation uses a liquid membrane feed.
A variety of other techniques have been discussed, including the following:
Pure ethanol and alcoholic beverages are heavily taxed as psychoactive drugs, but ethanol has many uses that do not involve its consumption. To relieve the tax burden on these uses, most jurisdictions waive the tax when an agent has been added to the ethanol to render it unfit to drink. These include bittering agents such as denatonium benzoate and toxins such as methanol, naphtha, and pyridine. Products of this kind are called denatured alcohol.
Absolute or anhydrous alcohol refers to ethanol with a low water content. There are various grades with maximum water contents ranging from 1% to a few parts per million (ppm). If azeotropic distillation is used to remove water, it will contain trace amounts of the material separation agent (e.g. benzene). Absolute alcohol is not intended for human consumption. Absolute ethanol is used as a solvent for laboratory and industrial applications, where water will react with other chemicals, and as fuel alcohol. Spectroscopic ethanol is an absolute ethanol with a low absorbance in ultraviolet and visible light, fit for use as a solvent in ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy.
Pure ethanol is classed as 200 proof in the US, equivalent to 175 degrees proof in the UK system.
Rectified spirit, an azeotropic composition of 96% ethanol containing 4% water, is used instead of anhydrous ethanol for various purposes. Spirits of wine are about 94% ethanol (188 proof). The impurities are different from those in 95% (190 proof) laboratory ethanol.
Ethanol is classified as a primary alcohol, meaning that the carbon that its hydroxyl group attaches to has at least two hydrogen atoms attached to it as well. Many ethanol reactions occur at its hydroxyl group.
In the presence of acid catalysts, ethanol reacts with carboxylic acids to produce ethyl esters and water:
This reaction, which is conducted on large scale industrially, requires the removal of the water from the reaction mixture as it is formed. Esters react in the presence of an acid or base to give back the alcohol and a salt. This reaction is known as saponification because it is used in the preparation of soap. Ethanol can also form esters with inorganic acids. Diethyl sulfate and triethyl phosphate are prepared by treating ethanol with sulfur trioxide and phosphorus pentoxide respectively. Diethyl sulfate is a useful ethylating agent in organic synthesis. Ethyl nitrite, prepared from the reaction of ethanol with sodium nitrite and sulfuric acid, was formerly used as a diuretic.
In the presence of acid catalysts, alcohols can be converted to alkenes such as ethanol to ethylene. Typically solid acids such as alumina are used.
Since water is removed from the same molecule, the reaction is known as intramolecular dehydration. Intramolecular dehydration of an alcohol requires a high temperature and the presence of an acid catalyst such as sulfuric acid.
Ethylene produced from sugar-derived ethanol (primarily in Brazil) competes with ethylene produced from petrochemical feedstocks such as naphtha and ethane.
At a lower temperature than that of intramolecular dehydration, intermolecular alcohol dehydration may occur producing a symmetrical ether. This is a condensation reaction. In the following example, diethyl ether is produced from ethanol:
Complete combustion of ethanol forms carbon dioxide and water:
Specific heat = 2.44 kJ/(kg·K)
Ethanol is a neutral molecule and the pH of a solution of ethanol in water is nearly 7.00. Ethanol can be quantitatively converted to its conjugate base, the ethoxide ion (CH3CH2O), by reaction with an alkali metal such as sodium:
or a very strong base such as sodium hydride:
The acidities of water and ethanol are nearly the same, as indicated by their pKa of 15.7 and 16 respectively. Thus, sodium ethoxide and sodium hydroxide exist in an equilibrium that is closely balanced:
Ethanol is not used industrially as a precursor to ethyl halides, but the reactions are illustrative. Ethanol reacts with hydrogen halides to produce ethyl halides such as ethyl chloride and ethyl bromide via an SN2 reaction:
HCl requires a catalyst such as zinc chloride. HBr requires refluxing with a sulfuric acid catalyst. Ethyl halides can, in principle, also be produced by treating ethanol with more specialized halogenating agents, such as thionyl chloride or phosphorus tribromide.
Upon treatment with halogens in the presence of base, ethanol gives the corresponding haloform (CHX3, where X = Cl, Br, I). This conversion is called the haloform reaction. An intermediate in the reaction with chlorine is the aldehyde called chloral, which forms chloral hydrate upon reaction with water:
Ethanol can be oxidized to acetaldehyde and further oxidized to acetic acid, depending on the reagents and conditions. This oxidation is of no importance industrially, but in the human body, these oxidation reactions are catalyzed by the enzyme liver alcohol dehydrogenase. The oxidation product of ethanol, acetic acid, is a nutrient for humans, being a precursor to acetyl CoA, where the acetyl group can be spent as energy or used for biosynthesis.
Ethanol is similar to macronutrients such as proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in that it provides calories. When consumed and metabolized, it contributes 7 kilocalories per gram via ethanol metabolism.
Ethanol is very flammable and should not be used around an open flame.
Pure ethanol will irritate the skin and eyes. Nausea, vomiting, and intoxication are symptoms of ingestion. Long-term use by ingestion can result in serious liver damage. Atmospheric concentrations above one part per thousand are above the European Union occupational exposure limits.
The fermentation of sugar into ethanol is one of the earliest biotechnologies employed by humans. Ethanol has historically been identified variously as spirit of wine or ardent spirits, and as aqua vitae or aqua vita. The intoxicating effects of its consumption have been known since ancient times. Ethanol has been used by humans since prehistory as the intoxicating ingredient of alcoholic beverages. Dried residue on 9,000-year-old pottery found in China suggests that Neolithic people consumed alcoholic beverages.
The inflammable nature of the exhalations of wine was already known to ancient natural philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BCE), and Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 CE). However, this did not immediately lead to the isolation of ethanol, even despite the development of more advanced distillation techniques in second- and third-century Roman Egypt. An important recognition, first found in one of the writings attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (ninth century CE), was that by adding salt to boiling wine, which increases the wine's relative volatility, the flammability of the resulting vapors may be enhanced. The distillation of wine is attested in Arabic works attributed to al-Kindī (c. 801–873 CE) and to al-Fārābī (c. 872–950), and in the 28th book of al-Zahrāwī's (Latin: Abulcasis, 936–1013) Kitāb al-Taṣrīf (later translated into Latin as Liber servatoris). In the twelfth century, recipes for the production of aqua ardens ("burning water", i.e., ethanol) by distilling wine with salt started to appear in a number of Latin works, and by the end of the thirteenth century it had become a widely known substance among Western European chemists.
The works of Taddeo Alderotti (1223–1296) describe a method for concentrating ethanol involving repeated fractional distillation through a water-cooled still, by which an ethanol purity of 90% could be obtained. The medicinal properties of ethanol were studied by Arnald of Villanova (1240–1311 CE) and John of Rupescissa (c. 1310–1366), the latter of whom regarded it as a life-preserving substance able to prevent all diseases (the aqua vitae or "water of life", also called by John the quintessence of wine).
In China, archaeological evidence indicates that the true distillation of alcohol began during the Jin (1115–1234) or Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties. A still has been found at an archaeological site in Qinglong, Hebei, dating to the 12th century. In India, the true distillation of alcohol was introduced from the Middle East, and was in wide use in the Delhi Sultanate by the 14th century.
In 1796, German-Russian chemist Johann Tobias Lowitz obtained pure ethanol by mixing partially purified ethanol (the alcohol-water azeotrope) with an excess of anhydrous alkali and then distilling the mixture over low heat. French chemist Antoine Lavoisier described ethanol as a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and in 1807 Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure determined ethanol's chemical formula. Fifty years later, Archibald Scott Couper published the structural formula of ethanol. It was one of the first structural formulas determined.
Ethanol was first prepared synthetically in 1825 by Michael Faraday. He found that sulfuric acid could absorb large volumes of coal gas. He gave the resulting solution to Henry Hennell, a British chemist, who found in 1826 that it contained "sulphovinic acid" (ethyl hydrogen sulfate). In 1828, Hennell and the French chemist Georges-Simon Serullas independently discovered that sulphovinic acid could be decomposed into ethanol. Thus, in 1825 Faraday had unwittingly discovered that ethanol could be produced from ethylene (a component of coal gas) by acid-catalyzed hydration, a process similar to current industrial ethanol synthesis.
Ethanol was used as lamp fuel in the U.S. as early as 1840, but a tax levied on industrial alcohol during the Civil War made this use uneconomical. The tax was repealed in 1906. Use as an automotive fuel dates back to 1908, with the Ford Model T able to run on petrol (gasoline) or ethanol. It fuels some spirit lamps.
Ethanol intended for industrial use is often produced from ethylene. Ethanol has widespread use as a solvent of substances intended for human contact or consumption, including scents, flavorings, colorings, and medicines. In chemistry, it is both a solvent and a feedstock for the synthesis of other products. It has a long history as a fuel for heat and light, and more recently as a fuel for internal combustion engines. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Ethanol (also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound with the chemical formula CH3CH2OH. It is an alcohol, with its formula also written as C2H5OH, C2H6O or EtOH, where Et stands for ethyl. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a characteristic wine-like odor and pungent taste. It is a psychoactive recreational drug, and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Ethanol is naturally produced by the fermentation process of sugars by yeasts or via petrochemical processes such as ethylene hydration. Historically it was used as a general anesthetic, and has modern medical applications as an antiseptic, disinfectant, solvent for some medications, and antidote for methanol poisoning and ethylene glycol poisoning. It is used as a chemical solvent and in the synthesis of organic compounds, and as a fuel source. Ethanol also can be dehydrated to make ethylene, an important chemical feedstock. As of 2006, world production of ethanol was 51 gigalitres (1.3×10 US gallons), coming mostly from Brazil and the U.S.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Ethanol is the systematic name defined by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry for a compound consisting of an alkyl group with two carbon atoms (prefix \"eth-\"), having a single bond between them (infix \"-an-\") and an attached −OH functional group (suffix \"-ol\").",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The \"eth-\" prefix and the qualifier \"ethyl\" in \"ethyl alcohol\" originally came from the name \"ethyl\" assigned in 1834 to the group C2H5− by Justus Liebig. He coined the word from the German name Aether of the compound C2H5−O−C2H5 (commonly called \"ether\" in English, more specifically called \"diethyl ether\"). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Ethyl is a contraction of the Ancient Greek αἰθήρ (aithḗr, \"upper air\") and the Greek word ὕλη (hýlē, \"wood, raw material\", hence \"matter, substance\").",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The name ethanol was coined as a result of a resolution on naming alcohols and phenols that was adopted at the International Conference on Chemical Nomenclature that was held in April 1892 in Geneva, Switzerland.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The term alcohol now refers to a wider class of substances in chemistry nomenclature, but in common parlance it remains the name of ethanol. It is a medieval loan from Arabic al-kuḥl, a powdered ore of antimony used since antiquity as a cosmetic, and retained that meaning in Middle Latin. The use of 'alcohol' for ethanol (in full, \"alcohol of wine\") is modern and was first recorded in 1753. Before the late 18th century the term \"alcohol\" generally referred to any sublimated substance.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Ethanol is the oldest known sedative, used as an oral general anesthetic during surgery in ancient Mesopotamia and in medieval times. Mild intoxication starts at a blood alcohol concentration of 0.03-0.05% and induces anesthetic coma at 0.4%. However, this use carried the high risk of deadly alcohol intoxication and pulmonary aspiration on vomit, which led to use of alternatives in antiquity, such as opium and cannabis, and later diethyl ether starting in the 1840s.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Ethanol is used in medical wipes and most commonly in antibacterial hand sanitizer gels as an antiseptic for its bactericidal and anti-fungal effects. Ethanol kills microorganisms by dissolving their membrane lipid bilayer and denaturing their proteins, and is effective against most bacteria, fungi and viruses. However, it is ineffective against bacterial spores, but that can be alleviated by using hydrogen peroxide.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "A solution of 70% ethanol is more effective than pure ethanol because ethanol relies on water molecules for optimal antimicrobial activity. Absolute ethanol may inactivate microbes without destroying them because the alcohol is unable to fully permeate the microbe's membrane. Ethanol can also be used as a disinfectant and antiseptic because it causes cell dehydration by disrupting the osmotic balance across the cell membrane, so water leaves the cell leading to cell death.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Ethanol may be administered as an antidote to ethylene glycol poisoning and methanol poisoning. Ethanol serves this process by acting as a competitive inhibitor against methanol and ethylene glycol for alcohol dehydrogenase. Though it has more side effects, ethanol is less expensive and more readily available than fomepizole, which is also used as an antidote for methanol and ethylene glycol poisoning.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Ethanol, often in high concentrations, is used to dissolve many water-insoluble medications and related compounds. Liquid preparations of pain medications, cough and cold medicines, and mouth washes, for example, may contain up to 25% ethanol and may need to be avoided in individuals with adverse reactions to ethanol such as alcohol-induced respiratory reactions. Ethanol is present mainly as an antimicrobial preservative in over 700 liquid preparations of medicine including acetaminophen, iron supplements, ranitidine, furosemide, mannitol, phenobarbital, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole and over-the-counter cough medicine.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In mammals, ethanol is primarily metabolized in the liver and stomach by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) enzymes. These enzymes catalyze the oxidation of ethanol into acetaldehyde (ethanal):",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "When present in significant concentrations, this metabolism of ethanol is additionally aided by the cytochrome P450 enzyme CYP2E1 in humans, while trace amounts are also metabolized by catalase.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The resulting intermediate, acetaldehyde, is a known carcinogen, and poses significantly greater toxicity in humans than ethanol itself. Many of the symptoms typically associated with alcohol intoxication—as well as many of the health hazards typically associated with the long-term consumption of ethanol—can be attributed to acetaldehyde toxicity in humans.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The subsequent oxidation of acetaldehyde into acetate is performed by aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) enzymes. A mutation in the ALDH2 gene that encodes for an inactive or dysfunctional form of this enzyme affects roughly 50% of east Asian populations, contributing to the characteristic alcohol flush reaction that can cause temporary reddening of the skin as well as a number of related, and often unpleasant, symptoms of acetaldehyde toxicity. This mutation is typically accompanied by another mutation in the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme ADH1B in roughly 80% of east Asians, which improves the catalytic efficiency of converting ethanol into acetaldehyde.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "As a central nervous system depressant, ethanol is one of the most commonly consumed psychoactive drugs.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Despite alcohol's psychoactive, addictive, and carcinogenic properties, it is readily available and legal for sale in most countries. There are laws regulating the sale, exportation/importation, taxation, manufacturing, consumption, and possession of alcoholic beverages. The most common regulation is prohibition for minors.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The largest single use of ethanol is as an engine fuel and fuel additive. Brazil in particular relies heavily upon the use of ethanol as an engine fuel, due in part to its role as one of the world's leading producers of ethanol. Gasoline sold in Brazil contains at least 25% anhydrous ethanol. Hydrous ethanol (about 95% ethanol and 5% water) can be used as fuel in more than 90% of new gasoline-fueled cars sold in the country.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The US and many other countries primarily use E10 (10% ethanol, sometimes known as gasohol) and E85 (85% ethanol) ethanol/gasoline mixtures. Over time, it is believed that a material portion of the ≈150-billion-US-gallon (570,000,000 m) per year market for gasoline will begin to be replaced with fuel ethanol.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Australian law limits the use of pure ethanol from sugarcane waste to 10% in automobiles. Older cars (and vintage cars designed to use a slower burning fuel) should have the engine valves upgraded or replaced.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "According to an industry advocacy group, ethanol as a fuel reduces harmful tailpipe emissions of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, oxides of nitrogen, and other ozone-forming pollutants. Argonne National Laboratory analyzed greenhouse gas emissions of many different engine and fuel combinations, and found that biodiesel/petrodiesel blend (B20) showed a reduction of 8%, conventional E85 ethanol blend a reduction of 17% and cellulosic ethanol 64%, compared with pure gasoline. Ethanol has a much greater research octane number (RON) than gasoline, meaning it is less prone to pre-ignition, allowing for better ignition advance which means more torque, and efficiency in addition to the lower carbon emissions.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Ethanol combustion in an internal combustion engine yields many of the products of incomplete combustion produced by gasoline and significantly larger amounts of formaldehyde and related species such as acetaldehyde. This leads to a significantly larger photochemical reactivity and more ground level ozone. This data has been assembled into The Clean Fuels Report comparison of fuel emissions and show that ethanol exhaust generates 2.14 times as much ozone as gasoline exhaust. When this is added into the custom Localized Pollution Index of The Clean Fuels Report, the local pollution of ethanol (pollution that contributes to smog) is rated 1.7, where gasoline is 1.0 and higher numbers signify greater pollution. The California Air Resources Board formalized this issue in 2008 by recognizing control standards for formaldehydes as an emissions control group, much like the conventional NOx and reactive organic gases (ROGs).",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "More than 20% of Brazilian cars are able to use 100% ethanol as fuel, which includes ethanol-only engines and flex-fuel engines. Flex-fuel engines in Brazil are able to work with all ethanol, all gasoline or any mixture of both. In the United States, flex-fuel vehicles can run on 0% to 85% ethanol (15% gasoline) since higher ethanol blends are not yet allowed or efficient. Brazil supports this fleet of ethanol-burning automobiles with large national infrastructure that produces ethanol from domestically grown sugarcane.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Ethanol's high miscibility with water makes it unsuitable for shipping through modern pipelines like liquid hydrocarbons. Mechanics have seen increased cases of damage to small engines (in particular, the carburetor) and attribute the damage to the increased water retention by ethanol in fuel.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Ethanol was commonly used as fuel in early bipropellant rocket (liquid-propelled) vehicles, in conjunction with an oxidizer such as liquid oxygen. The German A-4 ballistic rocket of World War II (better known by its propaganda name V-2), which is credited as having begun the space age, used ethanol as the main constituent of B-Stoff. Under such nomenclature, the ethanol was mixed with 25% water to reduce the combustion chamber temperature. The V-2's design team helped develop U.S. rockets following World War II, including the ethanol-fueled Redstone rocket, which launched the first U.S. satellite. Alcohols fell into general disuse as more energy-dense rocket fuels were developed, although ethanol is currently used in lightweight rocket-powered racing aircraft.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Commercial fuel cells operate on reformed natural gas, hydrogen or methanol. Ethanol is an attractive alternative due to its wide availability, low cost, high purity and low toxicity. There is a wide range of fuel cell concepts that have entered trials including direct-ethanol fuel cells, auto-thermal reforming systems and thermally integrated systems. The majority of work is being conducted at a research level although there are a number of organizations at the beginning of the commercialization of ethanol fuel cells.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Ethanol fireplaces can be used for home heating or for decoration. Ethanol can also be used as stove fuel for cooking.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Ethanol is an important industrial ingredient. It has widespread use as a precursor for other organic compounds such as ethyl halides, ethyl esters, diethyl ether, acetic acid, and ethyl amines.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Ethanol is considered a universal solvent, as its molecular structure allows for the dissolving of both polar, hydrophilic and nonpolar, hydrophobic compounds. As ethanol also has a low boiling point, it is easy to remove from a solution that has been used to dissolve other compounds, making it a popular extracting agent for botanical oils. Cannabis oil extraction methods often use ethanol as an extraction solvent, and also as a post-processing solvent to remove oils, waxes, and chlorophyll from solution in a process known as winterization.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Ethanol is found in paints, tinctures, markers, and personal care products such as mouthwashes, perfumes and deodorants. Polysaccharides precipitate from aqueous solution in the presence of alcohol, and ethanol precipitation is used for this reason in the purification of DNA and RNA.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Because of its low freezing point of −114 °C (−173 °F) and low toxicity, ethanol is sometimes used in laboratories (with dry ice or other coolants) as a cooling bath to keep vessels at temperatures below the freezing point of water. For the same reason, it is also used as the active fluid in alcohol thermometers.",
"title": "Uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Ethanol is a 2-carbon alcohol. Its molecular formula is CH3CH2OH. The structure of the molecule of ethanol is CH3−CH2−OH (an ethyl group linked to a hydroxyl group), which indicates that the carbon of a methyl group (CH3−) is attached to the carbon of a methylene group (−CH2–), which is attached to the oxygen of a hydroxyl group (−OH). It is a constitutional isomer of dimethyl ether. Ethanol is sometimes abbreviated as EtOH, using the common organic chemistry notation of representing the ethyl group (C2H5−) with Et.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Ethanol is a volatile, colorless liquid that has a slight odor. It burns with a smokeless blue flame that is not always visible in normal light. The physical properties of ethanol stem primarily from the presence of its hydroxyl group and the shortness of its carbon chain. Ethanol's hydroxyl group is able to participate in hydrogen bonding, rendering it more viscous and less volatile than less polar organic compounds of similar molecular weight, such as propane.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Ethanol's adiabatic flame temperature for combustion in air is 2082 °C or 3779 °F.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Ethanol is slightly more refractive than water, having a refractive index of 1.36242 (at λ=589.3 nm and 18.35 °C or 65.03 °F). The triple point for ethanol is 150 ± 20 K.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Ethanol is a versatile solvent, miscible with water and with many organic solvents, including acetic acid, acetone, benzene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, diethyl ether, ethylene glycol, glycerol, nitromethane, pyridine, and toluene. Its main use as a solvent is in making tincture of iodine, cough syrups, etc. It is also miscible with light aliphatic hydrocarbons, such as pentane and hexane, and with aliphatic chlorides such as trichloroethane and tetrachloroethylene.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Ethanol's miscibility with water contrasts with the immiscibility of longer-chain alcohols (five or more carbon atoms), whose water miscibility decreases sharply as the number of carbons increases. The miscibility of ethanol with alkanes is limited to alkanes up to undecane: mixtures with dodecane and higher alkanes show a miscibility gap below a certain temperature (about 13 °C for dodecane). The miscibility gap tends to get wider with higher alkanes, and the temperature for complete miscibility increases.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Ethanol-water mixtures have less volume than the sum of their individual components at the given fractions. Mixing equal volumes of ethanol and water results in only 1.92 volumes of mixture. Mixing ethanol and water is exothermic, with up to 777 J/mol being released at 298 K.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Mixtures of ethanol and water form an azeotrope at about 89 mole-% ethanol and 11 mole-% water or a mixture of 95.6% ethanol by mass (or about 97% alcohol by volume) at normal pressure, which boils at 351 K (78 °C). This azeotropic composition is strongly temperature- and pressure-dependent and vanishes at temperatures below 303 K.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Hydrogen bonding causes pure ethanol to be hygroscopic to the extent that it readily absorbs water from the air. The polar nature of the hydroxyl group causes ethanol to dissolve many ionic compounds, notably sodium and potassium hydroxides, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, ammonium chloride, ammonium bromide, and sodium bromide. Sodium and potassium chlorides are slightly soluble in ethanol. Because the ethanol molecule also has a nonpolar end, it will also dissolve nonpolar substances, including most essential oils and numerous flavoring, coloring, and medicinal agents.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The addition of even a few percent of ethanol to water sharply reduces the surface tension of water. This property partially explains the \"tears of wine\" phenomenon. When wine is swirled in a glass, ethanol evaporates quickly from the thin film of wine on the wall of the glass. As the wine's ethanol content decreases, its surface tension increases and the thin film \"beads up\" and runs down the glass in channels rather than as a smooth sheet.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "An ethanol–water solution will catch fire if heated above a temperature called its flash point and an ignition source is then applied to it. For 20% alcohol by mass (about 25% by volume), this will occur at about 25 °C (77 °F). The flash point of pure ethanol is 13 °C (55 °F), but may be influenced very slightly by atmospheric composition such as pressure and humidity. Ethanol mixtures can ignite below average room temperature. Ethanol is considered a flammable liquid (Class 3 Hazardous Material) in concentrations above 2.35% by mass (3.0% by volume; 6 proof).",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Dishes using burning alcohol for culinary effects are called flambé.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Ethanol is a byproduct of the metabolic process of yeast. As such, ethanol will be present in any yeast habitat. Ethanol can commonly be found in overripe fruit. Ethanol produced by symbiotic yeast can be found in bertam palm blossoms. Although some animal species, such as the pentailed treeshrew, exhibit ethanol-seeking behaviors, most show no interest or avoidance of food sources containing ethanol. Ethanol is also produced during the germination of many plants as a result of natural anaerobiosis. Ethanol has been detected in outer space, forming an icy coating around dust grains in interstellar clouds. Minute quantity amounts (average 196 ppb) of endogenous ethanol and acetaldehyde were found in the exhaled breath of healthy volunteers. Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system.",
"title": "Natural occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Ethanol is produced both as a petrochemical, through the hydration of ethylene and, via biological processes, by fermenting sugars with yeast. Which process is more economical depends on prevailing prices of petroleum and grain feed stocks.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "World production of ethanol in 2006 was 51 gigalitres (1.3×10 US gal), with 69% of the world supply coming from Brazil and the U.S. Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugarcane, which has relatively high yields (830% more fuel than the fossil fuels used to produce it) compared to some other energy crops. Sugarcane not only has a greater concentration of sucrose than corn (by about 30%), but is also much easier to extract. The bagasse generated by the process is not discarded, but burned by power plants to produce electricity. Bagasse burning accounts for around 9% of the electricity produced in Brazil.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In the 1970s most industrial ethanol in the U.S. was made as a petrochemical, but in the 1980s the U.S. introduced subsidies for corn-based ethanol. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, as of 30 October 2007, 131 grain ethanol bio-refineries in the U.S. have the capacity to produce 7×10^ US gal (26,000,000 m) of ethanol per year. An additional 72 construction projects underway (in the U.S.) can add 6.4 billion US gallons (24,000,000 m) of new capacity in the next 18 months.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In India ethanol is made from sugarcane. Sweet sorghum is another potential source of ethanol, and is suitable for growing in dryland conditions. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics is investigating the possibility of growing sorghum as a source of fuel, food, and animal feed in arid parts of Asia and Africa. Sweet sorghum has one-third the water requirement of sugarcane over the same time period. It also requires about 22% less water than corn. The world's first sweet sorghum ethanol distillery began commercial production in 2007 in Andhra Pradesh, India.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Ethanol can be produced from petrochemical feed stocks, primarily by the acid-catalyzed hydration of ethylene. It is often referred to as synthetic ethanol.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The catalyst is most commonly phosphoric acid, adsorbed onto a porous support such as silica gel or diatomaceous earth. This catalyst was first used for large-scale ethanol production by the Shell Oil Company in 1947. The reaction is carried out in the presence of high pressure steam at 300 °C (572 °F) where a 5:3 ethylene to steam ratio is maintained. This process was used on an industrial scale by Union Carbide Corporation and others. It is no longer practiced in the US as fermentation ethanol produced from corn is more economical.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "In an older process, first practiced on the industrial scale in 1930 by Union Carbide but now almost entirely obsolete, ethylene was hydrated indirectly by reacting it with concentrated sulfuric acid to produce ethyl sulfate, which was hydrolyzed to yield ethanol and regenerate the sulfuric acid:",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Ethanol has been produced in the laboratory by converting carbon dioxide via biological and electrochemical reactions.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Ethanol in alcoholic beverages and fuel is produced by fermentation. Certain species of yeast (e.g., Saccharomyces cerevisiae) metabolize sugar (namely polysaccharides), producing ethanol and carbon dioxide. The chemical equations below summarize the conversion:",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Fermentation is the process of culturing yeast under favorable thermal conditions to produce alcohol. This process is carried out at around 35–40 °C (95–104 °F). Toxicity of ethanol to yeast limits the ethanol concentration obtainable by brewing; higher concentrations, therefore, are obtained by fortification or distillation. The most ethanol-tolerant yeast strains can survive up to approximately 18% ethanol by volume.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "To produce ethanol from starchy materials such as cereals, the starch must first be converted into sugars. In brewing beer, this has traditionally been accomplished by allowing the grain to germinate, or malt, which produces the enzyme amylase. When the malted grain is mashed, the amylase converts the remaining starches into sugars.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Sugars for ethanol fermentation can be obtained from cellulose. Deployment of this technology could turn a number of cellulose-containing agricultural by-products, such as corncobs, straw, and sawdust, into renewable energy resources. Other agricultural residues such as sugarcane bagasse and energy crops such as switchgrass may also be fermentable sugar sources.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Breweries and biofuel plants employ two methods for measuring ethanol concentration. Infrared ethanol sensors measure the vibrational frequency of dissolved ethanol using the C−H band at 2900 cm. This method uses a relatively inexpensive solid-state sensor that compares the C−H band with a reference band to calculate the ethanol content. The calculation makes use of the Beer–Lambert law. Alternatively, by measuring the density of the starting material and the density of the product, using a hydrometer, the change in specific gravity during fermentation indicates the alcohol content. This inexpensive and indirect method has a long history in the beer brewing industry.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Ethylene hydration or brewing produces an ethanol–water mixture. For most industrial and fuel uses, the ethanol must be purified. Fractional distillation at atmospheric pressure can concentrate ethanol to 95.6% by weight (89.5 mole%). This mixture is an azeotrope with a boiling point of 78.1 °C (172.6 °F), and cannot be further purified by distillation. Addition of an entraining agent, such as benzene, cyclohexane, or heptane, allows a new ternary azeotrope comprising the ethanol, water, and the entraining agent to be formed. This lower-boiling ternary azeotrope is removed preferentially, leading to water-free ethanol.",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Apart from distillation, ethanol may be dried by addition of a desiccant, such as molecular sieves, cellulose, or cornmeal. The desiccants can be dried and reused. Molecular sieves can be used to selectively absorb the water from the 95.6% ethanol solution. Molecular sieves of pore-size 3 Ångstrom, a type of zeolite, effectively sequester water molecules while excluding ethanol molecules. Heating the wet sieves drives out the water, allowing regeneration of their desiccant capability.",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Membranes can also be used to separate ethanol and water. Membrane-based separations are not subject to the limitations of the water-ethanol azeotrope because the separations are not based on vapor-liquid equilibria. Membranes are often used in the so-called hybrid membrane distillation process. This process uses a pre-concentration distillation column as the first separating step. The further separation is then accomplished with a membrane operated either in vapor permeation or pervaporation mode. Vapor permeation uses a vapor membrane feed and pervaporation uses a liquid membrane feed.",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "A variety of other techniques have been discussed, including the following:",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Pure ethanol and alcoholic beverages are heavily taxed as psychoactive drugs, but ethanol has many uses that do not involve its consumption. To relieve the tax burden on these uses, most jurisdictions waive the tax when an agent has been added to the ethanol to render it unfit to drink. These include bittering agents such as denatonium benzoate and toxins such as methanol, naphtha, and pyridine. Products of this kind are called denatured alcohol.",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Absolute or anhydrous alcohol refers to ethanol with a low water content. There are various grades with maximum water contents ranging from 1% to a few parts per million (ppm). If azeotropic distillation is used to remove water, it will contain trace amounts of the material separation agent (e.g. benzene). Absolute alcohol is not intended for human consumption. Absolute ethanol is used as a solvent for laboratory and industrial applications, where water will react with other chemicals, and as fuel alcohol. Spectroscopic ethanol is an absolute ethanol with a low absorbance in ultraviolet and visible light, fit for use as a solvent in ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy.",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Pure ethanol is classed as 200 proof in the US, equivalent to 175 degrees proof in the UK system.",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Rectified spirit, an azeotropic composition of 96% ethanol containing 4% water, is used instead of anhydrous ethanol for various purposes. Spirits of wine are about 94% ethanol (188 proof). The impurities are different from those in 95% (190 proof) laboratory ethanol.",
"title": "Purification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Ethanol is classified as a primary alcohol, meaning that the carbon that its hydroxyl group attaches to has at least two hydrogen atoms attached to it as well. Many ethanol reactions occur at its hydroxyl group.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In the presence of acid catalysts, ethanol reacts with carboxylic acids to produce ethyl esters and water:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "This reaction, which is conducted on large scale industrially, requires the removal of the water from the reaction mixture as it is formed. Esters react in the presence of an acid or base to give back the alcohol and a salt. This reaction is known as saponification because it is used in the preparation of soap. Ethanol can also form esters with inorganic acids. Diethyl sulfate and triethyl phosphate are prepared by treating ethanol with sulfur trioxide and phosphorus pentoxide respectively. Diethyl sulfate is a useful ethylating agent in organic synthesis. Ethyl nitrite, prepared from the reaction of ethanol with sodium nitrite and sulfuric acid, was formerly used as a diuretic.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In the presence of acid catalysts, alcohols can be converted to alkenes such as ethanol to ethylene. Typically solid acids such as alumina are used.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Since water is removed from the same molecule, the reaction is known as intramolecular dehydration. Intramolecular dehydration of an alcohol requires a high temperature and the presence of an acid catalyst such as sulfuric acid.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Ethylene produced from sugar-derived ethanol (primarily in Brazil) competes with ethylene produced from petrochemical feedstocks such as naphtha and ethane.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "At a lower temperature than that of intramolecular dehydration, intermolecular alcohol dehydration may occur producing a symmetrical ether. This is a condensation reaction. In the following example, diethyl ether is produced from ethanol:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Complete combustion of ethanol forms carbon dioxide and water:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Specific heat = 2.44 kJ/(kg·K)",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Ethanol is a neutral molecule and the pH of a solution of ethanol in water is nearly 7.00. Ethanol can be quantitatively converted to its conjugate base, the ethoxide ion (CH3CH2O), by reaction with an alkali metal such as sodium:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "or a very strong base such as sodium hydride:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The acidities of water and ethanol are nearly the same, as indicated by their pKa of 15.7 and 16 respectively. Thus, sodium ethoxide and sodium hydroxide exist in an equilibrium that is closely balanced:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Ethanol is not used industrially as a precursor to ethyl halides, but the reactions are illustrative. Ethanol reacts with hydrogen halides to produce ethyl halides such as ethyl chloride and ethyl bromide via an SN2 reaction:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "HCl requires a catalyst such as zinc chloride. HBr requires refluxing with a sulfuric acid catalyst. Ethyl halides can, in principle, also be produced by treating ethanol with more specialized halogenating agents, such as thionyl chloride or phosphorus tribromide.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Upon treatment with halogens in the presence of base, ethanol gives the corresponding haloform (CHX3, where X = Cl, Br, I). This conversion is called the haloform reaction. An intermediate in the reaction with chlorine is the aldehyde called chloral, which forms chloral hydrate upon reaction with water:",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Ethanol can be oxidized to acetaldehyde and further oxidized to acetic acid, depending on the reagents and conditions. This oxidation is of no importance industrially, but in the human body, these oxidation reactions are catalyzed by the enzyme liver alcohol dehydrogenase. The oxidation product of ethanol, acetic acid, is a nutrient for humans, being a precursor to acetyl CoA, where the acetyl group can be spent as energy or used for biosynthesis.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Ethanol is similar to macronutrients such as proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in that it provides calories. When consumed and metabolized, it contributes 7 kilocalories per gram via ethanol metabolism.",
"title": "Reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Ethanol is very flammable and should not be used around an open flame.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Pure ethanol will irritate the skin and eyes. Nausea, vomiting, and intoxication are symptoms of ingestion. Long-term use by ingestion can result in serious liver damage. Atmospheric concentrations above one part per thousand are above the European Union occupational exposure limits.",
"title": "Safety"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The fermentation of sugar into ethanol is one of the earliest biotechnologies employed by humans. Ethanol has historically been identified variously as spirit of wine or ardent spirits, and as aqua vitae or aqua vita. The intoxicating effects of its consumption have been known since ancient times. Ethanol has been used by humans since prehistory as the intoxicating ingredient of alcoholic beverages. Dried residue on 9,000-year-old pottery found in China suggests that Neolithic people consumed alcoholic beverages.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The inflammable nature of the exhalations of wine was already known to ancient natural philosophers such as Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BCE), and Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 CE). However, this did not immediately lead to the isolation of ethanol, even despite the development of more advanced distillation techniques in second- and third-century Roman Egypt. An important recognition, first found in one of the writings attributed to Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (ninth century CE), was that by adding salt to boiling wine, which increases the wine's relative volatility, the flammability of the resulting vapors may be enhanced. The distillation of wine is attested in Arabic works attributed to al-Kindī (c. 801–873 CE) and to al-Fārābī (c. 872–950), and in the 28th book of al-Zahrāwī's (Latin: Abulcasis, 936–1013) Kitāb al-Taṣrīf (later translated into Latin as Liber servatoris). In the twelfth century, recipes for the production of aqua ardens (\"burning water\", i.e., ethanol) by distilling wine with salt started to appear in a number of Latin works, and by the end of the thirteenth century it had become a widely known substance among Western European chemists.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The works of Taddeo Alderotti (1223–1296) describe a method for concentrating ethanol involving repeated fractional distillation through a water-cooled still, by which an ethanol purity of 90% could be obtained. The medicinal properties of ethanol were studied by Arnald of Villanova (1240–1311 CE) and John of Rupescissa (c. 1310–1366), the latter of whom regarded it as a life-preserving substance able to prevent all diseases (the aqua vitae or \"water of life\", also called by John the quintessence of wine).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In China, archaeological evidence indicates that the true distillation of alcohol began during the Jin (1115–1234) or Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties. A still has been found at an archaeological site in Qinglong, Hebei, dating to the 12th century. In India, the true distillation of alcohol was introduced from the Middle East, and was in wide use in the Delhi Sultanate by the 14th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In 1796, German-Russian chemist Johann Tobias Lowitz obtained pure ethanol by mixing partially purified ethanol (the alcohol-water azeotrope) with an excess of anhydrous alkali and then distilling the mixture over low heat. French chemist Antoine Lavoisier described ethanol as a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and in 1807 Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure determined ethanol's chemical formula. Fifty years later, Archibald Scott Couper published the structural formula of ethanol. It was one of the first structural formulas determined.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Ethanol was first prepared synthetically in 1825 by Michael Faraday. He found that sulfuric acid could absorb large volumes of coal gas. He gave the resulting solution to Henry Hennell, a British chemist, who found in 1826 that it contained \"sulphovinic acid\" (ethyl hydrogen sulfate). In 1828, Hennell and the French chemist Georges-Simon Serullas independently discovered that sulphovinic acid could be decomposed into ethanol. Thus, in 1825 Faraday had unwittingly discovered that ethanol could be produced from ethylene (a component of coal gas) by acid-catalyzed hydration, a process similar to current industrial ethanol synthesis.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Ethanol was used as lamp fuel in the U.S. as early as 1840, but a tax levied on industrial alcohol during the Civil War made this use uneconomical. The tax was repealed in 1906. Use as an automotive fuel dates back to 1908, with the Ford Model T able to run on petrol (gasoline) or ethanol. It fuels some spirit lamps.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Ethanol intended for industrial use is often produced from ethylene. Ethanol has widespread use as a solvent of substances intended for human contact or consumption, including scents, flavorings, colorings, and medicines. In chemistry, it is both a solvent and a feedstock for the synthesis of other products. It has a long history as a fuel for heat and light, and more recently as a fuel for internal combustion engines.",
"title": "History"
}
]
| Ethanol (also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, drinking alcohol, or simply alcohol) is an organic compound with the chemical formula CH3CH2OH. It is an alcohol, with its formula also written as C2H5OH, C2H6O or EtOH, where Et stands for ethyl. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a characteristic wine-like odor and pungent taste. It is a psychoactive recreational drug, and the active ingredient in alcoholic drinks. Ethanol is naturally produced by the fermentation process of sugars by yeasts or via petrochemical processes such as ethylene hydration. Historically it was used as a general anesthetic, and has modern medical applications as an antiseptic, disinfectant, solvent for some medications, and antidote for methanol poisoning and ethylene glycol poisoning. It is used as a chemical solvent and in the synthesis of organic compounds, and as a fuel source. Ethanol also can be dehydrated to make ethylene, an important chemical feedstock. As of 2006, world production of ethanol was 51 gigalitres (1.3×1010 US gallons), coming mostly from Brazil and the U.S. | 2001-11-07T07:17:24Z | 2023-12-24T21:00:00Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol |
10,049 | Eric Clapton | Eric Patrick Clapton CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. He ranked second in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in Gibson's "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". In 2023, Clapton was named the 35th best guitarist of all time. He was also named number five in Time magazine's list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009.
After playing in a number of different local bands, Clapton joined the Yardbirds from 1963 to 1965, and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers from 1965 to 1966. After leaving Mayall, he formed the power trio Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop". After four successful albums, Cream broke up in November 1968. Clapton then formed the blues rock band Blind Faith with Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech, recording one album and performing on one tour before they broke up. Clapton then toured with Delaney & Bonnie and recorded his first solo album in 1970, before forming Derek and the Dominos with Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Like Blind Faith, the band only lasted one album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which includes "Layla", one of Clapton's signature songs.
Clapton continued to record a number of successful solo albums and songs over the next several decades, including a 1974 cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" (which helped reggae reach a mass market), the country-infused Slowhand album (1977) and the pop rock of 1986's August. Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which appeared on his Unplugged album. In 1996 he had another top-40 hit with the R&B crossover "Change the World". In 1998, he released the Grammy award-winning "My Father's Eyes". Since 1999, he has recorded a number of traditional blues and blues rock albums and hosted the periodic Crossroads Guitar Festival. His most recent studio album is Happy Xmas (2018).
Clapton has received 18 Grammy Awards as well as the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004, he was awarded a CBE for services to music. He has received four Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. In his solo career, he has sold more than 280 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for those recovering from substance abuse.
Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton (1929–1999) and Edward Walter Fryer (1920–1985), a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec. Fryer was drafted to war before Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up believing that his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, Patricia's stepfather, were his parents, and that his mother was actually his older sister. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp (Reginald Cecil Clapton was the name of Rose's first husband, Eric Clapton's maternal grandfather). Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany, leaving Eric with his grandparents in Surrey.
Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest. Two years later he picked it up again and started playing consistently. He was influenced by blues music from an early age, and practised long hours learning the chords of blues music by playing along to the records. He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder, listening to them over and over until he was satisfied.
In 1961, after leaving Hollyfield School in Surbiton, he studied at the Kingston College of Art but was expelled at the end of the academic year because his focus had remained on music rather than art. His guitar playing was sufficiently advanced that, by the age of 16, he was getting noticed. Around this time, he began busking around Kingston, Richmond, and the West End. In 1962, he started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast Dave Brock in pubs around Surrey. When he was 17, he joined his first band, an early British R&B group, the Roosters, whose other guitarist was Tom McGuinness. He stayed with them from January until August 1963. In October of that year, he performed a seven-gig stint with Casey Jones & the Engineers.
In October 1963, Clapton joined the Yardbirds, a rhythm and blues band, and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesising influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B.B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene. The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, London. They toured England with American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II; a joint LP album, recorded in December 1963, was issued in 1965.
Yardbirds' rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing what is called a "slow handclap". Clapton's nickname of "Slowhand" came from Giorgio Gomelsky, a pun on the slow handclapping that ensued when Clapton stopped playing while he replaced a string. In December 1964, Clapton made his first appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with the Yardbirds. Since then, Clapton has performed at the Hall over 200 times, and has stated that performing at the venue is like "playing in my front room".
In March 1965, Clapton and the Yardbirds had their first major hit, "For Your Love", written by songwriter Graham Gouldman, who also wrote hit songs for Herman's Hermits and the Hollies (and later achieved success of his own as a member of 10cc). In part because of its success, the Yardbirds elected to move toward a pop-orientated sound, much to the annoyance of Clapton, who was devoted to the blues and not commercial success. He left the Yardbirds on the day that "For Your Love" went public, a move that left the band without its lead guitarist and most accomplished member. Clapton suggested fellow guitarist Jimmy Page as his replacement, but Page declined out of loyalty to Clapton, putting Jeff Beck forward. Beck and Page played together in the Yardbirds for a while, but Beck, Page, and Clapton were never in the group together. They first appeared together in 1983 on the 12-date benefit tour for Action for Research into multiple sclerosis with the first date on 23 September at the Royal Albert Hall.
Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April 1965, only to quit a few months later. In June, Clapton was invited to jam with Jimmy Page, recording a number of tracks that were retroactively credited to The Immediate All-Stars. In the summer of 1965 he left for Greece with a band called the Glands, which included his old friend Ben Palmer on piano. After a car crash that killed the bassist and injured the guitarist of the Greek band the Juniors, on 17 October 1965 the surviving members played memorial shows in which Clapton played with the band. In October 1965 he rejoined John Mayall. In March 1966, while still a member of the Bluesbreakers, Clapton briefly collaborated on a side project with Jack Bruce and Steve Winwood among others, recording only a few tracks under the name Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse. During his second Bluesbreakers stint, Clapton gained a reputation as the best blues guitarist on the club circuit. Although Clapton gained fame for playing on the influential album, Blues Breakers – John Mayall – With Eric Clapton, this album was not released until he had left the band for the last time in July 1966. The album itself is often called The Beano Album by fans because of its cover photograph showing Clapton reading the British children's comic The Beano.
Having swapped his Fender Telecaster and Vox AC30 amplifier for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and Marshall amplifier, Clapton's sound and playing inspired the famous slogan "Clapton is God", spray-painted by an unknown admirer on a wall in Islington, North London in 1967. The graffito was captured in a now-famous photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall. Clapton is reported to have been embarrassed by the slogan, saying in his The South Bank Show profile in 1987, "I never accepted that I was the greatest guitar player in the world. I always wanted to be the greatest guitar player in the world, but that's an ideal, and I accept it as an ideal".
Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966 (replaced by Peter Green) and was invited by drummer Ginger Baker to play in his newly formed band Cream, one of the earliest supergroups, with Jack Bruce on bass (Bruce was previously of the Bluesbreakers, the Graham Bond Organisation and Manfred Mann). Before the formation of Cream, Clapton was not well known in the United States; he left the Yardbirds before "For Your Love" hit the US top ten, and had yet to perform there. During his time with Cream, Clapton began to develop as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, though Bruce took most of the lead vocals and wrote the majority of the material with lyricist Pete Brown. Cream's first gig was an unofficial performance at the Twisted Wheel Club in Manchester on 29 July 1966 before their full debut two nights later at the National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor. Cream established its enduring legend with the high-volume blues jamming and extended solos of their live shows.
By early 1967, fans of the emerging blues-rock sound in the UK had begun to portray Clapton as Britain's top guitarist; however, he found himself rivalled by the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, an acid rock-infused guitarist who used wailing feedback and effects pedals to create new sounds for the instrument. Hendrix attended a performance of the newly formed Cream at the Central London Polytechnic on 1 October 1966, during which he sat in on a double-timed version of "Killing Floor". Top UK stars, including Clapton, Pete Townshend and members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, avidly attended Hendrix's early club performances. Hendrix's arrival had an immediate and major effect on the next phase of Clapton's career.
Clapton first visited the United States while touring with Cream. In March 1967, Cream performed a nine-show stand at the RKO Theater in New York. Clapton's 1964 painted Gibson SG guitar – The Fool – a "psychedelic fantasy", according to Clapton, made its debut at the RKO Theater. Clapton used the guitar for most of Cream's recordings after Fresh Cream, particularly on Disraeli Gears, until the band broke up in 1968. One of the world's best-known guitars, it symbolises the psychedelic era. They recorded Disraeli Gears in New York from 11 to 15 May 1967. Cream's repertoire varied from hard rock ("I Feel Free") to lengthy blues-based instrumental jams ("Spoonful"). Disraeli Gears contained Clapton's searing guitar lines, Bruce's soaring vocals and prominent, fluid bass playing, and Baker's powerful, polyrhythmic jazz-influenced drumming. Together, Cream's talents secured them as an influential power trio. Clapton's voice can be heard on Frank Zappa's album We're Only in It for the Money, on the tracks "Are You Hung Up?" and "Nasal Retentive Calliope Music".
In 28 months, Cream had become a commercial success, selling millions of records and playing throughout the US and Europe. They redefined the instrumentalist's role in rock and were one of the first blues-rock bands to emphasise musical virtuosity and lengthy jazz-style improvisation sessions. Their US hit singles include "Sunshine of Your Love" (No. 5, 1968), "White Room" (No. 6, 1968) and "Crossroads" (No. 28, 1969) – a live version of Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues". Though Cream were hailed as one of the greatest groups of its day, and the adulation of Clapton as a guitar legend reached new heights, the supergroup was short-lived. Drug and alcohol use escalated tension between the three members, and conflicts between Bruce and Baker eventually led to Cream's demise. A strongly critical Rolling Stone review of a concert of the group's second headlining US tour was another significant factor in the trio's demise, and it affected Clapton profoundly. Clapton has also credited Music from Big Pink, the debut album of The Band, and its revolutionary Americana sound as influencing his decision to leave Cream.
Cream's farewell album, Goodbye, comprising live performances recorded at The Forum, Los Angeles, on 19 October 1968, was released shortly after Cream disbanded. It also spawned the studio single "Badge", co-written by Clapton and George Harrison (Clapton had met and become close friends with Harrison after the Beatles shared a bill with the Clapton-era Yardbirds at the London Palladium). In 1968, Clapton played the lead guitar solo on Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", from the Beatles' self-titled double album (also known as the "White Album"). Harrison's debut solo album, Wonderwall Music (1968), became the first of many Harrison solo records to include Clapton on guitar. Clapton went largely uncredited for his contributions to Harrison's albums due to contractual restraints, and Harrison was credited as "L'Angelo Misterioso" for his contributions to the song "Badge" on Goodbye. The pair often played live together as each other's guest. A year after Harrison's death in 2001, Clapton was musical director for the Concert for George.
In January 1969, when the Beatles were recording and filming what became Let It Be, tensions became so acute that Harrison quit the group for several days, prompting John Lennon to suggest they complete the project with Clapton if Harrison did not return. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, television director of the recording sessions for Let It Be, later recalled: "I was there when John mentioned Clapton – but that wasn't going to happen. Would Eric have become a Beatle? No. Paul [McCartney] didn't want to go there. He didn't want them to break up. Then George came back." Clapton was on good terms with all four of the Beatles; in December 1968 he had played with Lennon at The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus as part of the one-off group the Dirty Mac.
Cream briefly reunited in 1993 to perform at the ceremony inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A full reunion took place in May 2005, with Clapton, Bruce and Baker playing four sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, and three shows at New York's Madison Square Garden that October. Recordings from the London shows, Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005, were released on CD, LP and DVD in late 2005.
Clapton's next group, Blind Faith, formed in 1969, was composed of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood of Traffic, and Ric Grech of Family, and yielded one LP and one arena-circuit tour. The supergroup debuted before 100,000 fans in London's Hyde Park on 7 June 1969. They performed several dates in Scandinavia and began a sold-out American tour in July before their only album was released. The LP Blind Faith consisted of just six songs, one of them the hit "Can't Find My Way Home". Another, "Presence of the Lord", is the first song credited solely to Clapton. The album's jacket image of a topless pubescent girl was deemed controversial in the US and was replaced by a photograph of the band. Blind Faith dissolved after less than seven months.
Clapton subsequently toured as a sideman for an act that had opened for Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. He also performed as a member of Lennon's Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in September 1969, a recording from which was released as the album Live Peace in Toronto 1969. On 30 September, Clapton played lead guitar on Lennon's second solo single, "Cold Turkey". On 15 December that year, Clapton performed with Lennon, Harrison and others as the Plastic Ono Supergroup at a fundraiser for UNICEF in London.
Delaney Bramlett encouraged Clapton in his singing and writing. Using the Bramletts' backing group and an all-star cast of session players (including Leon Russell and Stephen Stills), Clapton recorded his first solo album during two brief tour hiatuses, titled Eric Clapton. Delaney Bramlett co-wrote six of the songs with Clapton, also producing the LP, and Bonnie Bramlett co-wrote "Let It Rain". The album yielded the unexpected US No. 18 hit, J. J. Cale's "After Midnight". Clapton also worked with much of Delaney and Bonnie's band to record George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in spring 1970.
During this period, Clapton also recorded with artists such as Dr. John, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr and Dave Mason. With Chicago blues artist Howlin' Wolf, he recorded The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, that also included long-time Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin and members of the Rolling Stones, Winwood and Starr. Despite the superstar line-up, critic Cub Koda noted: "Even Eric Clapton, who usually welcomes any chance to play with one of his idols, has criticized this album repeatedly in interviews, which speaks volumes in and of itself." Other noted recordings from this period include Clapton's guitar work on "Go Back Home" from Stephen Stills' self-titled first solo album.
With the intention of counteracting the "star" cult faction that had begun to form around him, Clapton assembled a new band composed of Delaney and Bonnie's former rhythm section, Bobby Whitlock as keyboardist and vocalist, Carl Radle as the bassist, and drummer Jim Gordon, with Clapton playing guitar. It was his intention to show that he need not fill a starring role, and functioned well as a member of an ensemble. During this period, Clapton was increasingly influenced by The Band and their 1968 album Music from Big Pink, saying: "What I appreciated about the Band was that they were more concerned with songs and singing. They would have three- and four-part harmonies, and the guitar was put back into perspective as being accompaniment. That suited me well, because I had gotten so tired of the virtuosity – or pseudo-virtuosity – thing of long, boring guitar solos just because they were expected. The Band brought things back into perspective. The priority was the song."
The band was originally called "Eric Clapton and Friends". The eventual name was a fluke that occurred when the band's provisional name of "Del and the Dynamos" was misread as Derek and the Dominos. Clapton's biography states that Tony Ashton of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke told Clapton to call the band "Del and the Dominos", since "Del" was his nickname for Eric Clapton. Del and Eric were combined and the final name became "Derek and the Dominos".
Clapton's close friendship with George Harrison brought him into contact with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, with whom he became deeply infatuated. When she spurned his advances, Clapton's unrequited affections prompted most of the material for the Dominos' album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970). Heavily blues-influenced, the album features the twin lead guitars of Clapton and Duane Allman, with Allman's slide guitar as a key ingredient of the sound. Working at Criteria Studios in Miami with Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd, who had worked with Clapton on Cream's Disraeli Gears, the band recorded a double album.
The album contained the hit love song "Layla", inspired by the classical poet of Persian literature, Nizami Ganjavi's The Story of Layla and Majnun, a copy of which Ian Dallas had given to Clapton. The book moved Clapton profoundly, as it was the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful, unavailable woman and went crazy because he could not marry her. The two parts of "Layla" were recorded in separate sessions: the opening guitar section was recorded first, and for the second section, laid down a few weeks later, drummer Jim Gordon played the piano part for the melody, which he claimed to have written (though Bobby Whitlock stated that Rita Coolidge wrote it).
The Layla LP was actually recorded by a five-piece version of the group, thanks to the unforeseen inclusion of guitarist Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. A few days into the Layla sessions, Dowd – who was also producing the Allmans – invited Clapton to an Allman Brothers outdoor concert in Miami. The two guitarists met first on stage, then played all night in the studio, and became friends. Duane first added his slide guitar to "Tell the Truth" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out". In four days, the five-piece Dominos recorded "Key to the Highway", "Have You Ever Loved a Woman" (a blues standard popularised by Freddie King and others) and "Why Does Love Got to be So Sad?" In September, Duane briefly left the sessions for gigs with his own band, and the four-piece Dominos recorded "I Looked Away", "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Keep on Growing". Allman returned to record "I Am Yours", "Anyday" and "It's Too Late". On 9 September, they recorded Hendrix's "Little Wing" and the title track. The following day, the final track, "It's Too Late", was recorded.
Tragedy dogged the group throughout its brief career. During the sessions, Clapton was devastated by news of the death of Jimi Hendrix; eight days previously the band had cut a cover of "Little Wing" as a tribute. On 17 September 1970, one day before Hendrix's death, Clapton had purchased a left-handed Fender Stratocaster that he had planned to give to Hendrix as a birthday gift. Adding to Clapton's woes, Layla received only lukewarm reviews upon release. The shaken group undertook a US tour without Allman, who had returned to the Allman Brothers Band. Despite Clapton's later admission that the tour took place amid a blizzard of drugs and alcohol, it resulted in the live double album In Concert.
Recording of a second Dominos studio album was underway when a clash of egos took place and Clapton walked out, thus disbanding the group. Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident on 29 October 1971. Clapton wrote later in his autobiography that he and Allman were inseparable during the Layla sessions in Florida; he talked about Allman as the "musical brother I'd never had but wished I did". Although Radle remained Clapton's bass player until the summer of 1979 (Radle died in May 1980 from the effects of alcohol and narcotics), it was not until 2003 that Clapton and Whitlock appeared together again; Clapton guested on Whitlock's appearance on the Later with Jools Holland show. Another tragic footnote to the Dominos story was the fate of drummer Jim Gordon, who had undiagnosed schizophrenia and years later murdered his mother during a psychotic episode. Gordon was confined to 16-years-to-life imprisonment, later being moved to a mental institution, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Clapton's career successes in the 1970s were in stark contrast with the struggles he coped with in his personal life, which was troubled by romantic longings and drug and alcohol addiction. Still infatuated with Boyd and torn by his friendship with Harrison, he withdrew from recording and touring to isolation in his Surrey residence as the Dominos broke up. He nursed a heroin addiction, which resulted in a lengthy career hiatus interrupted only by performing at Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh benefit shows in New York in August 1971; there, he passed out on stage, was revived, and managed to finish his performance. In January 1973, the Who's Pete Townshend organised a comeback concert for Clapton at London's Rainbow Theatre, titled the "Rainbow Concert", to help Clapton kick his addiction. Clapton returned the favour by playing "The Preacher" in Ken Russell's film version of the Who's Tommy in 1975. His appearance in the film (performing "Eyesight to the Blind") is notable as he is clearly wearing a fake beard in some shots, the result of deciding to shave off his real beard after the initial takes in an attempt to force the director to remove his earlier scene from the film and leave the set.
In 1974, Clapton started living with Boyd (they would not marry until 1979) and was no longer using heroin (although he gradually began to drink heavily). He assembled a low-key touring band that included Radle, Miami guitarist George Terry, keyboardist Dick Sims (who died in 2011), drummer Jamie Oldaker, and vocalists Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy (also known as Marcella Detroit). With this band Clapton recorded 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), an album with an emphasis on more compact songs and fewer guitar solos; the cover version of "I Shot the Sheriff" was Clapton's first number one hit. The 1975 album There's One in Every Crowd continued this trend. The album's original title, The World's Greatest Guitar Player (There's One in Every Crowd), was changed before pressing, as it was felt its ironic intention would be misunderstood. The band toured the world and subsequently released the 1975 live LP E. C. Was Here. Clapton continued to release albums and toured regularly. Highlights of the period include No Reason to Cry (a collaboration with Bob Dylan and The Band); Slowhand, which contained "Wonderful Tonight" and a second J. J. Cale cover, "Cocaine". In 1976, he performed as one of a string of notable guests at the farewell performance of The Band, filmed in a Martin Scorsese documentary titled The Last Waltz.
In 1981, Clapton was invited by producer Martin Lewis to appear at the Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in London. Clapton accepted the invitation and teamed up with Jeff Beck to perform a series of duets – reportedly their first ever billed stage collaboration. Three of the performances were released on the album of the show, and one of the songs appeared in the film. The performances at London's Drury Lane theatre heralded a return to form and prominence for Clapton in the new decade. Many factors had influenced Clapton's comeback, including his "deepening commitment to Christianity", to which he had converted prior to his heroin addiction.
After calling his manager and admitting he was an alcoholic, Clapton flew to Minneapolis–Saint Paul in January 1982 and checked in at Hazelden Treatment Center, located in Center City, Minnesota. On the flight over, Clapton indulged in a large number of drinks, for fear he would never be able to drink again. Clapton wrote in his autobiography:
In the lowest moments of my life, the only reason I didn't commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn't be able to drink any more if I was dead. It was the only thing I thought was worth living for, and the idea that people were about to try and remove me from alcohol was so terrible that I drank and drank and drank, and they had to practically carry me into the clinic.
After being discharged, it was recommended by doctors of Hazelden that Clapton not partake in any activities that would act as triggers for his alcoholism or stress. But it did happen. Clapton would go back to the Hazelden Treatment Center in November 1987. He has stayed sober ever since. A few months after his discharge from his first rehab, Clapton began working on his next album, against doctors' orders. Working with Tom Dowd, he produced what he thought as his "most forced" album to date, Money and Cigarettes. Clapton chose the name of the album "because that's all I saw myself having left" after his first rehabilitation from alcoholism.
In 1984, he performed on former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, and participated in the supporting tour. Since then Waters and Clapton have had a close relationship. In 2005, they performed together for the Tsunami Relief Fund. In 2006, they performed at the Highclere Castle, in aid of the Countryside Alliance, playing two set pieces of "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". Clapton, now a regular charity performer, played at the Live Aid concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia on 13 July 1985, playing with Phil Collins, Tim Renwick, Chris Stainton, Jamie Oldaker, Marcy Levy, Shaun Murphy and Donald 'Duck' Dunn. When offered a slot close to peak viewing hours, he was apparently flattered. His album output continued in the 1980s, including two produced with Phil Collins, 1985's Behind the Sun, which produced the hits "Forever Man" and "She's Waiting", and 1986's August.
August was suffused with Collins's trademark drum and horn sound, and became Clapton's biggest seller in the UK to date, matching his highest chart position, number 3. The album's first track, the hit "It's in the Way That You Use It", appeared in the Tom Cruise–Paul Newman film The Color of Money. The songs "Tearing Us Apart" (with Tina Turner) and "Miss You" continued Clapton's more angry sound. This rebound kicked off Clapton's two-year period of touring with Collins and their August collaborators, bassist Nathan East and keyboard player/songwriter Greg Phillinganes. While on tour for August, two concert videos were recorded of the four-man band: Eric Clapton Live from Montreux and Eric Clapton and Friends. Clapton later remade "After Midnight" as a single and a promotional track for the Michelob beer brand, which had also used earlier songs by Collins and Steve Winwood. Clapton won a British Academy Television Award for his collaboration with Michael Kamen on the score for the 1985 BBC television thriller series Edge of Darkness. At the 1987 Brit Awards in London, Clapton was awarded the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 1987, he played on George Harrison's album Cloud Nine, contributing guitar to "Cloud 9", "That's What It Takes", "Devil's Radio" and "Wreck of the Hesperus".
Clapton also got together with the Bee Gees for charity. The supergroup called itself the Bunburys, and recorded a charity album with the proceeds going to the Bunbury Cricket Club in Cheshire, which plays exhibition cricket matches to raise money for nonprofit organisations in England. The Bunburys recorded three songs for The Bunbury Tails: "We're the Bunburys", "Bunbury Afternoon" and "Fight (No Matter How Long)". The last song also appeared on The 1988 Summer Olympics Album and went to No. 8 on the rock music chart. Clapton played at the cricket club's 25th anniversary celebrations in 2011, which were held at London's Grosvenor House Hotel. In 1988, he played with Dire Straits and Elton John at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium and the Prince's Trust rock gala at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1989, Clapton released Journeyman, an album that covered a wide range of styles, including blues, jazz, soul and pop. Collaborators included George Harrison, Phil Collins, Daryl Hall, Chaka Khan, Mick Jones, David Sanborn and Robert Cray. The song "Bad Love" was released as a single and later won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
The 1990s brought a series of 32 concerts to the Royal Albert Hall, such as the 24 Nights series of concerts that took place around January through February 1990, and February to March 1991. On 30 June 1990, Dire Straits, Clapton and Elton John made a guest appearance in the Nordoff-Robbins charity show held at Knebworth in England. On 27 August 1990, fellow blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was touring with Clapton, and three members of their road crew were killed in a helicopter crash between concerts. Then, on 20 March 1991, Clapton's four-year-old son, Conor, died after falling from the 53rd-floor window of his mother's friend's New York City apartment at 117 East 57th Street. Conor's funeral took place on 28 March at St Mary Magdalene's Church in Clapton's home village in Ripley, Surrey, with Conor buried in the church graveyard. In 1991, Clapton appeared on Richie Sambora's album, Stranger in This Town, in a song dedicated to him, called "Mr. Bluesman". He contributed guitar and vocals to "Runaway Train", a duet with Elton John on the latter's The One album the following year.
I almost subconsciously used music for myself as a healing agent, and lo and behold, it worked ... I have got a great deal of happiness and a great deal of healing from music.
—Clapton on the healing process in writing "Tears in Heaven".
Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which was co-written by Will Jennings. At the 35th Annual Grammy Awards, Clapton received six Grammys for the single "Tears in Heaven" and his Unplugged album, for which Clapton performed live in front of a small audience on 16 January 1992 at Bray Film Studios in Windsor, Berkshire, England. The album reached number one on the Billboard 200, and is certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling over 10 million copies in the US. It reached number two in the UK Albums Chart and is certified four times platinum in the UK. On 9 September 1992, Clapton performed "Tears in Heaven" at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, and won the award for Best Male Video.
In 1992, Clapton received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. In October 1992 Clapton was among the dozens of artists performing at Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. Recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the live two-disk CD/DVD captured a show full of celebrities performing classic Dylan songs, with Clapton playing the lead on a nearly 7-minute version of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" as part of the finale. While Clapton played acoustic guitar on Unplugged, his 1994 album From the Cradle contained new versions of old blues standards, highlighted by his electric guitar playing. In 1995, Clapton for the first and only time appeared on a UK No. 1 single, collaborating with Chrissie Hynde, Cher and Neneh Cherry on a solo to a cover of "Love Can Build a Bridge" released in aid of the British charity telethon Comic Relief.
On 12 September 1996 Clapton played a party for Armani at New York City's Lexington Armory with Greg Phillinganes, Nathan East and Steve Gadd. Sheryl Crow appeared on one number, performing "Tearing Us Apart", a track from August, which was first performed by Tina Turner during the Prince's Trust All-Star Rock show in 1986. It was Clapton's sole US appearance that year, following the open-air concert held at Hyde Park. The concert was taped and the footage was released both on VHS video cassette and later, on DVD. Clapton's 1996 recording of the Wayne Kirkpatrick/Gordon Kennedy/Tommy Sims tune "Change the World" (on the soundtrack of the film Phenomenon) won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1997, the same year he recorded Retail Therapy (an album of electronic music with Simon Climie under the pseudonym TDF). On 15 September 1997, Clapton appeared at the Music for Montserrat concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, performing "Layla" and "Same Old Blues" before finishing with "Hey Jude" alongside fellow English artists Paul McCartney, Elton John, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler and Sting. That autumn, Clapton released the album Pilgrim, the first record containing new material for almost a decade.
In 1996, Clapton had a relationship with singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow. They remain friends, and Clapton appeared as a guest on Crow's Central Park Concert. The duo performed a Cream hit single, "White Room". Later, Clapton and Crow performed an alternate version of "Tulsa Time" with other guitar legends at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in June 2007 as well as Robert Johnson's blues classic "Crossroads" at London's Hyde Park in August 2008 with John Mayer and Robert Randolph.
At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards on 24 February 1999, Clapton received his third Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, for his song "My Father's Eyes". In October 1999, the compilation album, Clapton Chronicles: The Best of Eric Clapton, was released, which contained a new song, "Blue Eyes Blue", that also appears in soundtrack for the film, Runaway Bride. Clapton finished the twentieth century with collaborations with Carlos Santana and B.B. King. Clapton looked up to King and had always wanted to make an album with him, while King said of Clapton, "I admire the man. I think he's No. 1 in rock 'n' roll as a guitarist and No. 1 as a great person."
Clapton released the album Reptile in March 2001. One month after the 11 September attacks, Clapton appeared at the Concert for New York City, performing alongside Buddy Guy. An event marking the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in June 2002, Clapton performed "Layla" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at the Party at the Palace concert in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. On 29 November 2002, the Concert for George was held at the Royal Albert Hall, a tribute to George Harrison, who had died a year earlier of lung cancer. Clapton was a performer and the musical director. The concert included Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ravi Shankar, Gary Brooker, Billy Preston, Joe Brown and Dhani Harrison. In 2004, Clapton released two albums of covers of songs by bluesman Robert Johnson, Me and Mr. Johnson and Sessions for Robert J. Guitarist Doyle Bramhall II worked on the album with Clapton (after opening Clapton's 2001 tour with his band Smokestack) and joined him on his 2004 tour. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Clapton No. 53 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Other media appearances include the Toots & the Maytals Grammy award-winning album True Love, where he played guitar on the track "Pressure Drop".
On 22 January 2005, Clapton performed in the Tsunami Relief Concert held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, in aid of the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. In May 2005, Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker reunited as Cream for a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Concert recordings were released on CD and DVD. Later, Cream performed in New York at Madison Square Garden. Clapton's first album of new original material in nearly five years, Back Home, was released on Reprise Records on 30 August.
A collaboration with guitarist J. J. Cale, The Road to Escondido, was released on 7 November 2006, featuring Derek Trucks and Billy Preston (Preston had also been a part of Clapton's 2004 touring band). He invited Trucks to join his band for his 2006–2007 world tour. Bramhall remained, giving Clapton three elite guitarists in his band, allowing him to revisit many Derek and the Dominos songs that he hadn't played in decades. Trucks became the third member of the Allman Brothers Band to tour supporting Clapton, the second being pianist/keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who appeared on the MTV Unplugged album and the 24 Nights performances at the Royal Albert Hall, London in 1990 and 1991, as well as Clapton's 1992 US tour.
On 20 May 2006, Clapton performed with Queen drummer Roger Taylor and former Pink Floyd bassist/songwriter Roger Waters at Highclere Castle, Hampshire, in support of the Countryside Alliance, which promotes issues relating to the British countryside. On 13 August 2006, Clapton made a guest appearance at the Bob Dylan concert in Columbus, Ohio, playing guitar on three songs in Jimmie Vaughan's opening act. The chemistry between Trucks and Clapton convinced him to invite the Derek Trucks Band to open for Clapton's set at his 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival. Trucks remained on set and performed with Clapton's band throughout his performances. The rights to Clapton's official memoirs, written by Christopher Simon Sykes and published in 2007, were sold at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair for US$4 million.
In 2007, Clapton learned more about his father, a Canadian soldier who left the UK after the war. Although Clapton's grandparents eventually told him the truth about his parentage, he only knew that his father's name was Edward Fryer. This was a source of disquiet for Clapton, as witnessed by his 1998 song "My Father's Eyes". A Montreal journalist named Michael Woloschuk researched Canadian Armed Forces service records and tracked down members of Fryer's family, and finally pieced together the story. He learned that Clapton's father was Edward Walter Fryer, born 21 March 1920, in Montreal and died 15 May 1985 in Newmarket, Ontario. Fryer was a musician (piano and saxophone) and a lifelong drifter who was married several times, had several children, and apparently never knew that he was the father of Eric Clapton. Clapton thanked Woloschuk in an encounter at Macdonald–Cartier Airport, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
On 26 February 2008, it was reported that Clapton had been invited to play a concert in North Korea by government officials. Clapton agreed in principle and suggested it take place in 2009. Kristen Foster, a spokesperson for Clapton, said that he regularly received offers to play abroad and that there had been no agreement for him to play in North Korea. In February 2008, Clapton performed with his long-time friend Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden and guested on his recorded single, "Dirty City", on Winwood's album Nine Lives. The two former Blind Faith bandmates met again for a series of 14 concerts throughout the United States in June 2009. Clapton's 2008 Summer Tour began on 3 May at the Ford Amphitheatre, Tampa, Florida, and then moved to Canada, Ireland, England, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Monaco. On 28 June 2008, he headlined Saturday night for Hard Rock Calling 2008 in London's Hyde Park (previously Hyde Park Calling) with support from Sheryl Crow and John Mayer.
In March 2009, the Allman Brothers Band (amongst many notable guests) celebrated their 40th year, dedicating their string of concerts to the late Duane Allman on their annual run at the Beacon Theatre. Eric Clapton was one of the performers, with drummer Butch Trucks remarking that the performance was not the typical Allman Brothers experience, given the number and musical styles of the guests who were invited to perform. Songs like "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" were punctuated with others, including "The Weight", with Levon Helm; Johnny Winter sitting in on Hendrix's "Red House"; and "Layla". On 4 May 2009 Clapton appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, playing "Further on Up the Road" with Joe Bonamassa.
Clapton was scheduled to perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary concert in Madison Square Garden on 30 October 2009, but cancelled due to gallstone surgery. Van Morrison (who also cancelled) said in an interview that he and Clapton were to do a "couple of songs", but that they would do something else together at "some other stage of the game".
Clapton performed a two-night show with Jeff Beck at the O2 Arena in London on 13–14 February 2010. The two former Yardbirds extended their 2010 tour with stops at Madison Square Garden, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, and the Bell Centre in Montreal. Clapton performed a series of concerts in 11 cities throughout the United States from 25 February to 13 March 2010, including Roger Daltrey as opening act. His third European tour with Steve Winwood began on 18 May and ended 13 June, including Tom Norris as opening act. He then began a short North American tour lasting from 26 June to 3 July, starting with his third Crossroads Guitar Festival on 26 June at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. Clapton released a new studio album, Clapton, on 27 September 2010 in the United Kingdom and 28 September 2010 in the United States. On 17 November 2010, Clapton performed as guest on the Prince's Trust rock gala held at the Royal Albert Hall, supported by the house band for the evening, which included Jools Holland, Midge Ure and Mark King.
On 24 June 2011, Clapton was in concert with Pino Daniele in Cava de' Tirreni stadium before performing a series of concerts in South America from 6 to 16 October 2011. He spent November and December 2011 touring Japan with Steve Winwood, playing 13 shows in various cities throughout the country. On 24 February 2012 Clapton, Keith Richards, Gary Clark Jr., Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, Kim Wilson and other artists performed together in the Howlin' For Hubert Tribute concert held at the Apollo Theater of New York City honouring blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin who died at age 80 on 4 December 2011. On 29 November 2012, Clapton joined The Rolling Stones at London's O2 Arena during the band's second of five arena dates celebrating their 50th anniversary. On 12 December, Clapton performed The Concert for Sandy Relief at Madison Square Garden, broadcast live via television, radio, cinemas and the Internet across six continents. In January 2013, Surfdog Records announced a signed deal with Clapton for the release of his forthcoming album Old Sock on 12 March. On 8 April 2013, Eric and Hard Rock International launched the limited-edition Eric Clapton Artist Spotlight merchandise programme benefiting Crossroads Centre Antigua. Clapton toured the US and Europe from 14 March to 19 June 2013 to celebrate 50 years as a professional musician. On 28 February 2013, Clapton announced his intention to stop touring in 2015 due to hassles with travel.
On 15 October 2013, Clapton's popular Unplugged album and concert DVD were re-released, titled Unplugged: Expanded & Remastered. The album includes the original 14 tracks, remastered, as well as 6 additional tracks, including 2 versions of "My Father's Eyes". The DVD includes a restored version of the concert, as well as over 60 minutes of unseen footage from the rehearsal. On 13 and 14 November 2013, Clapton headlined the final two evenings of the "Baloise Session", an annual indoor music festival in Basel, Switzerland. On 20 November 2013, Warner Bros released Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013 in CD/DVD/Blu-ray. On 30 April 2014, Clapton announced the release of The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale as an homage to J. J. Cale who died on 26 July 2013. This tribute album is named after the 1972 single "Call Me the Breeze" and comprises 16 Cale songs performed by Clapton, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and others. On 21 June 2014, Clapton abruptly walked off stage during a concert at the Glasgow Hydro. Although he did return to perform one final song, thousands of fans were upset by the lack of explanation from Clapton or the venue and booed after the concert ended around 40 minutes before advertised to finish. Both Clapton and the venue apologised the next day, blaming 'technical difficulties' for making sound conditions 'unbearable' for Clapton on stage. A week later he confirmed his retirement plans attributing his decision to the road being "unbearable" in addition to "odd ailments" that may force him to put down his guitar permanently. In a 2016 interview with Classic Rock magazine, Clapton revealed that he had been diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy in 2013, a condition involving damage to peripheral nerves that typically causes stabbing, burning, or tingling pain in the arms and legs.
Clapton performed two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York on 1 and 3 May 2015 followed by a 7-night residency at London's Royal Albert Hall from 14 to 23 May 2015 to celebrate his 70th birthday on 30 March. The shows also mark 50 years since Clapton first played at the Royal Albert Hall – his debut was on 7 December 1964 when he performed as part of The Yardbirds for the BBC's Top Beat Show. The concert film, Slowhand at 70 – Live at the Royal Albert Hall, was released by Eagle Rock Entertainment on 13 November 2015 on DVD, CD, Blu-ray and LP. The 2-night concerts in the US marked the 46th anniversary since Clapton, with Cream, opened the "new" Madison Square Garden on 2 November 1968. Clapton has performed more times at Madison Square Garden than any other US venue, a total of 45 times. On 20 May 2016, Clapton released his twenty-third studio album I Still Do. On 30 September 2016 the live-album Live in San Diego was released. In August 2018, Clapton announced that he had recorded his twenty-fourth studio album, Happy Xmas, which consists of blues-tinged interpretations of Christmas songs, with the album released on 12 October. Between April and September 2019, he played 17 concerts in Japan, Europe and the Southwestern United States. He returned to the road in September 2021, playing eight shows in the southern United States. In May 2022, Clapton announced a run of seven US concerts in September with Jimmie Vaughan. In May 2023, Clapton performed at the Jeff Beck tribute concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall, sharing the stage with Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Kirk Hammett and Johnny Depp among others.
Clapton cites Muddy Waters, Freddie King, B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Hubert Sumlin as guitar-playing influences. In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton refers to Muddy Waters as "the father figure I never really had". Until his death in 1983, Waters was a part of Clapton's life. "When I got to know Muddy, unfortunately, my drinking career was in full sway." In 2000, Clapton collaborated with B.B. King on their album Riding with the King. The music video for the title track shows Clapton as the chauffeur, with one of his idols in the back seat.
Clapton has said that blues musician Robert Johnson is his single most important influence. In 2004, Clapton released Sessions for Robert Johnson, containing covers of Johnson's songs using electric and acoustic guitars. In an essay for the 1990 boxed set of Johnson's recordings, Clapton wrote:
Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived. He was true, absolutely, to his own vision, and as deep as I have gotten into the music over the last 30 years, I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really ... it seemed to echo something I had always felt. [italics in original]
Clapton also singled out Buddy Holly as an influence. The Chirping Crickets was the first album Clapton ever bought; he later saw Holly on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. In his autobiography, Clapton recounts the first time he saw Holly and his Fender, saying, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ... it was like seeing an instrument from outer space and I said to myself: 'That's the future – that's what I want.'" In the 2017 documentary film, Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars, Clapton cites Bismillah Khan as an influence, adding that "I wanted my guitar to sound like his reed instrument." In the same documentary he also cited harmonica player Little Walter as an influence: "The sound he made with the harmonica playing through an amplifier. It was thick and fat and very melodic."
Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and Cream. He ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in Gibson's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.
In 2011, The Guardian attributed the creation of the cult of the guitar hero to Clapton, ranking it number seven on their list of the 50 key events in rock music history;
Nothing is more central to rock mythology than the cult of the lead guitarist. And no one did more to create that cult than Eric Clapton. He had already been a member of the Yardbirds before joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, the clearing house for guitarists, in April 1965. His two stints with Mayall saw his reputation grow to the extent that a famous graffito captured the popular appraisal of him among rock fans: "Clapton is God".
Elias Leight of Rolling Stone writes that Clapton "influenced recording techniques as well as guitar-playing technique". During recording sessions with John Mayall's group, Clapton was frustrated by technicians "that just came up to your amp with the microphone and just stuck it two inches away from the front of the amplifier. It seemed to me that if you wanted to get the atmosphere we were getting in the clubs, you needed it to sound like you were in the audience 10 feet away, not three inches". Clapton then moved the microphones, with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters stating, "That changed everything. Before Eric, guitar playing in England had been Hank Marvin of the Shadows, very simple, not much technique. Suddenly we heard something completely different. The records sounded unlike anything we had heard before."
In 2012, Clapton was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires to mark his 80th birthday. Indelibly linked to the Royal Albert Hall in London, a venue he has played at more than any other in his 50-year plus career, Clapton was inducted into the Royal Albert Hall's Walk of Fame in 2018, making him one of the first eleven recipients of a star on the walk, thus joining Muhammad Ali, Winston Churchill, the Suffragettes, and Albert Einstein, among others who were viewed as "key players" in the building's history.
Robert Christgau, in a dissenting appraisal of Clapton's legacy, writes:
A promiscuous sideman whose monklike aura has never diminished his extravagant appetites, Clapton likes to get paid, and he's amassed a discography that for an artist of his caliber is remarkably undistinguished. In his self-protective self-deprecation he often attributes this to his own laziness or his need for a catalyst, but it's also guitar hero's disease: like many other guys whose hand-ear coordination is off the curve, he's a casual tunesmith and a corny lyricist, and his band concepts are chronically hit-or-miss.
Like Hank Marvin, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Clapton exerted a crucial and widespread influence in popularising particular models of electric guitar. With the Yardbirds, Clapton played a Fender Telecaster, a Fender Jazzmaster, a double-cutaway Gretsch 6120, and a 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335. He became exclusively a Gibson player for a period beginning in mid-1965, when he purchased a used sunburst Gibson Les Paul guitar from a guitar store in London. Clapton commented on the slim profile of the neck, which would indicate it was a 1960 model.
Early during his stint in Cream, Clapton's first Les Paul Standard was stolen. He continued to play Les Pauls exclusively with Cream (one bought from Andy Summers was almost identical to the stolen guitar) until 1967, when he acquired his most famous guitar in this period, a 1964 Gibson SG, dubbed "the Fool". Clapton used both the Les Paul and the SG to create his self-described "woman tone". He explained in a 1967 interview, "I am playing more smoothly now. I'm developing what I call my 'woman tone.' It's a sweet sound, something like the solo on 'I Feel Free'." Writer Michael Dregni describes it as "thick yet piercing, overdriven yet smooth, distorted yet creamy". The tone is achieved by a combination of tone control settings on the guitars and Clapton's Marshall JTM45 amplifier. Vintage Guitar magazine identifies "the opening riff and solo of 'Sunshine of Your Love' are arguably the best illustrations of full-blown woman tone". Clapton's "Fool" acquired its name from its distinctive psychedelic paint job, created by the visual art collective also known as the Fool (just before Cream's first US appearance in 1967, Clapton's SG, Bruce's Fender VI, and Baker's drum head were all repainted in psychedelic designs).
In 1968, Clapton bought a Gibson Firebird and started using the 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335 again. The aforementioned 1964 ES-335 had a storied career. Clapton used it at the last Cream show in November 1968 as well as with Blind Faith, played it sparingly for slide pieces in the 1970s, used it on "Hard Times" from Journeyman, the Hyde Park live concert of 1996, and the From the Cradle sessions and tour of 1994–95. It was sold for US$847,500 at a 2004 auction. Gibson produced a limited run of 250 "Crossroads 335" replicas. The 335 was only the second electric guitar Clapton bought.
In July 1968 Clapton gave George Harrison a 1957 'goldtop' Gibson Les Paul that been refinished with a red colour, nicknamed Lucy. The following September, Clapton played the guitar on the Beatles' recording of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps". Lucy was stolen from Harrison, though later tracked down and returned to him – he lent it to Clapton for his 1973 comeback concert at the Rainbow. His SG "The Fool" found its way into the hands of George Harrison's friend Jackie Lomax, who subsequently sold it to musician Todd Rundgren for US$500 in 1972. Rundgren restored the guitar and nicknamed it "Sunny", after "Sunshine of Your Love". He retained it until 2000, when he sold it at an auction for US$150,000. At the 1969 Blind Faith concert in Hyde Park, London Clapton played a Fender Custom Telecaster, which was fitted with "Brownie"'s neck.
In late 1969 Clapton made the switch to the Fender Stratocaster. "I had a lot of influences when I took up the Strat. First there was Buddy Holly, and Buddy Guy. Hank Marvin was the first well known person over here in England who was using one, but that wasn't really my kind of music. Steve Winwood had so much credibility, and when he started playing one, I thought, oh, if he can do it, I can do it". The first—used during the recording of Eric Clapton—was "Brownie", which in 1973 became the backup to the most famous of all Clapton's guitars, "Blackie". In November 1970 Eric bought six Fender Stratocasters from the Sho-bud guitar shop in Nashville, Tennessee while on tour with the Dominos. He gave one each to George Harrison, Steve Winwood, and Pete Townshend.
Clapton assembled the best components of the remaining three to create "Blackie", which was his favourite stage guitar until its retirement in 1985. It was first played live 13 January 1973 at the Rainbow Concert. Clapton called the 1956/57 Strat a "mongrel". On 24 June 2004, Clapton sold "Blackie" at Christie's Auction House, New York, for US$959,500 to raise funds for his Crossroads Centre for drug and alcohol addictions. "Brownie" is now on display at the Experience Music Project. The Fender Custom Shop has since produced a limited run of 275 'Blackie' replicas, correct in every detail right down to the 'Duck Brothers' flight case, and artificially aged using Fender's 'Relic' process to simulate years of hard wear. One was presented to Clapton upon the model's release and was used for three numbers during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 17 May 2006. In 1979, Clapton gave his signed Fender Lead II guitar to the Hard Rock Cafe in London to designate his favourite bar stool. Pete Townshend also donated his own Gibson Les Paul guitar, with a note attached: "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete".
Signature guitars in Clapton's honour are made by Fender and C.F. Martin & Company. In 1988, Fender introduced his signature Eric Clapton Stratocaster. Several signature-model 000-sized acoustic guitars made by Martin. The first, of these, introduced in 1995, was a limited edition 000-42EC Eric Clapton signature model with a production run of 461. For the single "Change the World" (1996) and the album Pilgrim (1998) he used a Martin 000-28 EC Eric Clapton signature model, which he subsequently gave to guitarist Paul Wassif. His 1939 000-42 Martin that he played on the Unplugged album sold for US$791,500 at auction. Clapton uses Ernie Ball Slinky and Super Slinky strings, gauge .10 to.46. His guitar technician for over thirty years was Lee Dickson.
Clapton appeared in the movie version of Tommy, the first full-length rock opera, written by the Who. In the movie version, Clapton appeared as the Preacher, performing Sonny Boy Williamson's song, "Eyesight to the Blind". He appeared in Blues Brothers 2000 as one of the Louisiana Gator Boys. In addition to being in the band, he had a small speaking role. Clapton has appeared in an advertisement for the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen. In March 2007 Clapton appeared in an advertisement for RealNetwork's Rhapsody online music service. In 2010, Clapton started appearing as a spokesman for T-Mobile, advertising their MyTouch Fender cell phone. Clapton also appeared in the 2011 BBC documentary Reggae Got Soul: The Story of Toots and the Maytals, which was described as "The untold story of one of the most influential artists ever to come out of Jamaica."
When asked to describe God by their minister, the characters Eric Forman and Steven Hyde both drew an image of Clapton in the episode "Holy Crap!" of season two of That '70s Show.
Clapton appeared on the BBC's Top Gear in 2013, during Series 19 Episode 4 and was involved in testing the new Kia Cee'd. He was called upon to test the Cee'd's auxiliary input, which he tested by plugging in one of his guitars and playing several bars of his most famous hits. He was introduced by Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson as a "local guitarist".
In 2017, a documentary film titled Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars was directed by Lili Fini Zanuck. Clapton wrote the film score for Zanuck's 1991 film Rush and the two remained friends. In an interview for BBC News, Zanuck said that Clapton only agreed to participate if she directed it:
I think this got made because Eric was in the right mood. He's an incredibly private man and despite his immense success, he's never cared if he got any publicity at all, he just loves his music ... I think it might be something to do with his age, as he turned 70 a couple of years ago. He said to me, "I didn't want it to be done after I was dead and for it to be wrong." Maybe he thought his time had come to lay it all out on the table.
Clapton's partner from the late 1960s to 1974 was Alice Ormsby-Gore, a British aristocrat; they were often wrongly reported as engaged. He briefly dated funk singer Betty Davis. He married Pattie Boyd on 27 March 1979, in Tucson, Arizona, but their marriage was marred by his infidelities and domestic violence. During a 1999 interview with The Sunday Times, Clapton admitted to raping and abusing her while they were married and he was a "full-blown" alcoholic who felt entitled to sex. In 1984, while recording Behind the Sun, Clapton began a relationship with Yvonne Kelly, the manager of AIR Studios Montserrat. Although both were married to other partners at the time, they had a daughter named Ruth Kelly Clapton in January 1985. Ruth's existence was kept from the public until the media realised she was his child in 1991.
Clapton and Boyd tried unsuccessfully to have children, even trying in vitro fertilisation in 1984, but were faced instead with miscarriages. He had an affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo, who gave birth to their son, Conor, on 21 August 1986. Clapton and Boyd later divorced in 1989 after she was "utterly devastated" by his confession to impregnating Del Santo during this affair. Conor died on 20 March 1991 at the age of four after falling out of an open bedroom window on the 53rd floor of a Manhattan apartment building.
In 1998, Clapton, then 53, met 22-year-old administrative assistant Melia McEnery in Columbus, Ohio, at a party given for him after a performance. He quietly dated her for a year, and went public with the relationship in 1999. They married on 1 January 2002 at St Mary Magdalene church in Clapton's birthplace, Ripley. They have three daughters, Julie Rose (born 13 June 2001), Ella May (born 14 January 2003), and Sophie Belle (born 1 February 2005).
On 5 August 1976, Clapton provoked an uproar when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated on stage, Clapton voiced his support for the right-wing British politician Enoch Powell. He addressed the audience as follows:
Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch's our man. I think Enoch's right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!
"Keep Britain White" was, at the time, a slogan of the far-right National Front (NF). This incident, along with some controversial remarks made around the same time by David Bowie, were the main catalysts for the creation of Rock Against Racism, with a concert on 30 April 1978.
In an interview from October 1976 with Sounds magazine, Clapton said that he did not "know much about politics" and said of his immigration speech that "I just don't know what came over me that night. It must have been something that happened in the day but it came out in this garbled thing." In a 2004 interview with Uncut, Clapton referred to Enoch Powell as "outrageously brave". He said that the UK was "inviting people in as cheap labour and then putting them in ghettos". In 2004, Clapton told an interviewer for Scotland on Sunday, "There's no way I could be a racist. It would make no sense." In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton said he was "deliberately oblivious" to racial conflict. In a December 2007 interview with Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show, Clapton said he was not a racist but still believed Powell's comments were relevant.
After watching unedited footage of the 1976 outburst, which is included in Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars—a documentary which also covers his daily alcohol and drug abuse prior to his sobriety—in 2018 Clapton stated he was "disgusted" with himself for his "chauvinistic" and "fascistic" comments on stage. He added: "I sabotaged everything I got involved with. I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn't make sense. Half of my friends were black, I dated a black woman, and I championed black music."
Clapton supports the Countryside Alliance, which promotes field sports and issues relating to the British countryside. He has played in concerts to raise funds for the organisation and publicly opposed the Labour Party's ban on fox hunting with the 2004 Hunting Act. A spokesperson for Clapton said, "Eric supports the Countryside Alliance. He does not hunt himself, but does enjoy rural pursuits such as fishing and shooting. He supports the Alliance's pursuit to scrap the ban on the basis that he disagrees with the state's interference with people's private pursuits."
In November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Clapton and Van Morrison collaborated on an anti-mask, anti-lockdown single entitled "Stand and Deliver", the profits from which were donated to Morrison's Lockdown Financial Hardship Fund. Morrison's stance was criticised by Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann. In July 2021, Clapton wrote that he would "not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present", in response to Boris Johnson mandating that concert attendees be vaccinated. Clapton had by then taken both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and said he had had severe reactions to both injections. Whether the symptoms he reported were actually vaccine-related was called into question by an NBC News editorial, given that Clapton previously reported suffering the same symptoms as early as 2013 due to nerve damage.
In August 2021, Clapton released the single "This Has Gotta Stop" and an accompanying music video. It was described as a protest song against COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccinations, and contains lyrical and visual statements against what Clapton sees as the erosion of civil liberties as the result of lockdown policies.
Clapton tested positive for COVID-19 in May 2022 causing him to cancel some concerts in his tour schedule.
In November 2023, during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Clapton released "Voice of a Child", a song featuring images of destruction in the Gaza Strip.
In 2009, Surrey Life Magazine ranked Clapton as number 17 in their list of richest Surrey residents, estimating his fortune at £120 million in assets. This was a combination of income, property, a £9 million yacht, Va Bene (previously owned by Bernie Ecclestone), his back music catalogue, his touring income, and his holding company Marshbrook Ltd, which had earned him £110 million since 1989. In 2003, he purchased a 50% share of gentleman's outfitters Cordings Piccadilly. At the time, owner Noll Uloth was trying to save the shop from closure and contacted Clapton, his "best client"; within five minutes, Clapton replied with "I can't let this happen".
Since the 1970s, Clapton has considered himself a "car enthusiast" and has often stated his passion for the Ferrari brand. Clapton currently owns or has owned a range of Ferraris, and when asked about his Ferrari collection in 1989, he said he liked the touring cars the company produces for road use and commented "if I had more space and if I had been wise I would have a huge collection by now and I would be a multi-multi-millionaire". In 2010, he explained that for him "Ferrari has always been the number one car" to own and drive, and that he always supported Ferrari on the road and in Formula One motor racing.
In 2012, Ferrari honoured Clapton with the one-off special project car, the Ferrari SP12 EC. In July 2013 Clapton displayed it at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in the Michelin Supercar Run. In 2014, Clapton explained that Ferrari is still his favourite car brand. Among the other vehicles Clapton owns or has owned are a vintage Mini Cooper Radford that was a gift from George Harrison.
In 1993, Clapton was appointed a director of Clouds House, a UK treatment centre for drug and alcohol dependence, and served on their board until 1997. Clapton also served on the board of directors for The Chemical Dependency Centre from 1994 until 1999. Both charities subsequently merged to become Action on Addiction in 2007.
In 1998, he established the Crossroads Centre in Antigua to help others overcome their addictions to drugs and alcohol and is active in its management oversight and fundraising to the present day. Clapton has organised the Crossroads Guitar Festival in 1999, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2019 to raise funds for this centre. In 1999, Clapton auctioned off some of his guitar collection to raise more than US$5 million for continuing support of the Crossroads Centre. A second guitar auction, including the "Cream" of Clapton's collection – as well as guitars donated by famous friends – was held on 24 June 2004. His Lowden acoustic guitar sold for US$41,825. The revenue garnered by this auction at Christie's was US$7,438,624.
In 2011, he auctioned off over 150 items at a New York auction with proceeds going to his Crossroads Centre. Items included his guitar from the Cream reunion tour in 2005, speaker cabinets used in the early 1970s from his days with Derek and the Dominos, and some guitars from Jeff Beck, J. J. Cale, and Joe Bonamassa. In March 2011 he raised more than £1.3 million when he auctioned off 138 lots, made up of 75 guitars and 55 amps from his personal collection, including a 1984 Gibson hollow body guitar, a Gianni Versace suit from his 1990 concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and a replica of the famous Fender Stratocaster known as "Blackie", which fetched more than $30,000. All proceeds again went to Crossroads.
Clapton has performed at the Secret Policeman's Ball, a benefit show co-founded by Monty Python member John Cleese on behalf of Amnesty International. He made his first appearance at the 1981 show held in London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and he subsequently became an activist. Clapton has collaborated with The Prince's Trust, the leading UK youth charity, which provides training, personal development, business start up support, mentoring, and advice. He has performed at the charity's rock concert numerous times since the 1980s, most recently in 2010. In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of Southeast Asia after the devastation inflicted by the 2004 tsunami.
Clapton is a fan of English football club West Bromwich Albion. In 1982, he performed a concert before West Brom player John Wile's testimonial game at The Hawthorns. It has been reported that the club rejected his offer to invest cash in the club around this time. In the late 1970s Clapton positioned a West Brom scarf on the back cover of his album, Backless. In the 1978–79 season Clapton sponsored West Brom's UEFA Cup home game against Turkish club Galatasaray.
Clapton's music has appeared in dozens of movies and television shows as far back as 1973's Mean Streets, which included the Derek and the Dominos song "I Looked Away" and a performance of "Steppin' Out" by Cream. Other appearances in media include in the Miami Vice series ("Wonderful Tonight", "Knock on Wood", "She's Waiting", and "Layla"), Back to the Future ("Heaven Is One Step Away"), The Color of Money ("It's in the Way That You Use It"), Lethal Weapon 2 ("Knockin' On Heaven's Door"), Goodfellas ("Layla" and "Sunshine of Your Love"), Freaks and Geeks episode "I'm With the Band" ("Sunshine of Your Love", "White Room" and "Crossroads"), Friends episodes "The One with the Proposal, Part 2" ("Wonderful Tonight") and "The One Where Rachel Has A Baby" ("River of Tears"), School Of Rock ("Sunshine Of Your Love)", Men in Black III ("Strange Brew"), Captain Phillips ("Wonderful Tonight"), August: Osage County ("Lay Down Sally"), Good Girls Revolt episode "The Year-Ender" ("White Room)", Rick and Morty episode "The Vat of Acid Episode" ("It's in the Way That You Use It") and Joker ("White Room").
Both Opel and Vauxhall used the guitar riff from "Layla" in their advertising campaigns throughout 1987–95. In addition to his music appearing in media, Clapton has contributed to several movies by writing or co-writing the musical scores or contributing original songs. These movies include Lethal Weapon (co-written with Michael Kamen), Communion, Rush, Phenomenon ("Change the World"), and Lethal Weapon 3 (co-wrote and co-performed "It's Probably Me" with Sting and "Runaway Train" with Elton John). | [
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"text": "Eric Patrick Clapton CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. He ranked second in Rolling Stone's list of the \"100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time\" and fourth in Gibson's \"Top 50 Guitarists of All Time\". In 2023, Clapton was named the 35th best guitarist of all time. He was also named number five in Time magazine's list of \"The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players\" in 2009.",
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "After playing in a number of different local bands, Clapton joined the Yardbirds from 1963 to 1965, and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers from 1965 to 1966. After leaving Mayall, he formed the power trio Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and \"arty, blues-based psychedelic pop\". After four successful albums, Cream broke up in November 1968. Clapton then formed the blues rock band Blind Faith with Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech, recording one album and performing on one tour before they broke up. Clapton then toured with Delaney & Bonnie and recorded his first solo album in 1970, before forming Derek and the Dominos with Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Like Blind Faith, the band only lasted one album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which includes \"Layla\", one of Clapton's signature songs.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Clapton continued to record a number of successful solo albums and songs over the next several decades, including a 1974 cover of Bob Marley's \"I Shot the Sheriff\" (which helped reggae reach a mass market), the country-infused Slowhand album (1977) and the pop rock of 1986's August. Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Clapton's grief was expressed in the song \"Tears in Heaven\", which appeared on his Unplugged album. In 1996 he had another top-40 hit with the R&B crossover \"Change the World\". In 1998, he released the Grammy award-winning \"My Father's Eyes\". Since 1999, he has recorded a number of traditional blues and blues rock albums and hosted the periodic Crossroads Guitar Festival. His most recent studio album is Happy Xmas (2018).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Clapton has received 18 Grammy Awards as well as the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004, he was awarded a CBE for services to music. He has received four Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. In his solo career, he has sold more than 280 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for those recovering from substance abuse.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton (1929–1999) and Edward Walter Fryer (1920–1985), a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec. Fryer was drafted to war before Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up believing that his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, Patricia's stepfather, were his parents, and that his mother was actually his older sister. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp (Reginald Cecil Clapton was the name of Rose's first husband, Eric Clapton's maternal grandfather). Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany, leaving Eric with his grandparents in Surrey.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest. Two years later he picked it up again and started playing consistently. He was influenced by blues music from an early age, and practised long hours learning the chords of blues music by playing along to the records. He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder, listening to them over and over until he was satisfied.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1961, after leaving Hollyfield School in Surbiton, he studied at the Kingston College of Art but was expelled at the end of the academic year because his focus had remained on music rather than art. His guitar playing was sufficiently advanced that, by the age of 16, he was getting noticed. Around this time, he began busking around Kingston, Richmond, and the West End. In 1962, he started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast Dave Brock in pubs around Surrey. When he was 17, he joined his first band, an early British R&B group, the Roosters, whose other guitarist was Tom McGuinness. He stayed with them from January until August 1963. In October of that year, he performed a seven-gig stint with Casey Jones & the Engineers.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In October 1963, Clapton joined the Yardbirds, a rhythm and blues band, and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesising influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B.B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene. The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, London. They toured England with American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II; a joint LP album, recorded in December 1963, was issued in 1965.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Yardbirds' rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing what is called a \"slow handclap\". Clapton's nickname of \"Slowhand\" came from Giorgio Gomelsky, a pun on the slow handclapping that ensued when Clapton stopped playing while he replaced a string. In December 1964, Clapton made his first appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with the Yardbirds. Since then, Clapton has performed at the Hall over 200 times, and has stated that performing at the venue is like \"playing in my front room\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In March 1965, Clapton and the Yardbirds had their first major hit, \"For Your Love\", written by songwriter Graham Gouldman, who also wrote hit songs for Herman's Hermits and the Hollies (and later achieved success of his own as a member of 10cc). In part because of its success, the Yardbirds elected to move toward a pop-orientated sound, much to the annoyance of Clapton, who was devoted to the blues and not commercial success. He left the Yardbirds on the day that \"For Your Love\" went public, a move that left the band without its lead guitarist and most accomplished member. Clapton suggested fellow guitarist Jimmy Page as his replacement, but Page declined out of loyalty to Clapton, putting Jeff Beck forward. Beck and Page played together in the Yardbirds for a while, but Beck, Page, and Clapton were never in the group together. They first appeared together in 1983 on the 12-date benefit tour for Action for Research into multiple sclerosis with the first date on 23 September at the Royal Albert Hall.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April 1965, only to quit a few months later. In June, Clapton was invited to jam with Jimmy Page, recording a number of tracks that were retroactively credited to The Immediate All-Stars. In the summer of 1965 he left for Greece with a band called the Glands, which included his old friend Ben Palmer on piano. After a car crash that killed the bassist and injured the guitarist of the Greek band the Juniors, on 17 October 1965 the surviving members played memorial shows in which Clapton played with the band. In October 1965 he rejoined John Mayall. In March 1966, while still a member of the Bluesbreakers, Clapton briefly collaborated on a side project with Jack Bruce and Steve Winwood among others, recording only a few tracks under the name Eric Clapton and the Powerhouse. During his second Bluesbreakers stint, Clapton gained a reputation as the best blues guitarist on the club circuit. Although Clapton gained fame for playing on the influential album, Blues Breakers – John Mayall – With Eric Clapton, this album was not released until he had left the band for the last time in July 1966. The album itself is often called The Beano Album by fans because of its cover photograph showing Clapton reading the British children's comic The Beano.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Having swapped his Fender Telecaster and Vox AC30 amplifier for a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and Marshall amplifier, Clapton's sound and playing inspired the famous slogan \"Clapton is God\", spray-painted by an unknown admirer on a wall in Islington, North London in 1967. The graffito was captured in a now-famous photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall. Clapton is reported to have been embarrassed by the slogan, saying in his The South Bank Show profile in 1987, \"I never accepted that I was the greatest guitar player in the world. I always wanted to be the greatest guitar player in the world, but that's an ideal, and I accept it as an ideal\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966 (replaced by Peter Green) and was invited by drummer Ginger Baker to play in his newly formed band Cream, one of the earliest supergroups, with Jack Bruce on bass (Bruce was previously of the Bluesbreakers, the Graham Bond Organisation and Manfred Mann). Before the formation of Cream, Clapton was not well known in the United States; he left the Yardbirds before \"For Your Love\" hit the US top ten, and had yet to perform there. During his time with Cream, Clapton began to develop as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, though Bruce took most of the lead vocals and wrote the majority of the material with lyricist Pete Brown. Cream's first gig was an unofficial performance at the Twisted Wheel Club in Manchester on 29 July 1966 before their full debut two nights later at the National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor. Cream established its enduring legend with the high-volume blues jamming and extended solos of their live shows.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "By early 1967, fans of the emerging blues-rock sound in the UK had begun to portray Clapton as Britain's top guitarist; however, he found himself rivalled by the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, an acid rock-infused guitarist who used wailing feedback and effects pedals to create new sounds for the instrument. Hendrix attended a performance of the newly formed Cream at the Central London Polytechnic on 1 October 1966, during which he sat in on a double-timed version of \"Killing Floor\". Top UK stars, including Clapton, Pete Townshend and members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, avidly attended Hendrix's early club performances. Hendrix's arrival had an immediate and major effect on the next phase of Clapton's career.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Clapton first visited the United States while touring with Cream. In March 1967, Cream performed a nine-show stand at the RKO Theater in New York. Clapton's 1964 painted Gibson SG guitar – The Fool – a \"psychedelic fantasy\", according to Clapton, made its debut at the RKO Theater. Clapton used the guitar for most of Cream's recordings after Fresh Cream, particularly on Disraeli Gears, until the band broke up in 1968. One of the world's best-known guitars, it symbolises the psychedelic era. They recorded Disraeli Gears in New York from 11 to 15 May 1967. Cream's repertoire varied from hard rock (\"I Feel Free\") to lengthy blues-based instrumental jams (\"Spoonful\"). Disraeli Gears contained Clapton's searing guitar lines, Bruce's soaring vocals and prominent, fluid bass playing, and Baker's powerful, polyrhythmic jazz-influenced drumming. Together, Cream's talents secured them as an influential power trio. Clapton's voice can be heard on Frank Zappa's album We're Only in It for the Money, on the tracks \"Are You Hung Up?\" and \"Nasal Retentive Calliope Music\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 28 months, Cream had become a commercial success, selling millions of records and playing throughout the US and Europe. They redefined the instrumentalist's role in rock and were one of the first blues-rock bands to emphasise musical virtuosity and lengthy jazz-style improvisation sessions. Their US hit singles include \"Sunshine of Your Love\" (No. 5, 1968), \"White Room\" (No. 6, 1968) and \"Crossroads\" (No. 28, 1969) – a live version of Robert Johnson's \"Cross Road Blues\". Though Cream were hailed as one of the greatest groups of its day, and the adulation of Clapton as a guitar legend reached new heights, the supergroup was short-lived. Drug and alcohol use escalated tension between the three members, and conflicts between Bruce and Baker eventually led to Cream's demise. A strongly critical Rolling Stone review of a concert of the group's second headlining US tour was another significant factor in the trio's demise, and it affected Clapton profoundly. Clapton has also credited Music from Big Pink, the debut album of The Band, and its revolutionary Americana sound as influencing his decision to leave Cream.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Cream's farewell album, Goodbye, comprising live performances recorded at The Forum, Los Angeles, on 19 October 1968, was released shortly after Cream disbanded. It also spawned the studio single \"Badge\", co-written by Clapton and George Harrison (Clapton had met and become close friends with Harrison after the Beatles shared a bill with the Clapton-era Yardbirds at the London Palladium). In 1968, Clapton played the lead guitar solo on Harrison's \"While My Guitar Gently Weeps\", from the Beatles' self-titled double album (also known as the \"White Album\"). Harrison's debut solo album, Wonderwall Music (1968), became the first of many Harrison solo records to include Clapton on guitar. Clapton went largely uncredited for his contributions to Harrison's albums due to contractual restraints, and Harrison was credited as \"L'Angelo Misterioso\" for his contributions to the song \"Badge\" on Goodbye. The pair often played live together as each other's guest. A year after Harrison's death in 2001, Clapton was musical director for the Concert for George.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In January 1969, when the Beatles were recording and filming what became Let It Be, tensions became so acute that Harrison quit the group for several days, prompting John Lennon to suggest they complete the project with Clapton if Harrison did not return. Michael Lindsay-Hogg, television director of the recording sessions for Let It Be, later recalled: \"I was there when John mentioned Clapton – but that wasn't going to happen. Would Eric have become a Beatle? No. Paul [McCartney] didn't want to go there. He didn't want them to break up. Then George came back.\" Clapton was on good terms with all four of the Beatles; in December 1968 he had played with Lennon at The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus as part of the one-off group the Dirty Mac.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Cream briefly reunited in 1993 to perform at the ceremony inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A full reunion took place in May 2005, with Clapton, Bruce and Baker playing four sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, and three shows at New York's Madison Square Garden that October. Recordings from the London shows, Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005, were released on CD, LP and DVD in late 2005.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Clapton's next group, Blind Faith, formed in 1969, was composed of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood of Traffic, and Ric Grech of Family, and yielded one LP and one arena-circuit tour. The supergroup debuted before 100,000 fans in London's Hyde Park on 7 June 1969. They performed several dates in Scandinavia and began a sold-out American tour in July before their only album was released. The LP Blind Faith consisted of just six songs, one of them the hit \"Can't Find My Way Home\". Another, \"Presence of the Lord\", is the first song credited solely to Clapton. The album's jacket image of a topless pubescent girl was deemed controversial in the US and was replaced by a photograph of the band. Blind Faith dissolved after less than seven months.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Clapton subsequently toured as a sideman for an act that had opened for Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends. He also performed as a member of Lennon's Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival in September 1969, a recording from which was released as the album Live Peace in Toronto 1969. On 30 September, Clapton played lead guitar on Lennon's second solo single, \"Cold Turkey\". On 15 December that year, Clapton performed with Lennon, Harrison and others as the Plastic Ono Supergroup at a fundraiser for UNICEF in London.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Delaney Bramlett encouraged Clapton in his singing and writing. Using the Bramletts' backing group and an all-star cast of session players (including Leon Russell and Stephen Stills), Clapton recorded his first solo album during two brief tour hiatuses, titled Eric Clapton. Delaney Bramlett co-wrote six of the songs with Clapton, also producing the LP, and Bonnie Bramlett co-wrote \"Let It Rain\". The album yielded the unexpected US No. 18 hit, J. J. Cale's \"After Midnight\". Clapton also worked with much of Delaney and Bonnie's band to record George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in spring 1970.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "During this period, Clapton also recorded with artists such as Dr. John, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Ringo Starr and Dave Mason. With Chicago blues artist Howlin' Wolf, he recorded The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, that also included long-time Wolf guitarist Hubert Sumlin and members of the Rolling Stones, Winwood and Starr. Despite the superstar line-up, critic Cub Koda noted: \"Even Eric Clapton, who usually welcomes any chance to play with one of his idols, has criticized this album repeatedly in interviews, which speaks volumes in and of itself.\" Other noted recordings from this period include Clapton's guitar work on \"Go Back Home\" from Stephen Stills' self-titled first solo album.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "With the intention of counteracting the \"star\" cult faction that had begun to form around him, Clapton assembled a new band composed of Delaney and Bonnie's former rhythm section, Bobby Whitlock as keyboardist and vocalist, Carl Radle as the bassist, and drummer Jim Gordon, with Clapton playing guitar. It was his intention to show that he need not fill a starring role, and functioned well as a member of an ensemble. During this period, Clapton was increasingly influenced by The Band and their 1968 album Music from Big Pink, saying: \"What I appreciated about the Band was that they were more concerned with songs and singing. They would have three- and four-part harmonies, and the guitar was put back into perspective as being accompaniment. That suited me well, because I had gotten so tired of the virtuosity – or pseudo-virtuosity – thing of long, boring guitar solos just because they were expected. The Band brought things back into perspective. The priority was the song.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The band was originally called \"Eric Clapton and Friends\". The eventual name was a fluke that occurred when the band's provisional name of \"Del and the Dynamos\" was misread as Derek and the Dominos. Clapton's biography states that Tony Ashton of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke told Clapton to call the band \"Del and the Dominos\", since \"Del\" was his nickname for Eric Clapton. Del and Eric were combined and the final name became \"Derek and the Dominos\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Clapton's close friendship with George Harrison brought him into contact with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, with whom he became deeply infatuated. When she spurned his advances, Clapton's unrequited affections prompted most of the material for the Dominos' album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970). Heavily blues-influenced, the album features the twin lead guitars of Clapton and Duane Allman, with Allman's slide guitar as a key ingredient of the sound. Working at Criteria Studios in Miami with Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd, who had worked with Clapton on Cream's Disraeli Gears, the band recorded a double album.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The album contained the hit love song \"Layla\", inspired by the classical poet of Persian literature, Nizami Ganjavi's The Story of Layla and Majnun, a copy of which Ian Dallas had given to Clapton. The book moved Clapton profoundly, as it was the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful, unavailable woman and went crazy because he could not marry her. The two parts of \"Layla\" were recorded in separate sessions: the opening guitar section was recorded first, and for the second section, laid down a few weeks later, drummer Jim Gordon played the piano part for the melody, which he claimed to have written (though Bobby Whitlock stated that Rita Coolidge wrote it).",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Layla LP was actually recorded by a five-piece version of the group, thanks to the unforeseen inclusion of guitarist Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. A few days into the Layla sessions, Dowd – who was also producing the Allmans – invited Clapton to an Allman Brothers outdoor concert in Miami. The two guitarists met first on stage, then played all night in the studio, and became friends. Duane first added his slide guitar to \"Tell the Truth\" and \"Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out\". In four days, the five-piece Dominos recorded \"Key to the Highway\", \"Have You Ever Loved a Woman\" (a blues standard popularised by Freddie King and others) and \"Why Does Love Got to be So Sad?\" In September, Duane briefly left the sessions for gigs with his own band, and the four-piece Dominos recorded \"I Looked Away\", \"Bell Bottom Blues\" and \"Keep on Growing\". Allman returned to record \"I Am Yours\", \"Anyday\" and \"It's Too Late\". On 9 September, they recorded Hendrix's \"Little Wing\" and the title track. The following day, the final track, \"It's Too Late\", was recorded.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Tragedy dogged the group throughout its brief career. During the sessions, Clapton was devastated by news of the death of Jimi Hendrix; eight days previously the band had cut a cover of \"Little Wing\" as a tribute. On 17 September 1970, one day before Hendrix's death, Clapton had purchased a left-handed Fender Stratocaster that he had planned to give to Hendrix as a birthday gift. Adding to Clapton's woes, Layla received only lukewarm reviews upon release. The shaken group undertook a US tour without Allman, who had returned to the Allman Brothers Band. Despite Clapton's later admission that the tour took place amid a blizzard of drugs and alcohol, it resulted in the live double album In Concert.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Recording of a second Dominos studio album was underway when a clash of egos took place and Clapton walked out, thus disbanding the group. Allman was killed in a motorcycle accident on 29 October 1971. Clapton wrote later in his autobiography that he and Allman were inseparable during the Layla sessions in Florida; he talked about Allman as the \"musical brother I'd never had but wished I did\". Although Radle remained Clapton's bass player until the summer of 1979 (Radle died in May 1980 from the effects of alcohol and narcotics), it was not until 2003 that Clapton and Whitlock appeared together again; Clapton guested on Whitlock's appearance on the Later with Jools Holland show. Another tragic footnote to the Dominos story was the fate of drummer Jim Gordon, who had undiagnosed schizophrenia and years later murdered his mother during a psychotic episode. Gordon was confined to 16-years-to-life imprisonment, later being moved to a mental institution, where he remained for the rest of his life.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Clapton's career successes in the 1970s were in stark contrast with the struggles he coped with in his personal life, which was troubled by romantic longings and drug and alcohol addiction. Still infatuated with Boyd and torn by his friendship with Harrison, he withdrew from recording and touring to isolation in his Surrey residence as the Dominos broke up. He nursed a heroin addiction, which resulted in a lengthy career hiatus interrupted only by performing at Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh benefit shows in New York in August 1971; there, he passed out on stage, was revived, and managed to finish his performance. In January 1973, the Who's Pete Townshend organised a comeback concert for Clapton at London's Rainbow Theatre, titled the \"Rainbow Concert\", to help Clapton kick his addiction. Clapton returned the favour by playing \"The Preacher\" in Ken Russell's film version of the Who's Tommy in 1975. His appearance in the film (performing \"Eyesight to the Blind\") is notable as he is clearly wearing a fake beard in some shots, the result of deciding to shave off his real beard after the initial takes in an attempt to force the director to remove his earlier scene from the film and leave the set.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In 1974, Clapton started living with Boyd (they would not marry until 1979) and was no longer using heroin (although he gradually began to drink heavily). He assembled a low-key touring band that included Radle, Miami guitarist George Terry, keyboardist Dick Sims (who died in 2011), drummer Jamie Oldaker, and vocalists Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy (also known as Marcella Detroit). With this band Clapton recorded 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), an album with an emphasis on more compact songs and fewer guitar solos; the cover version of \"I Shot the Sheriff\" was Clapton's first number one hit. The 1975 album There's One in Every Crowd continued this trend. The album's original title, The World's Greatest Guitar Player (There's One in Every Crowd), was changed before pressing, as it was felt its ironic intention would be misunderstood. The band toured the world and subsequently released the 1975 live LP E. C. Was Here. Clapton continued to release albums and toured regularly. Highlights of the period include No Reason to Cry (a collaboration with Bob Dylan and The Band); Slowhand, which contained \"Wonderful Tonight\" and a second J. J. Cale cover, \"Cocaine\". In 1976, he performed as one of a string of notable guests at the farewell performance of The Band, filmed in a Martin Scorsese documentary titled The Last Waltz.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1981, Clapton was invited by producer Martin Lewis to appear at the Amnesty International benefit The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in London. Clapton accepted the invitation and teamed up with Jeff Beck to perform a series of duets – reportedly their first ever billed stage collaboration. Three of the performances were released on the album of the show, and one of the songs appeared in the film. The performances at London's Drury Lane theatre heralded a return to form and prominence for Clapton in the new decade. Many factors had influenced Clapton's comeback, including his \"deepening commitment to Christianity\", to which he had converted prior to his heroin addiction.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "After calling his manager and admitting he was an alcoholic, Clapton flew to Minneapolis–Saint Paul in January 1982 and checked in at Hazelden Treatment Center, located in Center City, Minnesota. On the flight over, Clapton indulged in a large number of drinks, for fear he would never be able to drink again. Clapton wrote in his autobiography:",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In the lowest moments of my life, the only reason I didn't commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn't be able to drink any more if I was dead. It was the only thing I thought was worth living for, and the idea that people were about to try and remove me from alcohol was so terrible that I drank and drank and drank, and they had to practically carry me into the clinic.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "After being discharged, it was recommended by doctors of Hazelden that Clapton not partake in any activities that would act as triggers for his alcoholism or stress. But it did happen. Clapton would go back to the Hazelden Treatment Center in November 1987. He has stayed sober ever since. A few months after his discharge from his first rehab, Clapton began working on his next album, against doctors' orders. Working with Tom Dowd, he produced what he thought as his \"most forced\" album to date, Money and Cigarettes. Clapton chose the name of the album \"because that's all I saw myself having left\" after his first rehabilitation from alcoholism.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 1984, he performed on former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, and participated in the supporting tour. Since then Waters and Clapton have had a close relationship. In 2005, they performed together for the Tsunami Relief Fund. In 2006, they performed at the Highclere Castle, in aid of the Countryside Alliance, playing two set pieces of \"Wish You Were Here\" and \"Comfortably Numb\". Clapton, now a regular charity performer, played at the Live Aid concert at John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia on 13 July 1985, playing with Phil Collins, Tim Renwick, Chris Stainton, Jamie Oldaker, Marcy Levy, Shaun Murphy and Donald 'Duck' Dunn. When offered a slot close to peak viewing hours, he was apparently flattered. His album output continued in the 1980s, including two produced with Phil Collins, 1985's Behind the Sun, which produced the hits \"Forever Man\" and \"She's Waiting\", and 1986's August.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "August was suffused with Collins's trademark drum and horn sound, and became Clapton's biggest seller in the UK to date, matching his highest chart position, number 3. The album's first track, the hit \"It's in the Way That You Use It\", appeared in the Tom Cruise–Paul Newman film The Color of Money. The songs \"Tearing Us Apart\" (with Tina Turner) and \"Miss You\" continued Clapton's more angry sound. This rebound kicked off Clapton's two-year period of touring with Collins and their August collaborators, bassist Nathan East and keyboard player/songwriter Greg Phillinganes. While on tour for August, two concert videos were recorded of the four-man band: Eric Clapton Live from Montreux and Eric Clapton and Friends. Clapton later remade \"After Midnight\" as a single and a promotional track for the Michelob beer brand, which had also used earlier songs by Collins and Steve Winwood. Clapton won a British Academy Television Award for his collaboration with Michael Kamen on the score for the 1985 BBC television thriller series Edge of Darkness. At the 1987 Brit Awards in London, Clapton was awarded the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 1987, he played on George Harrison's album Cloud Nine, contributing guitar to \"Cloud 9\", \"That's What It Takes\", \"Devil's Radio\" and \"Wreck of the Hesperus\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Clapton also got together with the Bee Gees for charity. The supergroup called itself the Bunburys, and recorded a charity album with the proceeds going to the Bunbury Cricket Club in Cheshire, which plays exhibition cricket matches to raise money for nonprofit organisations in England. The Bunburys recorded three songs for The Bunbury Tails: \"We're the Bunburys\", \"Bunbury Afternoon\" and \"Fight (No Matter How Long)\". The last song also appeared on The 1988 Summer Olympics Album and went to No. 8 on the rock music chart. Clapton played at the cricket club's 25th anniversary celebrations in 2011, which were held at London's Grosvenor House Hotel. In 1988, he played with Dire Straits and Elton John at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium and the Prince's Trust rock gala at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1989, Clapton released Journeyman, an album that covered a wide range of styles, including blues, jazz, soul and pop. Collaborators included George Harrison, Phil Collins, Daryl Hall, Chaka Khan, Mick Jones, David Sanborn and Robert Cray. The song \"Bad Love\" was released as a single and later won the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The 1990s brought a series of 32 concerts to the Royal Albert Hall, such as the 24 Nights series of concerts that took place around January through February 1990, and February to March 1991. On 30 June 1990, Dire Straits, Clapton and Elton John made a guest appearance in the Nordoff-Robbins charity show held at Knebworth in England. On 27 August 1990, fellow blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was touring with Clapton, and three members of their road crew were killed in a helicopter crash between concerts. Then, on 20 March 1991, Clapton's four-year-old son, Conor, died after falling from the 53rd-floor window of his mother's friend's New York City apartment at 117 East 57th Street. Conor's funeral took place on 28 March at St Mary Magdalene's Church in Clapton's home village in Ripley, Surrey, with Conor buried in the church graveyard. In 1991, Clapton appeared on Richie Sambora's album, Stranger in This Town, in a song dedicated to him, called \"Mr. Bluesman\". He contributed guitar and vocals to \"Runaway Train\", a duet with Elton John on the latter's The One album the following year.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "I almost subconsciously used music for myself as a healing agent, and lo and behold, it worked ... I have got a great deal of happiness and a great deal of healing from music.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "—Clapton on the healing process in writing \"Tears in Heaven\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Clapton's grief was expressed in the song \"Tears in Heaven\", which was co-written by Will Jennings. At the 35th Annual Grammy Awards, Clapton received six Grammys for the single \"Tears in Heaven\" and his Unplugged album, for which Clapton performed live in front of a small audience on 16 January 1992 at Bray Film Studios in Windsor, Berkshire, England. The album reached number one on the Billboard 200, and is certified Diamond by the RIAA for selling over 10 million copies in the US. It reached number two in the UK Albums Chart and is certified four times platinum in the UK. On 9 September 1992, Clapton performed \"Tears in Heaven\" at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, and won the award for Best Male Video.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 1992, Clapton received the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. In October 1992 Clapton was among the dozens of artists performing at Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. Recorded at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the live two-disk CD/DVD captured a show full of celebrities performing classic Dylan songs, with Clapton playing the lead on a nearly 7-minute version of Dylan's \"Knockin' on Heaven's Door\" as part of the finale. While Clapton played acoustic guitar on Unplugged, his 1994 album From the Cradle contained new versions of old blues standards, highlighted by his electric guitar playing. In 1995, Clapton for the first and only time appeared on a UK No. 1 single, collaborating with Chrissie Hynde, Cher and Neneh Cherry on a solo to a cover of \"Love Can Build a Bridge\" released in aid of the British charity telethon Comic Relief.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "On 12 September 1996 Clapton played a party for Armani at New York City's Lexington Armory with Greg Phillinganes, Nathan East and Steve Gadd. Sheryl Crow appeared on one number, performing \"Tearing Us Apart\", a track from August, which was first performed by Tina Turner during the Prince's Trust All-Star Rock show in 1986. It was Clapton's sole US appearance that year, following the open-air concert held at Hyde Park. The concert was taped and the footage was released both on VHS video cassette and later, on DVD. Clapton's 1996 recording of the Wayne Kirkpatrick/Gordon Kennedy/Tommy Sims tune \"Change the World\" (on the soundtrack of the film Phenomenon) won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1997, the same year he recorded Retail Therapy (an album of electronic music with Simon Climie under the pseudonym TDF). On 15 September 1997, Clapton appeared at the Music for Montserrat concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, performing \"Layla\" and \"Same Old Blues\" before finishing with \"Hey Jude\" alongside fellow English artists Paul McCartney, Elton John, Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler and Sting. That autumn, Clapton released the album Pilgrim, the first record containing new material for almost a decade.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1996, Clapton had a relationship with singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow. They remain friends, and Clapton appeared as a guest on Crow's Central Park Concert. The duo performed a Cream hit single, \"White Room\". Later, Clapton and Crow performed an alternate version of \"Tulsa Time\" with other guitar legends at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in June 2007 as well as Robert Johnson's blues classic \"Crossroads\" at London's Hyde Park in August 2008 with John Mayer and Robert Randolph.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "At the 41st Annual Grammy Awards on 24 February 1999, Clapton received his third Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, for his song \"My Father's Eyes\". In October 1999, the compilation album, Clapton Chronicles: The Best of Eric Clapton, was released, which contained a new song, \"Blue Eyes Blue\", that also appears in soundtrack for the film, Runaway Bride. Clapton finished the twentieth century with collaborations with Carlos Santana and B.B. King. Clapton looked up to King and had always wanted to make an album with him, while King said of Clapton, \"I admire the man. I think he's No. 1 in rock 'n' roll as a guitarist and No. 1 as a great person.\"",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Clapton released the album Reptile in March 2001. One month after the 11 September attacks, Clapton appeared at the Concert for New York City, performing alongside Buddy Guy. An event marking the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in June 2002, Clapton performed \"Layla\" and \"While My Guitar Gently Weeps\" at the Party at the Palace concert in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. On 29 November 2002, the Concert for George was held at the Royal Albert Hall, a tribute to George Harrison, who had died a year earlier of lung cancer. Clapton was a performer and the musical director. The concert included Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Ravi Shankar, Gary Brooker, Billy Preston, Joe Brown and Dhani Harrison. In 2004, Clapton released two albums of covers of songs by bluesman Robert Johnson, Me and Mr. Johnson and Sessions for Robert J. Guitarist Doyle Bramhall II worked on the album with Clapton (after opening Clapton's 2001 tour with his band Smokestack) and joined him on his 2004 tour. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Clapton No. 53 on their list of the \"100 Greatest Artists of All Time\". Other media appearances include the Toots & the Maytals Grammy award-winning album True Love, where he played guitar on the track \"Pressure Drop\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "On 22 January 2005, Clapton performed in the Tsunami Relief Concert held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, in aid of the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. In May 2005, Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker reunited as Cream for a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Concert recordings were released on CD and DVD. Later, Cream performed in New York at Madison Square Garden. Clapton's first album of new original material in nearly five years, Back Home, was released on Reprise Records on 30 August.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "A collaboration with guitarist J. J. Cale, The Road to Escondido, was released on 7 November 2006, featuring Derek Trucks and Billy Preston (Preston had also been a part of Clapton's 2004 touring band). He invited Trucks to join his band for his 2006–2007 world tour. Bramhall remained, giving Clapton three elite guitarists in his band, allowing him to revisit many Derek and the Dominos songs that he hadn't played in decades. Trucks became the third member of the Allman Brothers Band to tour supporting Clapton, the second being pianist/keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who appeared on the MTV Unplugged album and the 24 Nights performances at the Royal Albert Hall, London in 1990 and 1991, as well as Clapton's 1992 US tour.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "On 20 May 2006, Clapton performed with Queen drummer Roger Taylor and former Pink Floyd bassist/songwriter Roger Waters at Highclere Castle, Hampshire, in support of the Countryside Alliance, which promotes issues relating to the British countryside. On 13 August 2006, Clapton made a guest appearance at the Bob Dylan concert in Columbus, Ohio, playing guitar on three songs in Jimmie Vaughan's opening act. The chemistry between Trucks and Clapton convinced him to invite the Derek Trucks Band to open for Clapton's set at his 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival. Trucks remained on set and performed with Clapton's band throughout his performances. The rights to Clapton's official memoirs, written by Christopher Simon Sykes and published in 2007, were sold at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair for US$4 million.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 2007, Clapton learned more about his father, a Canadian soldier who left the UK after the war. Although Clapton's grandparents eventually told him the truth about his parentage, he only knew that his father's name was Edward Fryer. This was a source of disquiet for Clapton, as witnessed by his 1998 song \"My Father's Eyes\". A Montreal journalist named Michael Woloschuk researched Canadian Armed Forces service records and tracked down members of Fryer's family, and finally pieced together the story. He learned that Clapton's father was Edward Walter Fryer, born 21 March 1920, in Montreal and died 15 May 1985 in Newmarket, Ontario. Fryer was a musician (piano and saxophone) and a lifelong drifter who was married several times, had several children, and apparently never knew that he was the father of Eric Clapton. Clapton thanked Woloschuk in an encounter at Macdonald–Cartier Airport, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On 26 February 2008, it was reported that Clapton had been invited to play a concert in North Korea by government officials. Clapton agreed in principle and suggested it take place in 2009. Kristen Foster, a spokesperson for Clapton, said that he regularly received offers to play abroad and that there had been no agreement for him to play in North Korea. In February 2008, Clapton performed with his long-time friend Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden and guested on his recorded single, \"Dirty City\", on Winwood's album Nine Lives. The two former Blind Faith bandmates met again for a series of 14 concerts throughout the United States in June 2009. Clapton's 2008 Summer Tour began on 3 May at the Ford Amphitheatre, Tampa, Florida, and then moved to Canada, Ireland, England, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, and Monaco. On 28 June 2008, he headlined Saturday night for Hard Rock Calling 2008 in London's Hyde Park (previously Hyde Park Calling) with support from Sheryl Crow and John Mayer.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In March 2009, the Allman Brothers Band (amongst many notable guests) celebrated their 40th year, dedicating their string of concerts to the late Duane Allman on their annual run at the Beacon Theatre. Eric Clapton was one of the performers, with drummer Butch Trucks remarking that the performance was not the typical Allman Brothers experience, given the number and musical styles of the guests who were invited to perform. Songs like \"In Memory of Elizabeth Reed\" were punctuated with others, including \"The Weight\", with Levon Helm; Johnny Winter sitting in on Hendrix's \"Red House\"; and \"Layla\". On 4 May 2009 Clapton appeared at the Royal Albert Hall, playing \"Further on Up the Road\" with Joe Bonamassa.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Clapton was scheduled to perform at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 25th anniversary concert in Madison Square Garden on 30 October 2009, but cancelled due to gallstone surgery. Van Morrison (who also cancelled) said in an interview that he and Clapton were to do a \"couple of songs\", but that they would do something else together at \"some other stage of the game\".",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Clapton performed a two-night show with Jeff Beck at the O2 Arena in London on 13–14 February 2010. The two former Yardbirds extended their 2010 tour with stops at Madison Square Garden, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, and the Bell Centre in Montreal. Clapton performed a series of concerts in 11 cities throughout the United States from 25 February to 13 March 2010, including Roger Daltrey as opening act. His third European tour with Steve Winwood began on 18 May and ended 13 June, including Tom Norris as opening act. He then began a short North American tour lasting from 26 June to 3 July, starting with his third Crossroads Guitar Festival on 26 June at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. Clapton released a new studio album, Clapton, on 27 September 2010 in the United Kingdom and 28 September 2010 in the United States. On 17 November 2010, Clapton performed as guest on the Prince's Trust rock gala held at the Royal Albert Hall, supported by the house band for the evening, which included Jools Holland, Midge Ure and Mark King.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "On 24 June 2011, Clapton was in concert with Pino Daniele in Cava de' Tirreni stadium before performing a series of concerts in South America from 6 to 16 October 2011. He spent November and December 2011 touring Japan with Steve Winwood, playing 13 shows in various cities throughout the country. On 24 February 2012 Clapton, Keith Richards, Gary Clark Jr., Derek Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, Kim Wilson and other artists performed together in the Howlin' For Hubert Tribute concert held at the Apollo Theater of New York City honouring blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin who died at age 80 on 4 December 2011. On 29 November 2012, Clapton joined The Rolling Stones at London's O2 Arena during the band's second of five arena dates celebrating their 50th anniversary. On 12 December, Clapton performed The Concert for Sandy Relief at Madison Square Garden, broadcast live via television, radio, cinemas and the Internet across six continents. In January 2013, Surfdog Records announced a signed deal with Clapton for the release of his forthcoming album Old Sock on 12 March. On 8 April 2013, Eric and Hard Rock International launched the limited-edition Eric Clapton Artist Spotlight merchandise programme benefiting Crossroads Centre Antigua. Clapton toured the US and Europe from 14 March to 19 June 2013 to celebrate 50 years as a professional musician. On 28 February 2013, Clapton announced his intention to stop touring in 2015 due to hassles with travel.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "On 15 October 2013, Clapton's popular Unplugged album and concert DVD were re-released, titled Unplugged: Expanded & Remastered. The album includes the original 14 tracks, remastered, as well as 6 additional tracks, including 2 versions of \"My Father's Eyes\". The DVD includes a restored version of the concert, as well as over 60 minutes of unseen footage from the rehearsal. On 13 and 14 November 2013, Clapton headlined the final two evenings of the \"Baloise Session\", an annual indoor music festival in Basel, Switzerland. On 20 November 2013, Warner Bros released Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013 in CD/DVD/Blu-ray. On 30 April 2014, Clapton announced the release of The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale as an homage to J. J. Cale who died on 26 July 2013. This tribute album is named after the 1972 single \"Call Me the Breeze\" and comprises 16 Cale songs performed by Clapton, Mark Knopfler, John Mayer, Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and others. On 21 June 2014, Clapton abruptly walked off stage during a concert at the Glasgow Hydro. Although he did return to perform one final song, thousands of fans were upset by the lack of explanation from Clapton or the venue and booed after the concert ended around 40 minutes before advertised to finish. Both Clapton and the venue apologised the next day, blaming 'technical difficulties' for making sound conditions 'unbearable' for Clapton on stage. A week later he confirmed his retirement plans attributing his decision to the road being \"unbearable\" in addition to \"odd ailments\" that may force him to put down his guitar permanently. In a 2016 interview with Classic Rock magazine, Clapton revealed that he had been diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy in 2013, a condition involving damage to peripheral nerves that typically causes stabbing, burning, or tingling pain in the arms and legs.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Clapton performed two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York on 1 and 3 May 2015 followed by a 7-night residency at London's Royal Albert Hall from 14 to 23 May 2015 to celebrate his 70th birthday on 30 March. The shows also mark 50 years since Clapton first played at the Royal Albert Hall – his debut was on 7 December 1964 when he performed as part of The Yardbirds for the BBC's Top Beat Show. The concert film, Slowhand at 70 – Live at the Royal Albert Hall, was released by Eagle Rock Entertainment on 13 November 2015 on DVD, CD, Blu-ray and LP. The 2-night concerts in the US marked the 46th anniversary since Clapton, with Cream, opened the \"new\" Madison Square Garden on 2 November 1968. Clapton has performed more times at Madison Square Garden than any other US venue, a total of 45 times. On 20 May 2016, Clapton released his twenty-third studio album I Still Do. On 30 September 2016 the live-album Live in San Diego was released. In August 2018, Clapton announced that he had recorded his twenty-fourth studio album, Happy Xmas, which consists of blues-tinged interpretations of Christmas songs, with the album released on 12 October. Between April and September 2019, he played 17 concerts in Japan, Europe and the Southwestern United States. He returned to the road in September 2021, playing eight shows in the southern United States. In May 2022, Clapton announced a run of seven US concerts in September with Jimmie Vaughan. In May 2023, Clapton performed at the Jeff Beck tribute concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall, sharing the stage with Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Kirk Hammett and Johnny Depp among others.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Clapton cites Muddy Waters, Freddie King, B.B. King, Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Hubert Sumlin as guitar-playing influences. In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton refers to Muddy Waters as \"the father figure I never really had\". Until his death in 1983, Waters was a part of Clapton's life. \"When I got to know Muddy, unfortunately, my drinking career was in full sway.\" In 2000, Clapton collaborated with B.B. King on their album Riding with the King. The music video for the title track shows Clapton as the chauffeur, with one of his idols in the back seat.",
"title": "Influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Clapton has said that blues musician Robert Johnson is his single most important influence. In 2004, Clapton released Sessions for Robert Johnson, containing covers of Johnson's songs using electric and acoustic guitars. In an essay for the 1990 boxed set of Johnson's recordings, Clapton wrote:",
"title": "Influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived. He was true, absolutely, to his own vision, and as deep as I have gotten into the music over the last 30 years, I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really ... it seemed to echo something I had always felt. [italics in original]",
"title": "Influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Clapton also singled out Buddy Holly as an influence. The Chirping Crickets was the first album Clapton ever bought; he later saw Holly on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. In his autobiography, Clapton recounts the first time he saw Holly and his Fender, saying, \"I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ... it was like seeing an instrument from outer space and I said to myself: 'That's the future – that's what I want.'\" In the 2017 documentary film, Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars, Clapton cites Bismillah Khan as an influence, adding that \"I wanted my guitar to sound like his reed instrument.\" In the same documentary he also cited harmonica player Little Walter as an influence: \"The sound he made with the harmonica playing through an amplifier. It was thick and fat and very melodic.\"",
"title": "Influences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and Cream. He ranked second in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the \"100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time\" and fourth in Gibson's Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 2011, The Guardian attributed the creation of the cult of the guitar hero to Clapton, ranking it number seven on their list of the 50 key events in rock music history;",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Nothing is more central to rock mythology than the cult of the lead guitarist. And no one did more to create that cult than Eric Clapton. He had already been a member of the Yardbirds before joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, the clearing house for guitarists, in April 1965. His two stints with Mayall saw his reputation grow to the extent that a famous graffito captured the popular appraisal of him among rock fans: \"Clapton is God\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Elias Leight of Rolling Stone writes that Clapton \"influenced recording techniques as well as guitar-playing technique\". During recording sessions with John Mayall's group, Clapton was frustrated by technicians \"that just came up to your amp with the microphone and just stuck it two inches away from the front of the amplifier. It seemed to me that if you wanted to get the atmosphere we were getting in the clubs, you needed it to sound like you were in the audience 10 feet away, not three inches\". Clapton then moved the microphones, with Pink Floyd's Roger Waters stating, \"That changed everything. Before Eric, guitar playing in England had been Hank Marvin of the Shadows, very simple, not much technique. Suddenly we heard something completely different. The records sounded unlike anything we had heard before.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In 2012, Clapton was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires to mark his 80th birthday. Indelibly linked to the Royal Albert Hall in London, a venue he has played at more than any other in his 50-year plus career, Clapton was inducted into the Royal Albert Hall's Walk of Fame in 2018, making him one of the first eleven recipients of a star on the walk, thus joining Muhammad Ali, Winston Churchill, the Suffragettes, and Albert Einstein, among others who were viewed as \"key players\" in the building's history.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Robert Christgau, in a dissenting appraisal of Clapton's legacy, writes:",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "A promiscuous sideman whose monklike aura has never diminished his extravagant appetites, Clapton likes to get paid, and he's amassed a discography that for an artist of his caliber is remarkably undistinguished. In his self-protective self-deprecation he often attributes this to his own laziness or his need for a catalyst, but it's also guitar hero's disease: like many other guys whose hand-ear coordination is off the curve, he's a casual tunesmith and a corny lyricist, and his band concepts are chronically hit-or-miss.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Like Hank Marvin, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Clapton exerted a crucial and widespread influence in popularising particular models of electric guitar. With the Yardbirds, Clapton played a Fender Telecaster, a Fender Jazzmaster, a double-cutaway Gretsch 6120, and a 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335. He became exclusively a Gibson player for a period beginning in mid-1965, when he purchased a used sunburst Gibson Les Paul guitar from a guitar store in London. Clapton commented on the slim profile of the neck, which would indicate it was a 1960 model.",
"title": "Guitars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Early during his stint in Cream, Clapton's first Les Paul Standard was stolen. He continued to play Les Pauls exclusively with Cream (one bought from Andy Summers was almost identical to the stolen guitar) until 1967, when he acquired his most famous guitar in this period, a 1964 Gibson SG, dubbed \"the Fool\". Clapton used both the Les Paul and the SG to create his self-described \"woman tone\". He explained in a 1967 interview, \"I am playing more smoothly now. I'm developing what I call my 'woman tone.' It's a sweet sound, something like the solo on 'I Feel Free'.\" Writer Michael Dregni describes it as \"thick yet piercing, overdriven yet smooth, distorted yet creamy\". The tone is achieved by a combination of tone control settings on the guitars and Clapton's Marshall JTM45 amplifier. Vintage Guitar magazine identifies \"the opening riff and solo of 'Sunshine of Your Love' are arguably the best illustrations of full-blown woman tone\". Clapton's \"Fool\" acquired its name from its distinctive psychedelic paint job, created by the visual art collective also known as the Fool (just before Cream's first US appearance in 1967, Clapton's SG, Bruce's Fender VI, and Baker's drum head were all repainted in psychedelic designs).",
"title": "Guitars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In 1968, Clapton bought a Gibson Firebird and started using the 1964 Cherry-Red Gibson ES-335 again. The aforementioned 1964 ES-335 had a storied career. Clapton used it at the last Cream show in November 1968 as well as with Blind Faith, played it sparingly for slide pieces in the 1970s, used it on \"Hard Times\" from Journeyman, the Hyde Park live concert of 1996, and the From the Cradle sessions and tour of 1994–95. It was sold for US$847,500 at a 2004 auction. Gibson produced a limited run of 250 \"Crossroads 335\" replicas. The 335 was only the second electric guitar Clapton bought.",
"title": "Guitars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In July 1968 Clapton gave George Harrison a 1957 'goldtop' Gibson Les Paul that been refinished with a red colour, nicknamed Lucy. The following September, Clapton played the guitar on the Beatles' recording of \"While My Guitar Gently Weeps\". Lucy was stolen from Harrison, though later tracked down and returned to him – he lent it to Clapton for his 1973 comeback concert at the Rainbow. His SG \"The Fool\" found its way into the hands of George Harrison's friend Jackie Lomax, who subsequently sold it to musician Todd Rundgren for US$500 in 1972. Rundgren restored the guitar and nicknamed it \"Sunny\", after \"Sunshine of Your Love\". He retained it until 2000, when he sold it at an auction for US$150,000. At the 1969 Blind Faith concert in Hyde Park, London Clapton played a Fender Custom Telecaster, which was fitted with \"Brownie\"'s neck.",
"title": "Guitars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In late 1969 Clapton made the switch to the Fender Stratocaster. \"I had a lot of influences when I took up the Strat. First there was Buddy Holly, and Buddy Guy. Hank Marvin was the first well known person over here in England who was using one, but that wasn't really my kind of music. Steve Winwood had so much credibility, and when he started playing one, I thought, oh, if he can do it, I can do it\". The first—used during the recording of Eric Clapton—was \"Brownie\", which in 1973 became the backup to the most famous of all Clapton's guitars, \"Blackie\". In November 1970 Eric bought six Fender Stratocasters from the Sho-bud guitar shop in Nashville, Tennessee while on tour with the Dominos. He gave one each to George Harrison, Steve Winwood, and Pete Townshend.",
"title": "Guitars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Clapton assembled the best components of the remaining three to create \"Blackie\", which was his favourite stage guitar until its retirement in 1985. It was first played live 13 January 1973 at the Rainbow Concert. Clapton called the 1956/57 Strat a \"mongrel\". On 24 June 2004, Clapton sold \"Blackie\" at Christie's Auction House, New York, for US$959,500 to raise funds for his Crossroads Centre for drug and alcohol addictions. \"Brownie\" is now on display at the Experience Music Project. The Fender Custom Shop has since produced a limited run of 275 'Blackie' replicas, correct in every detail right down to the 'Duck Brothers' flight case, and artificially aged using Fender's 'Relic' process to simulate years of hard wear. One was presented to Clapton upon the model's release and was used for three numbers during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 17 May 2006. In 1979, Clapton gave his signed Fender Lead II guitar to the Hard Rock Cafe in London to designate his favourite bar stool. Pete Townshend also donated his own Gibson Les Paul guitar, with a note attached: \"Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete\".",
"title": "Guitars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Signature guitars in Clapton's honour are made by Fender and C.F. Martin & Company. In 1988, Fender introduced his signature Eric Clapton Stratocaster. Several signature-model 000-sized acoustic guitars made by Martin. The first, of these, introduced in 1995, was a limited edition 000-42EC Eric Clapton signature model with a production run of 461. For the single \"Change the World\" (1996) and the album Pilgrim (1998) he used a Martin 000-28 EC Eric Clapton signature model, which he subsequently gave to guitarist Paul Wassif. His 1939 000-42 Martin that he played on the Unplugged album sold for US$791,500 at auction. Clapton uses Ernie Ball Slinky and Super Slinky strings, gauge .10 to.46. His guitar technician for over thirty years was Lee Dickson.",
"title": "Guitars"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Clapton appeared in the movie version of Tommy, the first full-length rock opera, written by the Who. In the movie version, Clapton appeared as the Preacher, performing Sonny Boy Williamson's song, \"Eyesight to the Blind\". He appeared in Blues Brothers 2000 as one of the Louisiana Gator Boys. In addition to being in the band, he had a small speaking role. Clapton has appeared in an advertisement for the Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen. In March 2007 Clapton appeared in an advertisement for RealNetwork's Rhapsody online music service. In 2010, Clapton started appearing as a spokesman for T-Mobile, advertising their MyTouch Fender cell phone. Clapton also appeared in the 2011 BBC documentary Reggae Got Soul: The Story of Toots and the Maytals, which was described as \"The untold story of one of the most influential artists ever to come out of Jamaica.\"",
"title": "Other media appearances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "When asked to describe God by their minister, the characters Eric Forman and Steven Hyde both drew an image of Clapton in the episode \"Holy Crap!\" of season two of That '70s Show.",
"title": "Other media appearances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Clapton appeared on the BBC's Top Gear in 2013, during Series 19 Episode 4 and was involved in testing the new Kia Cee'd. He was called upon to test the Cee'd's auxiliary input, which he tested by plugging in one of his guitars and playing several bars of his most famous hits. He was introduced by Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson as a \"local guitarist\".",
"title": "Other media appearances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In 2017, a documentary film titled Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars was directed by Lili Fini Zanuck. Clapton wrote the film score for Zanuck's 1991 film Rush and the two remained friends. In an interview for BBC News, Zanuck said that Clapton only agreed to participate if she directed it:",
"title": "Other media appearances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "I think this got made because Eric was in the right mood. He's an incredibly private man and despite his immense success, he's never cared if he got any publicity at all, he just loves his music ... I think it might be something to do with his age, as he turned 70 a couple of years ago. He said to me, \"I didn't want it to be done after I was dead and for it to be wrong.\" Maybe he thought his time had come to lay it all out on the table.",
"title": "Other media appearances"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Clapton's partner from the late 1960s to 1974 was Alice Ormsby-Gore, a British aristocrat; they were often wrongly reported as engaged. He briefly dated funk singer Betty Davis. He married Pattie Boyd on 27 March 1979, in Tucson, Arizona, but their marriage was marred by his infidelities and domestic violence. During a 1999 interview with The Sunday Times, Clapton admitted to raping and abusing her while they were married and he was a \"full-blown\" alcoholic who felt entitled to sex. In 1984, while recording Behind the Sun, Clapton began a relationship with Yvonne Kelly, the manager of AIR Studios Montserrat. Although both were married to other partners at the time, they had a daughter named Ruth Kelly Clapton in January 1985. Ruth's existence was kept from the public until the media realised she was his child in 1991.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Clapton and Boyd tried unsuccessfully to have children, even trying in vitro fertilisation in 1984, but were faced instead with miscarriages. He had an affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo, who gave birth to their son, Conor, on 21 August 1986. Clapton and Boyd later divorced in 1989 after she was \"utterly devastated\" by his confession to impregnating Del Santo during this affair. Conor died on 20 March 1991 at the age of four after falling out of an open bedroom window on the 53rd floor of a Manhattan apartment building.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "In 1998, Clapton, then 53, met 22-year-old administrative assistant Melia McEnery in Columbus, Ohio, at a party given for him after a performance. He quietly dated her for a year, and went public with the relationship in 1999. They married on 1 January 2002 at St Mary Magdalene church in Clapton's birthplace, Ripley. They have three daughters, Julie Rose (born 13 June 2001), Ella May (born 14 January 2003), and Sophie Belle (born 1 February 2005).",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "On 5 August 1976, Clapton provoked an uproar when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated on stage, Clapton voiced his support for the right-wing British politician Enoch Powell. He addressed the audience as follows:",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch's our man. I think Enoch's right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "\"Keep Britain White\" was, at the time, a slogan of the far-right National Front (NF). This incident, along with some controversial remarks made around the same time by David Bowie, were the main catalysts for the creation of Rock Against Racism, with a concert on 30 April 1978.",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "In an interview from October 1976 with Sounds magazine, Clapton said that he did not \"know much about politics\" and said of his immigration speech that \"I just don't know what came over me that night. It must have been something that happened in the day but it came out in this garbled thing.\" In a 2004 interview with Uncut, Clapton referred to Enoch Powell as \"outrageously brave\". He said that the UK was \"inviting people in as cheap labour and then putting them in ghettos\". In 2004, Clapton told an interviewer for Scotland on Sunday, \"There's no way I could be a racist. It would make no sense.\" In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton said he was \"deliberately oblivious\" to racial conflict. In a December 2007 interview with Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show, Clapton said he was not a racist but still believed Powell's comments were relevant.",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "After watching unedited footage of the 1976 outburst, which is included in Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars—a documentary which also covers his daily alcohol and drug abuse prior to his sobriety—in 2018 Clapton stated he was \"disgusted\" with himself for his \"chauvinistic\" and \"fascistic\" comments on stage. He added: \"I sabotaged everything I got involved with. I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn't make sense. Half of my friends were black, I dated a black woman, and I championed black music.\"",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Clapton supports the Countryside Alliance, which promotes field sports and issues relating to the British countryside. He has played in concerts to raise funds for the organisation and publicly opposed the Labour Party's ban on fox hunting with the 2004 Hunting Act. A spokesperson for Clapton said, \"Eric supports the Countryside Alliance. He does not hunt himself, but does enjoy rural pursuits such as fishing and shooting. He supports the Alliance's pursuit to scrap the ban on the basis that he disagrees with the state's interference with people's private pursuits.\"",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "In November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Clapton and Van Morrison collaborated on an anti-mask, anti-lockdown single entitled \"Stand and Deliver\", the profits from which were donated to Morrison's Lockdown Financial Hardship Fund. Morrison's stance was criticised by Northern Ireland Health Minister Robin Swann. In July 2021, Clapton wrote that he would \"not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present\", in response to Boris Johnson mandating that concert attendees be vaccinated. Clapton had by then taken both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and said he had had severe reactions to both injections. Whether the symptoms he reported were actually vaccine-related was called into question by an NBC News editorial, given that Clapton previously reported suffering the same symptoms as early as 2013 due to nerve damage.",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In August 2021, Clapton released the single \"This Has Gotta Stop\" and an accompanying music video. It was described as a protest song against COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccinations, and contains lyrical and visual statements against what Clapton sees as the erosion of civil liberties as the result of lockdown policies.",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Clapton tested positive for COVID-19 in May 2022 causing him to cancel some concerts in his tour schedule.",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "In November 2023, during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Clapton released \"Voice of a Child\", a song featuring images of destruction in the Gaza Strip.",
"title": "Political opinions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In 2009, Surrey Life Magazine ranked Clapton as number 17 in their list of richest Surrey residents, estimating his fortune at £120 million in assets. This was a combination of income, property, a £9 million yacht, Va Bene (previously owned by Bernie Ecclestone), his back music catalogue, his touring income, and his holding company Marshbrook Ltd, which had earned him £110 million since 1989. In 2003, he purchased a 50% share of gentleman's outfitters Cordings Piccadilly. At the time, owner Noll Uloth was trying to save the shop from closure and contacted Clapton, his \"best client\"; within five minutes, Clapton replied with \"I can't let this happen\".",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Since the 1970s, Clapton has considered himself a \"car enthusiast\" and has often stated his passion for the Ferrari brand. Clapton currently owns or has owned a range of Ferraris, and when asked about his Ferrari collection in 1989, he said he liked the touring cars the company produces for road use and commented \"if I had more space and if I had been wise I would have a huge collection by now and I would be a multi-multi-millionaire\". In 2010, he explained that for him \"Ferrari has always been the number one car\" to own and drive, and that he always supported Ferrari on the road and in Formula One motor racing.",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "In 2012, Ferrari honoured Clapton with the one-off special project car, the Ferrari SP12 EC. In July 2013 Clapton displayed it at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England in the Michelin Supercar Run. In 2014, Clapton explained that Ferrari is still his favourite car brand. Among the other vehicles Clapton owns or has owned are a vintage Mini Cooper Radford that was a gift from George Harrison.",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In 1993, Clapton was appointed a director of Clouds House, a UK treatment centre for drug and alcohol dependence, and served on their board until 1997. Clapton also served on the board of directors for The Chemical Dependency Centre from 1994 until 1999. Both charities subsequently merged to become Action on Addiction in 2007.",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In 1998, he established the Crossroads Centre in Antigua to help others overcome their addictions to drugs and alcohol and is active in its management oversight and fundraising to the present day. Clapton has organised the Crossroads Guitar Festival in 1999, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2019 to raise funds for this centre. In 1999, Clapton auctioned off some of his guitar collection to raise more than US$5 million for continuing support of the Crossroads Centre. A second guitar auction, including the \"Cream\" of Clapton's collection – as well as guitars donated by famous friends – was held on 24 June 2004. His Lowden acoustic guitar sold for US$41,825. The revenue garnered by this auction at Christie's was US$7,438,624.",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In 2011, he auctioned off over 150 items at a New York auction with proceeds going to his Crossroads Centre. Items included his guitar from the Cream reunion tour in 2005, speaker cabinets used in the early 1970s from his days with Derek and the Dominos, and some guitars from Jeff Beck, J. J. Cale, and Joe Bonamassa. In March 2011 he raised more than £1.3 million when he auctioned off 138 lots, made up of 75 guitars and 55 amps from his personal collection, including a 1984 Gibson hollow body guitar, a Gianni Versace suit from his 1990 concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and a replica of the famous Fender Stratocaster known as \"Blackie\", which fetched more than $30,000. All proceeds again went to Crossroads.",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "Clapton has performed at the Secret Policeman's Ball, a benefit show co-founded by Monty Python member John Cleese on behalf of Amnesty International. He made his first appearance at the 1981 show held in London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and he subsequently became an activist. Clapton has collaborated with The Prince's Trust, the leading UK youth charity, which provides training, personal development, business start up support, mentoring, and advice. He has performed at the charity's rock concert numerous times since the 1980s, most recently in 2010. In 2008, he donated a song to Aid Still Required's CD to assist with the restoration of Southeast Asia after the devastation inflicted by the 2004 tsunami.",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "Clapton is a fan of English football club West Bromwich Albion. In 1982, he performed a concert before West Brom player John Wile's testimonial game at The Hawthorns. It has been reported that the club rejected his offer to invest cash in the club around this time. In the late 1970s Clapton positioned a West Brom scarf on the back cover of his album, Backless. In the 1978–79 season Clapton sponsored West Brom's UEFA Cup home game against Turkish club Galatasaray.",
"title": "Assets and philanthropy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Clapton's music has appeared in dozens of movies and television shows as far back as 1973's Mean Streets, which included the Derek and the Dominos song \"I Looked Away\" and a performance of \"Steppin' Out\" by Cream. Other appearances in media include in the Miami Vice series (\"Wonderful Tonight\", \"Knock on Wood\", \"She's Waiting\", and \"Layla\"), Back to the Future (\"Heaven Is One Step Away\"), The Color of Money (\"It's in the Way That You Use It\"), Lethal Weapon 2 (\"Knockin' On Heaven's Door\"), Goodfellas (\"Layla\" and \"Sunshine of Your Love\"), Freaks and Geeks episode \"I'm With the Band\" (\"Sunshine of Your Love\", \"White Room\" and \"Crossroads\"), Friends episodes \"The One with the Proposal, Part 2\" (\"Wonderful Tonight\") and \"The One Where Rachel Has A Baby\" (\"River of Tears\"), School Of Rock (\"Sunshine Of Your Love)\", Men in Black III (\"Strange Brew\"), Captain Phillips (\"Wonderful Tonight\"), August: Osage County (\"Lay Down Sally\"), Good Girls Revolt episode \"The Year-Ender\" (\"White Room)\", Rick and Morty episode \"The Vat of Acid Episode\" (\"It's in the Way That You Use It\") and Joker (\"White Room\").",
"title": "Clapton's music in film and TV"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Both Opel and Vauxhall used the guitar riff from \"Layla\" in their advertising campaigns throughout 1987–95. In addition to his music appearing in media, Clapton has contributed to several movies by writing or co-writing the musical scores or contributing original songs. These movies include Lethal Weapon (co-written with Michael Kamen), Communion, Rush, Phenomenon (\"Change the World\"), and Lethal Weapon 3 (co-wrote and co-performed \"It's Probably Me\" with Sting and \"Runaway Train\" with Elton John).",
"title": "Clapton's music in film and TV"
}
]
| Eric Patrick Clapton is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. He ranked second in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" and fourth in Gibson's "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time". In 2023, Clapton was named the 35th best guitarist of all time. He was also named number five in Time magazine's list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009. After playing in a number of different local bands, Clapton joined the Yardbirds from 1963 to 1965, and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers from 1965 to 1966. After leaving Mayall, he formed the power trio Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist/vocalist Jack Bruce, in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop". After four successful albums, Cream broke up in November 1968. Clapton then formed the blues rock band Blind Faith with Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech, recording one album and performing on one tour before they broke up. Clapton then toured with Delaney & Bonnie and recorded his first solo album in 1970, before forming Derek and the Dominos with Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon. Like Blind Faith, the band only lasted one album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which includes "Layla", one of Clapton's signature songs. Clapton continued to record a number of successful solo albums and songs over the next several decades, including a 1974 cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff", the country-infused Slowhand album (1977) and the pop rock of 1986's August. Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which appeared on his Unplugged album. In 1996 he had another top-40 hit with the R&B crossover "Change the World". In 1998, he released the Grammy award-winning "My Father's Eyes". Since 1999, he has recorded a number of traditional blues and blues rock albums and hosted the periodic Crossroads Guitar Festival. His most recent studio album is Happy Xmas (2018). Clapton has received 18 Grammy Awards as well as the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004, he was awarded a CBE for services to music. He has received four Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. In his solo career, he has sold more than 280 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for those recovering from substance abuse. | 2001-11-07T21:01:47Z | 2023-12-30T20:27:54Z | [
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10,053 | E2 | E2, e2, E02, E.II, e or E-2 may refer to: | [
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| E2, e2, E02, E.II, e2 or E-2 may refer to: | 2001-11-07T14:55:16Z | 2023-08-19T11:47:10Z | [
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10,055 | Etiology | Etiology (/ˌiːtiˈɒlədʒi/; alternatively spelled aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek word αἰτιολογία (aitiología), meaning "giving a reason for" (from αἰτία (aitía) 'cause', and -λογία (-logía) 'study of'). More completely, etiology is the study of the causes, origins, or reasons behind the way that things are, or the way they function, or it can refer to the causes themselves. The word is commonly used in medicine (pertaining to causes of disease) and in philosophy, but also in physics, biology, psychology, government, geography, spatial analysis and theology in reference to the causes or origins of various phenomena.
In the past, when many physical phenomena were not well understood or when histories were not recorded, myths often arose to provide etiologies. Thus, an etiological myth, or origin myth, is a myth that has arisen, been told over time or written to explain the origins of various social or natural phenomena. For example, Virgil's Aeneid is a national myth written to explain and glorify the origins of the Roman Empire. In theology, many religions have creation myths explaining the origins of the world or its relationship to believers.
In medicine, the etiology of an illness or condition refers to the frequent studies to determine one or more factors that come together to cause the illness. Relatedly, when disease is widespread, epidemiological studies investigate what associated factors, such as location, sex, exposure to chemicals, and many others, make a population more or less likely to have an illness, condition, or disease, thus helping determine its etiology. Sometimes determining etiology is an imprecise process. In the past, the etiology of a common sailor's disease, scurvy, was long unknown. When large, ocean-going ships were built, sailors began to put to sea for long periods of time, and often lacked fresh fruit and vegetables. Without knowing the precise cause, Captain James Cook suspected scurvy was caused by the lack of vegetables in the diet. Based on his suspicion, he forced his crew to eat sauerkraut, a cabbage preparation, every day, and based upon the positive outcomes, he inferred that it prevented scurvy, even though he did not know precisely why. It took about another two hundred years to discover the precise etiology; the lack of vitamin C in a sailor's diet.
The following are examples of intrinsic factors:
An etiological myth, or origin myth, is a myth intended to explain the origins of cult practices, natural phenomena, proper names and the like. For example, the name Delphi and its associated deity, Apollon Delphinios, are explained in the Homeric Hymn which tells of how Apollo, in the shape of a dolphin (delphis), propelled Cretans over the seas to make them his priests. While Delphi is actually related to the word delphus ("womb"), many etiological myths are similarly based on folk etymology (the term "Amazon", for example). In the Aeneid (published c. 17 BC), Virgil claims the descent of Augustus Caesar's Julian clan from the hero Aeneas through his son Ascanius, also called Iulus. The story of Prometheus' sacrifice trick at Mecone in Hesiod's Theogony relates how Prometheus tricked Zeus into choosing the bones and fat of the first sacrificial animal rather than the meat to justify why, after a sacrifice, the Greeks offered the bones wrapped in fat to the gods while keeping the meat for themselves. In Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe, the origin of the color of mulberries is explained, as the white berries become stained red from the blood gushing forth from their double suicide. | [
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"text": "Etiology (/ˌiːtiˈɒlədʒi/; alternatively spelled aetiology or ætiology) is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek word αἰτιολογία (aitiología), meaning \"giving a reason for\" (from αἰτία (aitía) 'cause', and -λογία (-logía) 'study of'). More completely, etiology is the study of the causes, origins, or reasons behind the way that things are, or the way they function, or it can refer to the causes themselves. The word is commonly used in medicine (pertaining to causes of disease) and in philosophy, but also in physics, biology, psychology, government, geography, spatial analysis and theology in reference to the causes or origins of various phenomena.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "In the past, when many physical phenomena were not well understood or when histories were not recorded, myths often arose to provide etiologies. Thus, an etiological myth, or origin myth, is a myth that has arisen, been told over time or written to explain the origins of various social or natural phenomena. For example, Virgil's Aeneid is a national myth written to explain and glorify the origins of the Roman Empire. In theology, many religions have creation myths explaining the origins of the world or its relationship to believers.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "In medicine, the etiology of an illness or condition refers to the frequent studies to determine one or more factors that come together to cause the illness. Relatedly, when disease is widespread, epidemiological studies investigate what associated factors, such as location, sex, exposure to chemicals, and many others, make a population more or less likely to have an illness, condition, or disease, thus helping determine its etiology. Sometimes determining etiology is an imprecise process. In the past, the etiology of a common sailor's disease, scurvy, was long unknown. When large, ocean-going ships were built, sailors began to put to sea for long periods of time, and often lacked fresh fruit and vegetables. Without knowing the precise cause, Captain James Cook suspected scurvy was caused by the lack of vegetables in the diet. Based on his suspicion, he forced his crew to eat sauerkraut, a cabbage preparation, every day, and based upon the positive outcomes, he inferred that it prevented scurvy, even though he did not know precisely why. It took about another two hundred years to discover the precise etiology; the lack of vitamin C in a sailor's diet.",
"title": "Medicine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The following are examples of intrinsic factors:",
"title": "Medicine"
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"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "An etiological myth, or origin myth, is a myth intended to explain the origins of cult practices, natural phenomena, proper names and the like. For example, the name Delphi and its associated deity, Apollon Delphinios, are explained in the Homeric Hymn which tells of how Apollo, in the shape of a dolphin (delphis), propelled Cretans over the seas to make them his priests. While Delphi is actually related to the word delphus (\"womb\"), many etiological myths are similarly based on folk etymology (the term \"Amazon\", for example). In the Aeneid (published c. 17 BC), Virgil claims the descent of Augustus Caesar's Julian clan from the hero Aeneas through his son Ascanius, also called Iulus. The story of Prometheus' sacrifice trick at Mecone in Hesiod's Theogony relates how Prometheus tricked Zeus into choosing the bones and fat of the first sacrificial animal rather than the meat to justify why, after a sacrifice, the Greeks offered the bones wrapped in fat to the gods while keeping the meat for themselves. In Ovid's Pyramus and Thisbe, the origin of the color of mulberries is explained, as the white berries become stained red from the blood gushing forth from their double suicide.",
"title": "Mythology"
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| Etiology is the study of causation or origination. The word is derived from the Greek word αἰτιολογία (aitiología), meaning "giving a reason for". More completely, etiology is the study of the causes, origins, or reasons behind the way that things are, or the way they function, or it can refer to the causes themselves. The word is commonly used in medicine and in philosophy, but also in physics, biology, psychology, government, geography, spatial analysis and theology in reference to the causes or origins of various phenomena. In the past, when many physical phenomena were not well understood or when histories were not recorded, myths often arose to provide etiologies. Thus, an etiological myth, or origin myth, is a myth that has arisen, been told over time or written to explain the origins of various social or natural phenomena. For example, Virgil's Aeneid is a national myth written to explain and glorify the origins of the Roman Empire. In theology, many religions have creation myths explaining the origins of the world or its relationship to believers. | 2023-05-24T04:53:17Z | [
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10,065 | Empirical formula | In chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest whole number ratio of atoms present in a compound. A simple example of this concept is that the empirical formula of sulfur monoxide, or SO, would simply be SO, as is the empirical formula of disulfur dioxide, S2O2. Thus, sulfur monoxide and disulfur dioxide, both compounds of sulfur and oxygen, have the same empirical formula. However, their molecular formulas, which express the number of atoms in each molecule of a chemical compound, are not the same.
An empirical formula makes no mention of the arrangement or number of atoms. It is standard for many ionic compounds, like calcium chloride (CaCl2), and for macromolecules, such as silicon dioxide (SiO2).
The molecular formula, on the other hand, shows the number of each type of atom in a molecule. The structural formula shows the arrangement of the molecule. It is also possible for different types of compounds to have equal empirical formulas.
In the early days of chemistry, information regarding the composition of compounds came from elemental analysis, which gives information about the relative amounts of elements present in a compound, which can be written as percentages or mole ratios. However, chemists were not able to determine the exact amounts of these elements and were only able to know their ratios, hence the name "empirical formula". Since ionic compounds are extended networks of anions and cations, all formulas of ionic compounds are emperical.
A chemical analysis of a sample of methyl acetate provides the following elemental data: 48.64% carbon (C), 8.16% hydrogen (H), and 43.20% oxygen (O). For the purposes of determining empirical formulas, it's assumed that we have 100 grams of the compound. If this is the case, the percentages will be equal to the mass of each element in grams.
Thus, the empirical formula of methyl acetate is C3H6O2 . This formula also happens to be methyl acetate's molecular formula. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest whole number ratio of atoms present in a compound. A simple example of this concept is that the empirical formula of sulfur monoxide, or SO, would simply be SO, as is the empirical formula of disulfur dioxide, S2O2. Thus, sulfur monoxide and disulfur dioxide, both compounds of sulfur and oxygen, have the same empirical formula. However, their molecular formulas, which express the number of atoms in each molecule of a chemical compound, are not the same.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "An empirical formula makes no mention of the arrangement or number of atoms. It is standard for many ionic compounds, like calcium chloride (CaCl2), and for macromolecules, such as silicon dioxide (SiO2).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The molecular formula, on the other hand, shows the number of each type of atom in a molecule. The structural formula shows the arrangement of the molecule. It is also possible for different types of compounds to have equal empirical formulas.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the early days of chemistry, information regarding the composition of compounds came from elemental analysis, which gives information about the relative amounts of elements present in a compound, which can be written as percentages or mole ratios. However, chemists were not able to determine the exact amounts of these elements and were only able to know their ratios, hence the name \"empirical formula\". Since ionic compounds are extended networks of anions and cations, all formulas of ionic compounds are emperical.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "A chemical analysis of a sample of methyl acetate provides the following elemental data: 48.64% carbon (C), 8.16% hydrogen (H), and 43.20% oxygen (O). For the purposes of determining empirical formulas, it's assumed that we have 100 grams of the compound. If this is the case, the percentages will be equal to the mass of each element in grams.",
"title": "Calculation example"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Thus, the empirical formula of methyl acetate is C3H6O2 . This formula also happens to be methyl acetate's molecular formula.",
"title": "Calculation example"
}
]
| In chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest whole number ratio of atoms present in a compound. A simple example of this concept is that the empirical formula of sulfur monoxide, or SO, would simply be SO, as is the empirical formula of disulfur dioxide, S2O2. Thus, sulfur monoxide and disulfur dioxide, both compounds of sulfur and oxygen, have the same empirical formula. However, their molecular formulas, which express the number of atoms in each molecule of a chemical compound, are not the same. An empirical formula makes no mention of the arrangement or number of atoms. It is standard for many ionic compounds, like calcium chloride (CaCl2), and for macromolecules, such as silicon dioxide (SiO2). The molecular formula, on the other hand, shows the number of each type of atom in a molecule. The structural formula shows the arrangement of the molecule. It is also possible for different types of compounds to have equal empirical formulas. In the early days of chemistry, information regarding the composition of compounds came from elemental analysis, which gives information about the relative amounts of elements present in a compound, which can be written as percentages or mole ratios. However, chemists were not able to determine the exact amounts of these elements and were only able to know their ratios, hence the name "empirical formula". Since ionic compounds are extended networks of anions and cations, all formulas of ionic compounds are emperical. | 2001-11-08T14:02:43Z | 2023-12-14T01:52:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_formula |
10,067 | Episcopal polity | An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance ("ecclesiastical polity") in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. The word "bishop" here is derived via the British Latin and Vulgar Latin term *ebiscopus/*biscopus, from the Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος epískopos meaning "overseer". It is the structure used by many of the major Christian Churches and denominations, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist churches or denominations, and other churches founded independently from these lineages.
Churches with an episcopal polity are governed by bishops, practising their authorities in the dioceses and conferences or synods. Their leadership is both sacramental and constitutional; as well as performing ordinations, confirmations, and consecrations, the bishop supervises the clergy within a local jurisdiction and is the representative both to secular structures and within the hierarchy of the church.
Bishops are considered to derive their authority from an unbroken, personal apostolic succession from the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Bishops with such authority are said to represent the historical episcopate or historic episcopate. Churches with this type of government usually believe that the Church requires episcopal government as described in the New Testament (see 1 Timothy 3 and 2 Timothy 1). In some systems, bishops may be subject in limited ways to bishops holding a higher office (variously called archbishops, metropolitans, or patriarchs, depending upon the tradition). They also meet in councils or synods. These gatherings, subject to presidency by higher ranking bishops, usually make important decisions, though the synod or council may also be purely advisory.
For much of the written history of institutional Christianity, episcopal government was the only known form of church organization. This changed at the Reformation. Many Protestant churches are now organized by either congregational or presbyterian church polities, both descended from the writings of John Calvin, a Protestant reformer working and writing independently following the break with the Catholic Church precipitated by The Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther. However, some people have disputed the episcopal polity before the reformation, such as Aerius of Sebaste in the 4th century.
The definition of the word episcopal has variation among Christian traditions. There are subtle differences in governmental principles among episcopal churches at the present time. To some extent the separation of episcopal churches can be traced to these differences in ecclesiology, that is, their theological understanding of church and church governance. For some, "episcopal churches" are churches that use a hierarchy of bishops who identify as being in an unbroken, personal apostolic succession.
"Episcopal" is also commonly used to distinguish between the various organizational structures of denominations. For instance, "Presbyterian" (Greek: πρεσβύτερος, presbýteros) is used to describe a church governed by a hierarchy of assemblies of elected elders, referred to as presbyterian polity. Similarly, "episcopal" is used to describe a church governed by bishops. Self-governed local congregations, governed neither by elders nor bishops, are usually described as "congregational".
More specifically, the capitalized appellation "Episcopal" is applied to several churches historically based within Anglicanism ("Episcopalianism"), including those still in communion with the Church of England.
Using these definitions, examples of specific episcopal churches include:
Some Lutheran churches practice congregational polity or a form of presbyterian polity. Others, including the Church of Sweden, practice episcopal polity; the Church of Sweden also counts its bishops among the historic episcopate. This is also the case with some American Lutheran churches, such as the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church, Lutheran Orthodox Church, Lutheran Church - International, and the Lutheran Episcopal Communion.
Many Methodist churches (the United Methodist Church, among others) retain the form and function of episcopal polity, although in a modified form, called connexionalism. Since all trace their ordinations to an Anglican priest, John Wesley, it is generally considered that their bishops do not share in apostolic succession. However, United Methodists affirm that their bishops share in the historic episcopate.
The Apostle Paul in the letter to Philippians, Clement of Rome and the Didache when talking about the church system of governance, mention "bishops and deacons", omitting the word "presbyter", which has been argued by some to show that there was no presbyter-bishop distinction yet in the first century.
Ignatius of Antioch writing in already the early second century makes a clear distinction of bishops and presbyters, meaning that his letters show that an episcopal system was already existing by his time. However Bart Erhman sees it as significant that Ignatius in his letter to the Romans never mentioned a bishop in Rome. Later also Tertullian very clearly distinguishes the presbyters and bishops as a separate office, Irenaeus made lists of the succession of bishops, though bishop succession lists made by early church fathers are highly contradictory. By the second century it appears that the episcopal system had become the majority, universal view among Christians.
Even schismatic sects such as the Novatians and Donatists would use the episcopal system. Except for Aerius of Sebaste, who contested the episcopal system and started his own sect.
Jerome stated that churches were originally governed by a group of presbyters but only later churches decided to elect bishops to suppress schisms.
The Catholic Church has an episcopate, with the Pope, who is the Bishop of Rome, at the top. The Catholic Church considers that juridical oversight over the Church is not a power that derives from human beings, but strictly from the authority of Christ, which was given to his twelve apostles. The See of Rome, as the unbroken line of apostolic authority descending from St. Peter (the "prince and head of the apostles"), is a visible sign and instrument of communion among the college of bishops and therefore also of the local churches around the world. In communion with the worldwide college of bishops, the Pope has all legitimate juridical and teaching authority over the whole Church. This authority given by Christ to St. Peter and the apostles is transmitted from one generation to the next by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the laying on of hands from the Apostles to the bishops, in unbroken succession.
The conciliar idea of episcopal government continues in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In Eastern Orthodoxy, all autocephalous primates are seen as collectively gathering around Christ, with other archbishops and bishops gathering around them, and so forth. There is no single primate with exclusive authority comparable to the Pope in Rome. However, the Patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul) is seen as the primus inter pares, the "first among equals" of the autocephalous churches of Eastern Orthodoxy.
The Oriental Orthodox Churches affirm the ideas of apostolic succession and episcopal government. Within each national Church, the bishops form a holy synod to which even the Patriarch is subject. The Syriac Orthodox Church traces its apostolic succession to St. Peter and recognises Antioch as the original See of St. Peter. The Armenian Apostolic Church traces its lineage to the Apostle Bartholomew. The Indian Orthodox Church traces its lineage to the Apostle Thomas. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church received its lines of succession (Frumentius) through the Coptic Orthodox Church in the fifth century.
Both the Greek and Coptic Orthodox Churches each recognise their own Pope of Alexandria (Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, and Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria respectively), both of whom trace their apostolic succession back to the figure Mark the Evangelist. There are official, ongoing efforts in recent times to heal this ancient breach. Already, the two recognize each other's baptisms, chrismations, and marriages, making intermarriage much easier.
Historically, the Church of the East has traced its episcopal succession to St. Thomas the Apostle. Currently the bishops of the Assyrian Church of the East continue to maintain its apostolic succession.
Anglicanism is the most prominent of the Reformation traditions to lay claim to the historic episcopate through apostolic succession in terms comparable to the various Roman Catholic and Orthodox Communions. Anglicans assert unbroken episcopal succession in and through the Church of England back to St. Augustine of Canterbury and to the first century Roman province of Britannia. While some Celtic Christian practices were changed at the Synod of Whitby, the church in the British Isles was under papal authority from earliest times.
The legislation of Henry VIII effectively establishing the independence of the Church of England from Rome did not alter its constitutional or pastoral structures. Royal supremacy was exercised through the extant legal structures of the church, whose leaders were bishops. Episcopacy was thus seen as a given of the Reformed Ecclesia Anglicana, and a foundation in the institution's appeal to ancient and apostolic legitimacy. What did change was that bishops were now seen to be ministers of the Crown for the spiritual government of its subjects. The influence of Richard Hooker was crucial to an evolution in this understanding in which bishops came to be seen in their more traditional role as ones who delegate to the presbyterate inherited powers, act as pastors to presbyters, and holding a particular teaching office with respect to the wider church.
Anglican opinion has differed as to the way in which episcopal government is de jure divino (by the Divine Right of Kings). On the one hand, the seventeenth century divine, John Cosin, held that episcopal authority is jure divino, but that it stemmed from "apostolic practice and the customs of the Church ... [not] absolute precept that either Christ or His Apostles gave about it" (a view maintained also by Hooker). In contrast, Lancelot Andrewes and others held that episcopal government is derived from Christ via the apostles. Regardless, both parties viewed the episcopacy as bearing the apostolic function of oversight which both includes, and derives from, the power of ordination, and is normative for the governance of the church. The practice of apostolic succession both ensures the legitimacy of the church's mission and establishes the unity, communion, and continuity of the local church with the universal church. This formulation, in turn, laid the groundwork for an independent view of the church as a "sacred society" distinct from civil society, which was so crucial for the development of local churches as non-established entities outside England, and gave direct rise to the Catholic Revival and disestablishmentarianism within England.
Functionally, Anglican episcopal authority is expressed synodically, although individual provinces may accord their primate with more or less authority to act independently. Called variously "synods," "councils," or "conventions," they meet under episcopal chairmanship. In many jurisdictions, conciliar resolutions that have been passed require episcopal assent or consent to take force. Seen in this way, Anglicans often speak of "the bishop-in-synod" as the force and authority of episcopal governance. Such conciliar authority extends to the standard areas of doctrine, discipline, and worship, but in these regards is limited by Anglicanism's tradition of the limits of authority. Those limits are expressed in Article XXI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, ratified in 1571 (significantly, just as the Council of Trent was drawing to a close), which held that "General Councils ... may err, and sometimes have erred ... wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture." Hence, Anglican jurisdictions have traditionally been conservative in their approach to either innovative doctrinal development or in encompassing actions of the church as doctrinal (see lex orandi, lex credendi).
Anglican synodical government, though varied in expression, is characteristically representative. Provinces of the Anglican Communion, their ecclesiastical provinces and dioceses are governed by councils consisting not only of bishops, but also representatives of the presbyterate and laity.
There is no international juridical authority in Anglicanism, although the tradition's common experience of episcopacy, symbolised by the historical link with the See of Canterbury, along with a common and complex liturgical tradition, has provided a measure of unity. This has been reinforced by the Lambeth Conferences of Anglican Communion bishops, which first met in 1867. These conferences, though they propose and pass resolutions, are strictly consultative, and the intent of the resolutions is to provide guideposts for Anglican jurisdictions—not direction. The Conferences also express the function of the episcopate to demonstrate the ecumenical and catholic nature of the church.
The Scottish Episcopal Church traces its history back to the origins of Christianity in Scotland. Following the 1560 Scottish Reformation the Church of Scotland was initially run by Superintendents, episcopal governance was restored in 1572, but episcopalianism alternated with periods when the Kirk was under presbyterian control until the 1711 Act allowed formation of the independent non-established Scottish Episcopal Church. The Nonjuring schism led to the British Government imposing penal laws against the church. In 1784 the Scottish church appointed Samuel Seabury as first bishop of the American Episcopal Church, beginning the worldwide Anglican Communion of churches, and in 1792 the penal laws were abolished. The church accepted the articles of the Church of England in 1804. The spread of increasingly democratic forms of representative governance has its origin in the formation of the first General Conventions of the American Episcopal Church in the 1780s, which established a "House of Bishops" and a "House of Deputies". In many jurisdictions, there is also a third, clerical House. Resolutions may be voted on jointly or by each House, in the latter case requiring passage in all Houses to be adopted by the particular council.
Churches that are members of the Anglican Communion are episcopal churches in polity, and some are named "Episcopal". However, some churches that self-identify as Anglican do not belong to the Anglican Communion, and not all episcopally-governed churches are Anglican. The Roman Catholic Church, the Old Catholic Churches (in full communion with, but not members of, the Anglican Communion), and the Eastern Orthodox churches are recognized, and also their bishops, by Anglicans.
As an offshoot of Anglicanism, Methodist churches often use episcopal polity for historical as well as practical reasons, albeit to limited use. Methodists often use the term connexionalism or connexional polity in addition to "episcopal". Nevertheless, the powers of the Methodist episcopacy can be relatively strong and wide-reaching compared to traditional conceptions of episcopal polity. For example, in the United Methodist Church, bishops are elected for life, can serve up to two terms in a specific conference (three if special permission is given), are responsible for ordaining and appointing clergy to pastor churches, perform many administrative duties, preside at the annual sessions of the regional Conferences and at the quadrennial meeting of the worldwide General Conference, have authority for teaching and leading the church on matters of social and doctrinal import, and serve to represent the denomination in ecumenical gatherings. United Methodist bishops in the United States serve in their appointed conferences, being moved to a new "Episcopal Area" after 8 (or 12) years, until their mandated retirement at the end of the quadrennium following their sixty-sixth birthday. British Methodism holds that all ordained ministers are equal in terms of spirituality. However, for practical management lines are drawn into President of Conference, Chair of District, Superintendent Minister, Minister. However, all are ministers.
The Reformed Church of Hungary and the Lutheran churches in continental Europe may sometimes be called "episcopal". In these latter cases, the form of government is not radically different from the presbyterian form, except that their councils of bishops have hierarchical jurisdiction over the local ruling bodies to a greater extent than in most Presbyterian and other Reformed churches. As mentioned, the Lutheran Church in Sweden and Finland are exceptions, claiming apostolic succession in a pattern somewhat like the Anglican churches. Otherwise, forms of polity are not mandated in the Lutheran churches, as it is not regarded as having doctrinal significance. Old World Lutheranism, for historical reasons, has tended to adopt Erastian theories of episcopal authority (by which church authority is to a limited extent sanctioned by secular government). In the United States, the Lutheran churches tend to adopt a form of government that grants congregations more independence, but ultimately has an episcopal structure. A small minority of Episcopal Baptists exists.
Most Anabaptist churches of the plain dress tradition follow an episcopal system, at least in name. Congregational governance is strongly emphasized, and each congregation elects its pastor. Bishops enforce inter-congregational unity and may discipline pastors for breaking from traditional norms.
Although it never uses the term, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is episcopal, rather than presbyterian or congregational, in the sense that it has a strict hierarchy of leadership from the local bishop/branch president up to a single prophet/president, believed to be personally authorized and guided by Jesus Christ. Local congregations (branches, wards, and stakes) have de jure boundaries by which members are allocated, and membership records are centralized. This system developed gradually from a more presbyterian polity (Joseph Smith's original title in 1830 was "First Elder") for pragmatic and doctrinal reasons, reaching a full episcopacy during the Nauvoo period (1839–1846). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance (\"ecclesiastical polity\") in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. The word \"bishop\" here is derived via the British Latin and Vulgar Latin term *ebiscopus/*biscopus, from the Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος epískopos meaning \"overseer\". It is the structure used by many of the major Christian Churches and denominations, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist churches or denominations, and other churches founded independently from these lineages.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Churches with an episcopal polity are governed by bishops, practising their authorities in the dioceses and conferences or synods. Their leadership is both sacramental and constitutional; as well as performing ordinations, confirmations, and consecrations, the bishop supervises the clergy within a local jurisdiction and is the representative both to secular structures and within the hierarchy of the church.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Bishops are considered to derive their authority from an unbroken, personal apostolic succession from the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Bishops with such authority are said to represent the historical episcopate or historic episcopate. Churches with this type of government usually believe that the Church requires episcopal government as described in the New Testament (see 1 Timothy 3 and 2 Timothy 1). In some systems, bishops may be subject in limited ways to bishops holding a higher office (variously called archbishops, metropolitans, or patriarchs, depending upon the tradition). They also meet in councils or synods. These gatherings, subject to presidency by higher ranking bishops, usually make important decisions, though the synod or council may also be purely advisory.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "For much of the written history of institutional Christianity, episcopal government was the only known form of church organization. This changed at the Reformation. Many Protestant churches are now organized by either congregational or presbyterian church polities, both descended from the writings of John Calvin, a Protestant reformer working and writing independently following the break with the Catholic Church precipitated by The Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther. However, some people have disputed the episcopal polity before the reformation, such as Aerius of Sebaste in the 4th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The definition of the word episcopal has variation among Christian traditions. There are subtle differences in governmental principles among episcopal churches at the present time. To some extent the separation of episcopal churches can be traced to these differences in ecclesiology, that is, their theological understanding of church and church governance. For some, \"episcopal churches\" are churches that use a hierarchy of bishops who identify as being in an unbroken, personal apostolic succession.",
"title": "Overview of episcopal churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "\"Episcopal\" is also commonly used to distinguish between the various organizational structures of denominations. For instance, \"Presbyterian\" (Greek: πρεσβύτερος, presbýteros) is used to describe a church governed by a hierarchy of assemblies of elected elders, referred to as presbyterian polity. Similarly, \"episcopal\" is used to describe a church governed by bishops. Self-governed local congregations, governed neither by elders nor bishops, are usually described as \"congregational\".",
"title": "Overview of episcopal churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "More specifically, the capitalized appellation \"Episcopal\" is applied to several churches historically based within Anglicanism (\"Episcopalianism\"), including those still in communion with the Church of England.",
"title": "Overview of episcopal churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Using these definitions, examples of specific episcopal churches include:",
"title": "Overview of episcopal churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Some Lutheran churches practice congregational polity or a form of presbyterian polity. Others, including the Church of Sweden, practice episcopal polity; the Church of Sweden also counts its bishops among the historic episcopate. This is also the case with some American Lutheran churches, such as the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church, Lutheran Orthodox Church, Lutheran Church - International, and the Lutheran Episcopal Communion.",
"title": "Overview of episcopal churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Many Methodist churches (the United Methodist Church, among others) retain the form and function of episcopal polity, although in a modified form, called connexionalism. Since all trace their ordinations to an Anglican priest, John Wesley, it is generally considered that their bishops do not share in apostolic succession. However, United Methodists affirm that their bishops share in the historic episcopate.",
"title": "Overview of episcopal churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Apostle Paul in the letter to Philippians, Clement of Rome and the Didache when talking about the church system of governance, mention \"bishops and deacons\", omitting the word \"presbyter\", which has been argued by some to show that there was no presbyter-bishop distinction yet in the first century.",
"title": "Formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Ignatius of Antioch writing in already the early second century makes a clear distinction of bishops and presbyters, meaning that his letters show that an episcopal system was already existing by his time. However Bart Erhman sees it as significant that Ignatius in his letter to the Romans never mentioned a bishop in Rome. Later also Tertullian very clearly distinguishes the presbyters and bishops as a separate office, Irenaeus made lists of the succession of bishops, though bishop succession lists made by early church fathers are highly contradictory. By the second century it appears that the episcopal system had become the majority, universal view among Christians.",
"title": "Formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Even schismatic sects such as the Novatians and Donatists would use the episcopal system. Except for Aerius of Sebaste, who contested the episcopal system and started his own sect.",
"title": "Formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Jerome stated that churches were originally governed by a group of presbyters but only later churches decided to elect bishops to suppress schisms.",
"title": "Formation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Catholic Church has an episcopate, with the Pope, who is the Bishop of Rome, at the top. The Catholic Church considers that juridical oversight over the Church is not a power that derives from human beings, but strictly from the authority of Christ, which was given to his twelve apostles. The See of Rome, as the unbroken line of apostolic authority descending from St. Peter (the \"prince and head of the apostles\"), is a visible sign and instrument of communion among the college of bishops and therefore also of the local churches around the world. In communion with the worldwide college of bishops, the Pope has all legitimate juridical and teaching authority over the whole Church. This authority given by Christ to St. Peter and the apostles is transmitted from one generation to the next by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the laying on of hands from the Apostles to the bishops, in unbroken succession.",
"title": "Catholic Church"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The conciliar idea of episcopal government continues in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In Eastern Orthodoxy, all autocephalous primates are seen as collectively gathering around Christ, with other archbishops and bishops gathering around them, and so forth. There is no single primate with exclusive authority comparable to the Pope in Rome. However, the Patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul) is seen as the primus inter pares, the \"first among equals\" of the autocephalous churches of Eastern Orthodoxy.",
"title": "Eastern Orthodox Church"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Oriental Orthodox Churches affirm the ideas of apostolic succession and episcopal government. Within each national Church, the bishops form a holy synod to which even the Patriarch is subject. The Syriac Orthodox Church traces its apostolic succession to St. Peter and recognises Antioch as the original See of St. Peter. The Armenian Apostolic Church traces its lineage to the Apostle Bartholomew. The Indian Orthodox Church traces its lineage to the Apostle Thomas. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church received its lines of succession (Frumentius) through the Coptic Orthodox Church in the fifth century.",
"title": "Oriental Orthodox churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Both the Greek and Coptic Orthodox Churches each recognise their own Pope of Alexandria (Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, and Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria respectively), both of whom trace their apostolic succession back to the figure Mark the Evangelist. There are official, ongoing efforts in recent times to heal this ancient breach. Already, the two recognize each other's baptisms, chrismations, and marriages, making intermarriage much easier.",
"title": "Oriental Orthodox churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Historically, the Church of the East has traced its episcopal succession to St. Thomas the Apostle. Currently the bishops of the Assyrian Church of the East continue to maintain its apostolic succession.",
"title": "Church of the East"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Anglicanism is the most prominent of the Reformation traditions to lay claim to the historic episcopate through apostolic succession in terms comparable to the various Roman Catholic and Orthodox Communions. Anglicans assert unbroken episcopal succession in and through the Church of England back to St. Augustine of Canterbury and to the first century Roman province of Britannia. While some Celtic Christian practices were changed at the Synod of Whitby, the church in the British Isles was under papal authority from earliest times.",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The legislation of Henry VIII effectively establishing the independence of the Church of England from Rome did not alter its constitutional or pastoral structures. Royal supremacy was exercised through the extant legal structures of the church, whose leaders were bishops. Episcopacy was thus seen as a given of the Reformed Ecclesia Anglicana, and a foundation in the institution's appeal to ancient and apostolic legitimacy. What did change was that bishops were now seen to be ministers of the Crown for the spiritual government of its subjects. The influence of Richard Hooker was crucial to an evolution in this understanding in which bishops came to be seen in their more traditional role as ones who delegate to the presbyterate inherited powers, act as pastors to presbyters, and holding a particular teaching office with respect to the wider church.",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Anglican opinion has differed as to the way in which episcopal government is de jure divino (by the Divine Right of Kings). On the one hand, the seventeenth century divine, John Cosin, held that episcopal authority is jure divino, but that it stemmed from \"apostolic practice and the customs of the Church ... [not] absolute precept that either Christ or His Apostles gave about it\" (a view maintained also by Hooker). In contrast, Lancelot Andrewes and others held that episcopal government is derived from Christ via the apostles. Regardless, both parties viewed the episcopacy as bearing the apostolic function of oversight which both includes, and derives from, the power of ordination, and is normative for the governance of the church. The practice of apostolic succession both ensures the legitimacy of the church's mission and establishes the unity, communion, and continuity of the local church with the universal church. This formulation, in turn, laid the groundwork for an independent view of the church as a \"sacred society\" distinct from civil society, which was so crucial for the development of local churches as non-established entities outside England, and gave direct rise to the Catholic Revival and disestablishmentarianism within England.",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Functionally, Anglican episcopal authority is expressed synodically, although individual provinces may accord their primate with more or less authority to act independently. Called variously \"synods,\" \"councils,\" or \"conventions,\" they meet under episcopal chairmanship. In many jurisdictions, conciliar resolutions that have been passed require episcopal assent or consent to take force. Seen in this way, Anglicans often speak of \"the bishop-in-synod\" as the force and authority of episcopal governance. Such conciliar authority extends to the standard areas of doctrine, discipline, and worship, but in these regards is limited by Anglicanism's tradition of the limits of authority. Those limits are expressed in Article XXI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, ratified in 1571 (significantly, just as the Council of Trent was drawing to a close), which held that \"General Councils ... may err, and sometimes have erred ... wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of holy Scripture.\" Hence, Anglican jurisdictions have traditionally been conservative in their approach to either innovative doctrinal development or in encompassing actions of the church as doctrinal (see lex orandi, lex credendi).",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Anglican synodical government, though varied in expression, is characteristically representative. Provinces of the Anglican Communion, their ecclesiastical provinces and dioceses are governed by councils consisting not only of bishops, but also representatives of the presbyterate and laity.",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "There is no international juridical authority in Anglicanism, although the tradition's common experience of episcopacy, symbolised by the historical link with the See of Canterbury, along with a common and complex liturgical tradition, has provided a measure of unity. This has been reinforced by the Lambeth Conferences of Anglican Communion bishops, which first met in 1867. These conferences, though they propose and pass resolutions, are strictly consultative, and the intent of the resolutions is to provide guideposts for Anglican jurisdictions—not direction. The Conferences also express the function of the episcopate to demonstrate the ecumenical and catholic nature of the church.",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Scottish Episcopal Church traces its history back to the origins of Christianity in Scotland. Following the 1560 Scottish Reformation the Church of Scotland was initially run by Superintendents, episcopal governance was restored in 1572, but episcopalianism alternated with periods when the Kirk was under presbyterian control until the 1711 Act allowed formation of the independent non-established Scottish Episcopal Church. The Nonjuring schism led to the British Government imposing penal laws against the church. In 1784 the Scottish church appointed Samuel Seabury as first bishop of the American Episcopal Church, beginning the worldwide Anglican Communion of churches, and in 1792 the penal laws were abolished. The church accepted the articles of the Church of England in 1804. The spread of increasingly democratic forms of representative governance has its origin in the formation of the first General Conventions of the American Episcopal Church in the 1780s, which established a \"House of Bishops\" and a \"House of Deputies\". In many jurisdictions, there is also a third, clerical House. Resolutions may be voted on jointly or by each House, in the latter case requiring passage in all Houses to be adopted by the particular council.",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Churches that are members of the Anglican Communion are episcopal churches in polity, and some are named \"Episcopal\". However, some churches that self-identify as Anglican do not belong to the Anglican Communion, and not all episcopally-governed churches are Anglican. The Roman Catholic Church, the Old Catholic Churches (in full communion with, but not members of, the Anglican Communion), and the Eastern Orthodox churches are recognized, and also their bishops, by Anglicans.",
"title": "Anglican Communion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "As an offshoot of Anglicanism, Methodist churches often use episcopal polity for historical as well as practical reasons, albeit to limited use. Methodists often use the term connexionalism or connexional polity in addition to \"episcopal\". Nevertheless, the powers of the Methodist episcopacy can be relatively strong and wide-reaching compared to traditional conceptions of episcopal polity. For example, in the United Methodist Church, bishops are elected for life, can serve up to two terms in a specific conference (three if special permission is given), are responsible for ordaining and appointing clergy to pastor churches, perform many administrative duties, preside at the annual sessions of the regional Conferences and at the quadrennial meeting of the worldwide General Conference, have authority for teaching and leading the church on matters of social and doctrinal import, and serve to represent the denomination in ecumenical gatherings. United Methodist bishops in the United States serve in their appointed conferences, being moved to a new \"Episcopal Area\" after 8 (or 12) years, until their mandated retirement at the end of the quadrennium following their sixty-sixth birthday. British Methodism holds that all ordained ministers are equal in terms of spirituality. However, for practical management lines are drawn into President of Conference, Chair of District, Superintendent Minister, Minister. However, all are ministers.",
"title": "American Methodist churches"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The Reformed Church of Hungary and the Lutheran churches in continental Europe may sometimes be called \"episcopal\". In these latter cases, the form of government is not radically different from the presbyterian form, except that their councils of bishops have hierarchical jurisdiction over the local ruling bodies to a greater extent than in most Presbyterian and other Reformed churches. As mentioned, the Lutheran Church in Sweden and Finland are exceptions, claiming apostolic succession in a pattern somewhat like the Anglican churches. Otherwise, forms of polity are not mandated in the Lutheran churches, as it is not regarded as having doctrinal significance. Old World Lutheranism, for historical reasons, has tended to adopt Erastian theories of episcopal authority (by which church authority is to a limited extent sanctioned by secular government). In the United States, the Lutheran churches tend to adopt a form of government that grants congregations more independence, but ultimately has an episcopal structure. A small minority of Episcopal Baptists exists.",
"title": "Episcopal government in other denominations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Most Anabaptist churches of the plain dress tradition follow an episcopal system, at least in name. Congregational governance is strongly emphasized, and each congregation elects its pastor. Bishops enforce inter-congregational unity and may discipline pastors for breaking from traditional norms.",
"title": "Episcopal government in other denominations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Although it never uses the term, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is episcopal, rather than presbyterian or congregational, in the sense that it has a strict hierarchy of leadership from the local bishop/branch president up to a single prophet/president, believed to be personally authorized and guided by Jesus Christ. Local congregations (branches, wards, and stakes) have de jure boundaries by which members are allocated, and membership records are centralized. This system developed gradually from a more presbyterian polity (Joseph Smith's original title in 1830 was \"First Elder\") for pragmatic and doctrinal reasons, reaching a full episcopacy during the Nauvoo period (1839–1846).",
"title": "Episcopal government in other denominations"
}
]
| An episcopal polity is a hierarchical form of church governance in which the chief local authorities are called bishops. The word "bishop" here is derived via the British Latin and Vulgar Latin term *ebiscopus/*biscopus, from the Ancient Greek ἐπίσκοπος epískopos meaning "overseer". It is the structure used by many of the major Christian Churches and denominations, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist churches or denominations, and other churches founded independently from these lineages. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-19T19:03:01Z | [
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10,068 | Episcopal | Episcopal may refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Episcopal may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| Episcopal may refer to: Of or relating to a bishop, an overseer in the Christian church
Episcopate, the see of a bishop – a diocese
Episcopal Church (disambiguation), any church with "Episcopal" in its name
Episcopal Church, an affiliate of Anglicanism based in the United States
Episcopal conference, an official assembly of bishops in a territory of the Roman Catholic Church
Episcopal polity, the church united under the oversight of bishops
Episcopal see, the official seat of a bishop, often applied to the area over which he exercises authority
Historical episcopate, dioceses established according to apostolic succession | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-10-02T16:17:08Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episcopal |
10,070 | East Slavic languages | The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siberia and the Russian Far East. In part due to the large historical influence of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Russian language is also spoken as a lingua franca in many regions of Caucasus and Central Asia. Of the three Slavic branches, East Slavic is the most spoken, with the number of native speakers larger than the Western and Southern branches combined.
The common consensus is that Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian are the existent East Slavic languages; Rusyn is mostly considered as a separate language too, but some classify it as a dialect of Ukrainian.
The modern East Slavic languages descend from a common predecessor spoken in Kievan Rus' from the 9th to 13th centuries, which later evolved into Ruthenian, the chancery language of the Balto-Ruthenian Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Dnieper river valley, and into medieval Russian in the Volga river valley, the language of the Russian principalities including the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications. Belarusian and Ukrainian, which are descendants of Ruthenian, have a tradition of using Latin-based alphabets—the Belarusian Łacinka and Ukrainian Latin alphabets, respectively (also Rusyn uses Latin in some regions).
The East Slavic territory exhibits a linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect, which shares features from both languages. East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area, making it virtually impossible to draw a line between the two languages. Central or Middle Russian (with its Moscow sub-dialect), the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect, has many original and archaic features.
Ruthenian, the ancestor of modern Belarusian and Ukrainian, was the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as "Chancery Slavonic" until the end of the 17th century when it was gradually replaced by the Polish language. The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk from 1710 is one of the most important written sources of the Ruthenian language. Due to the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth over many centuries, Belarusian and Ukrainian have been influenced in several respects by Polish, a West Slavic language / Lechitic. As a result of the long Polish-Lithuanian rule, these languages had been less exposed to Church Slavonic, featuring therefore less Church Slavonicisms than the modern Russian language, e.g. Ukr.: солодкий / solodkyj and Bel.: салодкі / salodki vs. Rus.: сладкий / sladkij ("sweet"). Additionally, the original East Slavic phonetic form was kept in many words in Ukrainian and Belarusian, e.g. Ukr.:одиниця / odynycja and Bel. адзінка / adzinka vs. Rus.: eдиница / edinica ("unit").
After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria, which were written in Old Church Slavonic (a South Slavic language). The Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of the Bulgarians was communicated in its spoken form.
Throughout the Middle Ages (and in some way up to the present day) there existed a duality between the Church Slavonic language used as some kind of 'higher' register (not only) in religious texts and the popular tongue used as a 'lower' register for secular texts. It has been suggested to describe this situation as diglossia, although there do exist mixed texts where it is sometimes very hard to determine why a given author used a popular or a Church Slavonic form in a given context. Church Slavonic was a major factor in the evolution of modern Russian, where there still exists a "high stratum" of words that were imported from this language. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siberia and the Russian Far East. In part due to the large historical influence of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Russian language is also spoken as a lingua franca in many regions of Caucasus and Central Asia. Of the three Slavic branches, East Slavic is the most spoken, with the number of native speakers larger than the Western and Southern branches combined.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The common consensus is that Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian are the existent East Slavic languages; Rusyn is mostly considered as a separate language too, but some classify it as a dialect of Ukrainian.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The modern East Slavic languages descend from a common predecessor spoken in Kievan Rus' from the 9th to 13th centuries, which later evolved into Ruthenian, the chancery language of the Balto-Ruthenian Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Dnieper river valley, and into medieval Russian in the Volga river valley, the language of the Russian principalities including the Grand Duchy of Moscow.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications. Belarusian and Ukrainian, which are descendants of Ruthenian, have a tradition of using Latin-based alphabets—the Belarusian Łacinka and Ukrainian Latin alphabets, respectively (also Rusyn uses Latin in some regions).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The East Slavic territory exhibits a linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect, which shares features from both languages. East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area, making it virtually impossible to draw a line between the two languages. Central or Middle Russian (with its Moscow sub-dialect), the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect, has many original and archaic features.",
"title": "Differentiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Ruthenian, the ancestor of modern Belarusian and Ukrainian, was the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as \"Chancery Slavonic\" until the end of the 17th century when it was gradually replaced by the Polish language. The Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk from 1710 is one of the most important written sources of the Ruthenian language. Due to the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth over many centuries, Belarusian and Ukrainian have been influenced in several respects by Polish, a West Slavic language / Lechitic. As a result of the long Polish-Lithuanian rule, these languages had been less exposed to Church Slavonic, featuring therefore less Church Slavonicisms than the modern Russian language, e.g. Ukr.: солодкий / solodkyj and Bel.: салодкі / salodki vs. Rus.: сладкий / sladkij (\"sweet\"). Additionally, the original East Slavic phonetic form was kept in many words in Ukrainian and Belarusian, e.g. Ukr.:одиниця / odynycja and Bel. адзінка / adzinka vs. Rus.: eдиница / edinica (\"unit\").",
"title": "Differentiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria, which were written in Old Church Slavonic (a South Slavic language). The Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of the Bulgarians was communicated in its spoken form.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Throughout the Middle Ages (and in some way up to the present day) there existed a duality between the Church Slavonic language used as some kind of 'higher' register (not only) in religious texts and the popular tongue used as a 'lower' register for secular texts. It has been suggested to describe this situation as diglossia, although there do exist mixed texts where it is sometimes very hard to determine why a given author used a popular or a Church Slavonic form in a given context. Church Slavonic was a major factor in the evolution of modern Russian, where there still exists a \"high stratum\" of words that were imported from this language.",
"title": "History"
}
]
| The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siberia and the Russian Far East. In part due to the large historical influence of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the Russian language is also spoken as a lingua franca in many regions of Caucasus and Central Asia. Of the three Slavic branches, East Slavic is the most spoken, with the number of native speakers larger than the Western and Southern branches combined. The common consensus is that Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian are the existent East Slavic languages; Rusyn is mostly considered as a separate language too, but some classify it as a dialect of Ukrainian. The modern East Slavic languages descend from a common predecessor spoken in Kievan Rus' from the 9th to 13th centuries, which later evolved into Ruthenian, the chancery language of the Balto-Ruthenian Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Dnieper river valley, and into medieval Russian in the Volga river valley, the language of the Russian principalities including the Grand Duchy of Moscow. All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications. Belarusian and Ukrainian, which are descendants of Ruthenian, have a tradition of using Latin-based alphabets—the Belarusian Łacinka and Ukrainian Latin alphabets, respectively. | 2001-11-08T20:16:18Z | 2023-12-07T23:42:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Slavic_languages |
10,071 | Elizabeth Gracen | Elizabeth Ward Gracen (born Elizabeth Grace Ward, April 3, 1961) is an American actress and beauty pageant contestant who won the title of Miss America in 1982.
Elizabeth Grace Ward was born on April 3, 1961, in Ozark, Arkansas, the daughter of Patricia Hampe, a nurse, and Jimmy Young Ward, a poultry worker. She was raised in Booneville, Arkansas. The family later moved to Russellville, Arkansas, where Ward dated University of Arkansas trainer Mike Walker and graduated from Russellville High School in 1979. She was a junior accounting major at Arkansas Tech University at the time she entered the Miss America contest. Instead of returning to Arkansas Tech, she used her Miss America scholarship money to study acting at HB Studios in New York City.
Gracen won the titles of Miss Arkansas in 1981 and Miss America in 1982. After her yearlong work as Miss America, she enrolled in acting classes then relocated to California to pursue a film and television career.
Gracen posed nude for Playboy magazine's May 1992 issue.
Gracen made her professional feature film debut in Three For The Road with Charlie Sheen. Her film credits also include a featured role in Marked for Death, opposite Steven Seagal, Pass The Ammo with Tim Curry, and the CBS feature 83 Hours Till Dawn with Peter Strauss and Robert Urich. Gracen starred in Lower Level and Discretion Assured with Michael York.
On television, Gracen has appeared in Shelley Duvall's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Sidney Sheldon's The Sands of Time, and The Death of the Incredible Hulk. She also appeared with a starring role in the series Extreme for NBC and the syndicated series Renegade and Queen of Swords.
Gracen's best-known acting role has been as the recurring character Amanda, a 1,200-year-old immortal, in the series Highlander: The Series and its spin-off series Highlander: The Raven.
In December 1999, Gracen filed for bankruptcy protection. After few television guest roles, and a supporting role in the made-for-television movie Interceptor Force 2, she took a long leave of absence from acting, beginning in 2002. Gracen began doing voiceover work for Blue Hours Productions, which has revived the classic radio anthology Suspense, which airs on Sirius XM. In 2012, Gracen did a character voice-over in the Malaysian animated science fiction film War of the Worlds: Goliath.
In 2012, Gracen formed Flapper Films. In 2014, she starred in Coherence, a sci-fi indie thriller. In January 2016, Gracen established Flapper Press and self-published Shalilly, a young adult fantasy novel.
Gracen made her directorial debut with a documentary short, "The Damn Deal," about three young drag queens from Arkansas who compete in female impersonator beauty pageants.
Gracen married Jon Birmingham in 1982, and they divorced in 1984.
In 1989, while filming Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, she met actor Brendan Hughes, and they married soon after. They divorced in 1994.
Gracen married Adam Murphy, and they have a daughter.
According to Gracen, some time in 1983, she had a one-night stand with future President Bill Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas. She was married at the time, as was he.
In 1992, rumors swirled that Gracen had had an affair with Clinton. At first, Gracen dismissed this claim (as requested by Clinton's campaign manager Mickey Kantor); however, in spring 1998 Gracen recanted her six-year-old denial and stated she had a one-night stand with Clinton in 1983. After her claim, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who was investigating Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit, issued a subpoena to have her testify to her claim in court. However, Gracen eluded the subpoena and was at one point able to avoid it because Highlander: The Raven was being filmed outside of the US. Paula Jones's legal team was also unable to track down Gracen because she had made unscheduled trips to Las Vegas and the Caribbean. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Elizabeth Ward Gracen (born Elizabeth Grace Ward, April 3, 1961) is an American actress and beauty pageant contestant who won the title of Miss America in 1982.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Elizabeth Grace Ward was born on April 3, 1961, in Ozark, Arkansas, the daughter of Patricia Hampe, a nurse, and Jimmy Young Ward, a poultry worker. She was raised in Booneville, Arkansas. The family later moved to Russellville, Arkansas, where Ward dated University of Arkansas trainer Mike Walker and graduated from Russellville High School in 1979. She was a junior accounting major at Arkansas Tech University at the time she entered the Miss America contest. Instead of returning to Arkansas Tech, she used her Miss America scholarship money to study acting at HB Studios in New York City.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Gracen won the titles of Miss Arkansas in 1981 and Miss America in 1982. After her yearlong work as Miss America, she enrolled in acting classes then relocated to California to pursue a film and television career.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Gracen posed nude for Playboy magazine's May 1992 issue.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Gracen made her professional feature film debut in Three For The Road with Charlie Sheen. Her film credits also include a featured role in Marked for Death, opposite Steven Seagal, Pass The Ammo with Tim Curry, and the CBS feature 83 Hours Till Dawn with Peter Strauss and Robert Urich. Gracen starred in Lower Level and Discretion Assured with Michael York.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On television, Gracen has appeared in Shelley Duvall's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Sidney Sheldon's The Sands of Time, and The Death of the Incredible Hulk. She also appeared with a starring role in the series Extreme for NBC and the syndicated series Renegade and Queen of Swords.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Gracen's best-known acting role has been as the recurring character Amanda, a 1,200-year-old immortal, in the series Highlander: The Series and its spin-off series Highlander: The Raven.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In December 1999, Gracen filed for bankruptcy protection. After few television guest roles, and a supporting role in the made-for-television movie Interceptor Force 2, she took a long leave of absence from acting, beginning in 2002. Gracen began doing voiceover work for Blue Hours Productions, which has revived the classic radio anthology Suspense, which airs on Sirius XM. In 2012, Gracen did a character voice-over in the Malaysian animated science fiction film War of the Worlds: Goliath.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 2012, Gracen formed Flapper Films. In 2014, she starred in Coherence, a sci-fi indie thriller. In January 2016, Gracen established Flapper Press and self-published Shalilly, a young adult fantasy novel.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Gracen made her directorial debut with a documentary short, \"The Damn Deal,\" about three young drag queens from Arkansas who compete in female impersonator beauty pageants.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Gracen married Jon Birmingham in 1982, and they divorced in 1984.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1989, while filming Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, she met actor Brendan Hughes, and they married soon after. They divorced in 1994.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Gracen married Adam Murphy, and they have a daughter.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "According to Gracen, some time in 1983, she had a one-night stand with future President Bill Clinton when he was Governor of Arkansas. She was married at the time, as was he.",
"title": "Personal life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1992, rumors swirled that Gracen had had an affair with Clinton. At first, Gracen dismissed this claim (as requested by Clinton's campaign manager Mickey Kantor); however, in spring 1998 Gracen recanted her six-year-old denial and stated she had a one-night stand with Clinton in 1983. After her claim, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who was investigating Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit, issued a subpoena to have her testify to her claim in court. However, Gracen eluded the subpoena and was at one point able to avoid it because Highlander: The Raven was being filmed outside of the US. Paula Jones's legal team was also unable to track down Gracen because she had made unscheduled trips to Las Vegas and the Caribbean.",
"title": "Personal life"
}
]
| Elizabeth Ward Gracen is an American actress and beauty pageant contestant who won the title of Miss America in 1982. | 2001-11-08T23:57:00Z | 2023-11-17T16:00:44Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gracen |
10,073 | Epicurus | Epicurus (/ˌɛpɪˈkjʊərəs/, EH-pih-KURE-əs; Greek: Ἐπίκουρος Epikouros; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed. Only three letters written by him—the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings. As a result of his work's destruction, most knowledge about his philosophy is due to later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, and with hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero.
Epicurus asserted that philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others attain happy (eudaimonic), tranquil lives characterized by ataraxia (peace and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of pain). He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that the root of all human neuroses is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy. According to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. He taught that people should act ethically not because the gods punish or reward them for their actions but because, due to the power of guilt, amoral behavior would inevitably lead to remorse weighing on their consciences and as a result, they would be prevented from attaining ataraxia.
Epicurus was an empiricist, meaning he believed that only the senses are a reliable source of knowledge about the world. He derived much of his physics and cosmology from the earlier philosopher Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 BC). Like Democritus, Epicurus taught that the universe is infinite and eternal and that all matter is made up of extremely tiny, invisible particles known as atoms. All occurrences in the natural world are ultimately the result of atoms moving and interacting in empty space. Epicurus deviated from Democritus by proposing the idea of atomic "swerve", which holds that atoms may deviate from their expected course, thus permitting humans to possess free will in an otherwise deterministic universe.
Though popular, Epicurean teachings were controversial from the beginning. Epicureanism reached the height of its popularity during the late years of the Roman Republic. It died out in late antiquity, subject to hostility from early Christianity. Throughout the Middle Ages Epicurus was popularly, though inaccurately, remembered as a patron of drunkards, whoremongers, and gluttons. His teachings gradually became more widely known in the fifteenth century with the rediscovery of important texts, but his ideas did not become acceptable until the seventeenth century, when the French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi revived a modified version of them, which was promoted by other writers, including Walter Charleton and Robert Boyle. His influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment, profoundly impacting the ideas of major thinkers, including John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl Marx.
Epicurus was born in the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos in February 341 BC. His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen. Epicurus grew up during the final years of the Greek Classical Period. Plato had died seven years before Epicurus was born and Epicurus was seven years old when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Persia. As a child, Epicurus would have received a typical ancient Greek education. As such, according to Norman Wentworth DeWitt, "it is inconceivable that he would have escaped the Platonic training in geometry, dialectic, and rhetoric." Epicurus is known to have studied under the instruction of a Samian Platonist named Pamphilus, probably for about four years. His Letter of Menoeceus and surviving fragments of his other writings strongly suggest that he had extensive training in rhetoric. After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey. Epicurus joined his family there after the completion of his military service. He studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus, and later those of Pyrrho, whose way of life Epicurus greatly admired.
Epicurus's teachings were heavily influenced by those of earlier philosophers, particularly Democritus. Nonetheless, Epicurus differed from his predecessors on several key points of determinism and vehemently denied having been influenced by any previous philosophers, whom he denounced as "confused". Instead, he insisted that he had been "self-taught". According to DeWitt, Epicurus's teachings also show influences from the contemporary philosophical school of Cynicism. The Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope was still alive when Epicurus would have been in Athens for his required military training and it is possible they may have met. Diogenes's pupil Crates of Thebes (c. 365 – c. 285 BC) was a close contemporary of Epicurus. Epicurus agreed with the Cynics' quest for honesty, but rejected their "insolence and vulgarity", instead teaching that honesty must be coupled with courtesy and kindness. Epicurus shared this view with his contemporary, the comic playwright Menander.
Epicurus's Letter to Menoeceus, possibly an early work of his, is written in an eloquent style similar to that of the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates (436–338 BC), but, for his later works, he seems to have adopted the bald, intellectual style of the mathematician Euclid. Epicurus's epistemology also bears an unacknowledged debt to the later writings of Aristotle (384–322 BC), who rejected the Platonic idea of hypostatic Reason and instead relied on nature and empirical evidence for knowledge about the universe. During Epicurus's formative years, Greek knowledge about the rest of the world was rapidly expanding due to the Hellenization of the Near East and the rise of Hellenistic kingdoms. Epicurus's philosophy was consequently more universal in its outlook than those of his predecessors, since it took cognizance of non-Greek peoples as well as Greeks. He may have had access to the now-lost writings of the historian and ethnographer Megasthenes, who wrote during the reign of Seleucus I Nicator (ruled 305–281 BC).
During Epicurus's lifetime, Platonism was the dominant philosophy in higher education. Epicurus's opposition to Platonism formed a large part of his thought. Over half of the forty Principal Doctrines of Epicureanism are flat contradictions of Platonism. In around 311 BC, Epicurus, when he was around thirty years old, began teaching in Mytilene. Around this time, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, arrived in Athens, at the age of about twenty-one, but Zeno did not begin teaching what would become Stoicism for another twenty years. Although later texts, such as the writings of the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero, portray Epicureanism and Stoicism as rivals, this rivalry seems to have only emerged after Epicurus's death.
Epicurus's teachings caused strife in Mytilene and he was forced to leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in c. 306 BC, where he remained until his death. There he founded The Garden (κῆπος), a school named for the garden he owned that served as the school's meeting place, about halfway between the locations of two other schools of philosophy, the Stoa and the Academy. The Garden was more than just a school; it was "a community of like-minded and aspiring practitioners of a particular way of life." The primary members were Hermarchus, the financier Idomeneus, Leonteus and his wife Themista, the satirist Colotes, the mathematician Polyaenus of Lampsacus, and Metrodorus of Lampsacus, the most famous popularizer of Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception, and the biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laërtius lists female students such as Leontion and Nikidion. An inscription on the gate to The Garden is recorded by Seneca the Younger in epistle XXI of Epistulae morales ad Lucilium: "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure."
According to Diskin Clay, Epicurus himself established a custom of celebrating his birthday annually with common meals, befitting his stature as heros ktistes ("founding hero") of the Garden. He ordained in his will annual memorial feasts for himself on the same date (10th of Gamelion month). Epicurean communities continued this tradition, referring to Epicurus as their "saviour" (soter) and celebrating him as hero. The hero cult of Epicurus may have operated as a Garden variety civic religion. However, clear evidence of an Epicurean hero cult, as well as the cult itself, seems buried by the weight of posthumous philosophical interpretation. Epicurus never married and had no known children. He was most likely a vegetarian.
Diogenes Laërtius records that, according to Epicurus's successor Hermarchus, Epicurus died a slow and painful death in 270 BC at the age of seventy-two from a stone blockage of his urinary tract. Despite being in immense pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and to have continued to teach until the very end. Possible insights into Epicurus's death may be offered by the extremely brief Epistle to Idomeneus, included by Diogenes Laërtius in Book X of his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The authenticity of this letter is uncertain and it may be a later pro-Epicurean forgery intended to paint an admirable portrait of the philosopher to counter the large number of forged epistles in Epicurus's name portraying him unfavorably.
I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy.
If authentic, this letter would support the tradition that Epicurus was able to remain joyful to the end, even in the midst of his suffering. It would also indicate that he maintained a special concern for the wellbeing of children.
Epicurus and his followers had a well-developed epistemology, which developed as a result of their rivalry with other philosophical schools. Epicurus wrote a treatise entitled Κανών, or Rule, in which he explained his methods of investigation and theory of knowledge. This book, however, has not survived, nor does any other text that fully and clearly explains Epicurean epistemology, leaving only mentions of this epistemology by several authors to reconstruct it. Epicurus was an ardent Empiricist; believing that the senses are the only reliable sources of information about the world. He rejected the Platonic idea of "Reason" as a reliable source of knowledge about the world apart from the senses and was bitterly opposed to the Pyrrhonists and Academic Skeptics, who not only questioned the ability of the senses to provide accurate knowledge about the world, but also whether it is even possible to know anything about the world at all.
Epicurus maintained that the senses never deceive humans, but that the senses can be misinterpreted. Epicurus held that the purpose of all knowledge is to aid humans in attaining ataraxia. He taught that knowledge is learned through experiences rather than innate and that the acceptance of the fundamental truth of the things a person perceives is essential to a person's moral and spiritual health. In the Letter to Pythocles, he states, "If a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquility." Epicurus regarded gut feelings as the ultimate authority on matters of morality and held that whether a person feels an action is right or wrong is a far more cogent guide to whether that act really is right or wrong than abstracts maxims, strict codified rules of ethics, or even reason itself.
Epicurus permitted that any and every statement that is not directly contrary to human perception has the possibility to be true. Nonetheless, anything contrary to a person's experience can be ruled out as false. Epicureans often used analogies to everyday experience to support their argument of so-called "imperceptibles", which included anything that a human being cannot perceive, such as the motion of atoms. In line with this principle of non-contradiction, the Epicureans believed that events in the natural world may have multiple causes that are all equally possible and probable. Lucretius writes in On the Nature of Things, as translated by William Ellery Leonard:
There be, besides, some thing Of which 'tis not enough one only cause To state—but rather several, whereof one Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy Lying afar some fellow's lifeless corse, 'Twere meet to name all causes of a death, That cause of his death might thereby be named: For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel, By cold, nor even by poison nor disease, Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him We know—And thus we have to say the same In divers cases.
Epicurus strongly favored naturalistic explanations over theological ones. In his Letter to Pythocles, he offers four different possible natural explanations for thunder, six different possible natural explanations for lightning, three for snow, three for comets, two for rainbows, two for earthquakes, and so on. Although all of these explanations are now known to be false, they were an important step in the history of science, because Epicurus was trying to explain natural phenomena using natural explanations, rather than resorting to inventing elaborate stories about gods and mythic heroes.
Epicurus was a hedonist, meaning he taught that what is pleasurable is morally good and what is painful is morally evil. He idiosyncratically defined "pleasure" as the absence of suffering and taught that all humans should seek to attain the state of ataraxia, meaning "untroubledness", a state in which the person is completely free from all pain or suffering. He argued that most of the suffering which human beings experience is caused by the irrational fears of death, divine retribution, and punishment in the afterlife. In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus explains that people seek wealth and power on account of these fears, believing that having more money, prestige, or political clout will save them from death. He, however, maintains that death is the end of existence, that the terrifying stories of punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions, and that death is therefore nothing to be feared. He writes in his Letter to Menoeceus: "Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience;... Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not." From this doctrine arose the Epicurean epitaph: Non fui, fui, non-sum, non-curo ("I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care"), which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of the Roman Empire. This quotation is often used today at humanist funerals.
The Tetrapharmakos presents a summary of the key points of Epicurean ethics:
Although Epicurus has been commonly misunderstood as an advocate of the rampant pursuit of pleasure, he, in fact, maintained that a person can only be happy and free from suffering by living wisely, soberly, and morally. He strongly disapproved of raw, excessive sensuality and warned that a person must take into account whether the consequences of his actions will result in suffering, writing, "the pleasant life is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by the enjoyment of boys and women, nor by fish and the other items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning." He also wrote that a single good piece of cheese could be equally pleasing as an entire feast. Furthermore, Epicurus taught that "it is not possible to live pleasurably without living sensibly and nobly and justly", because a person who engages in acts of dishonesty or injustice will be "loaded with troubles" on account of his own guilty conscience and will live in constant fear that his wrongdoings will be discovered by others. A person who is kind and just to others, however, will have no fear and will be more likely to attain ataraxia.
Epicurus distinguished between two different types of pleasure: "moving" pleasures (κατὰ κίνησιν ἡδοναί) and "static" pleasures (καταστηματικαὶ ἡδοναί). "Moving" pleasures occur when one is in the process of satisfying a desire and involve an active titillation of the senses. After one's desires have been satisfied (e.g. when one is full after eating), the pleasure quickly goes away and the suffering of wanting to fulfill the desire again returns. For Epicurus, static pleasures are the best pleasures because moving pleasures are always bound up with pain. Epicurus had a low opinion of sex and marriage, regarding both as having dubious value. Instead, he maintained that platonic friendships are essential to living a happy life. One of the Principal Doctrines states, "Of the things wisdom acquires for the blessedness of life as a whole, far the greatest is the possession of friendship." He also taught that philosophy is itself a pleasure to engage in. One of the quotes from Epicurus recorded in the Vatican Sayings declares, "In other pursuits, the hard-won fruit comes at the end. But in philosophy, delight keeps pace with knowledge. It is not after the lesson that enjoyment comes: learning and enjoyment happen at the same time."
Epicurus distinguishes between three types of desires: natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, and vain and empty. Natural and necessary desires include the desires for food and shelter. These are easy to satisfy, difficult to eliminate, bring pleasure when satisfied, and are naturally limited. Going beyond these limits produces unnecessary desires, such as the desire for luxury foods. Although food is necessary, luxury food is not necessary. Correspondingly, Epicurus advocates a life of hedonistic moderation by reducing desire, thus eliminating the unhappiness caused by unfulfilled desires. Vain desires include desires for power, wealth, and fame. These are difficult to satisfy because no matter how much one gets, one can always want more. These desires are inculcated by society and by false beliefs about what we need. They are not natural and are to be shunned.
Epicurus' teachings were introduced into medical philosophy and practice by the Epicurean doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia, who was the first physician who introduced Greek medicine in Rome. Asclepiades introduced the friendly, sympathetic, pleasing and painless treatment of patients. He advocated humane treatment of mental disorders, had insane persons freed from confinement and treated them with natural therapy, such as diet and massages. His teachings are surprisingly modern; therefore Asclepiades is considered to be a pioneer physician in psychotherapy, physical therapy and molecular medicine.
Epicurus writes in his Letter to Herodotus (not the historian) that "nothing ever arises from the nonexistent", indicating that all events therefore have causes, regardless of whether those causes are known or unknown. Similarly, he also writes that nothing ever passes away into nothingness, because, "if an object that passes from our view were completely annihilated, everything in the world would have perished, since that into which things were dissipated would be nonexistent." He therefore states: "The totality of things was always just as it is at present and will always remain the same because there is nothing into which it can change, inasmuch as there is nothing outside the totality that could intrude and effect change." Like Democritus before him, Epicurus taught that all matter is entirely made of extremely tiny particles called "atoms" (Greek: ἄτομος; atomos, meaning "indivisible"). For Epicurus and his followers, the existence of atoms was a matter of empirical observation; Epicurus's devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius, cites the gradual wearing down of rings from being worn, statues from being kissed, stones from being dripped on by water, and roads from being walked on in On the Nature of Things as evidence for the existence of atoms as tiny, imperceptible particles.
Also like Democritus, Epicurus was a materialist who taught that the only things that exist are atoms and void. Void occurs in any place where there are no atoms. Epicurus and his followers believed that atoms and void are both infinite and that the universe is therefore boundless. In On the Nature of Things, Lucretius argues this point using the example of a man throwing a javelin at the theoretical boundary of a finite universe. He states that the javelin must either go past the edge of the universe, in which case it is not really a boundary, or it must be blocked by something and prevented from continuing its path, but, if that happens, then the object blocking it must be outside the confines of the universe. As a result of this belief that the universe and the number of atoms in it are infinite, Epicurus and the Epicureans believed that there must also be infinitely many worlds within the universe.
Epicurus taught that the motion of atoms is constant, eternal, and without beginning or end. He held that there are two kinds of motion: the motion of atoms and the motion of visible objects. Both kinds of motion are real and not illusory. Democritus had described atoms as not only eternally moving, but also eternally flying through space, colliding, coalescing, and separating from each other as necessary. In a rare departure from Democritus's physics, Epicurus posited the idea of atomic "swerve" (παρέγκλισις parénklisis; Latin: clinamen), one of his best-known original ideas. According to this idea, atoms, as they are travelling through space, may deviate slightly from the course they would ordinarily be expected to follow. Epicurus's reason for introducing this doctrine was because he wanted to preserve the concepts of free will and ethical responsibility while still maintaining the deterministic physical model of atomism. Lucretius describes it, saying, "It is this slight deviation of primal bodies, at indeterminate times and places, which keeps the mind as such from experiencing an inner compulsion in doing everything it does and from being forced to endure and suffer like a captive in chains."
Epicurus was first to assert human freedom as a result of the fundamental indeterminism in the motion of atoms. This has led some philosophers to think that, for Epicurus, free will was caused directly by chance. In his On the Nature of Things, Lucretius appears to suggest this in the best-known passage on Epicurus' position. In his Letter to Menoeceus, however, Epicurus follows Aristotle and clearly identifies three possible causes: "some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency." Aristotle said some things "depend on us" (eph'hemin). Epicurus agreed, and said it is to these last things that praise and blame naturally attach. For Epicurus, the "swerve" of the atoms simply defeated determinism to leave room for autonomous agency.
In his Letter to Menoeceus, a summary of his own moral and theological teachings, the first piece of advice Epicurus himself gives to his student is: "First, believe that a god is an indestructible and blessed animal, in accordance with the general conception of god commonly held, and do not ascribe to god anything foreign to his indestructibility or repugnant to his blessedness." Epicurus maintained that he and his followers knew that the gods exist because "our knowledge of them is a matter of clear and distinct perception", meaning that people can empirically sense their presences. He did not mean that people can see the gods as physical objects, but rather that they can see visions of the gods sent from the remote regions of interstellar space in which they actually reside. According to George K. Strodach, Epicurus could have easily dispensed of the gods entirely without greatly altering his materialist worldview, but the gods still play one important function in Epicurus's theology as the paragons of moral virtue to be emulated and admired.
Epicurus rejected the conventional Greek view of the gods as anthropomorphic beings who walked the earth like ordinary people, fathered illegitimate offspring with mortals, and pursued personal feuds. Instead, he taught that the gods are morally perfect, but detached and immobile beings who live in the remote regions of interstellar space. In line with these teachings, Epicurus adamantly rejected the idea that deities were involved in human affairs in any way. Epicurus maintained that the gods are so utterly perfect and removed from the world that they are incapable of listening to prayers or supplications or doing virtually anything aside from contemplating their own perfections. In his Letter to Herodotus, he specifically denies that the gods have any control over natural phenomena, arguing that this would contradict their fundamental nature, which is perfect, because any kind of worldly involvement would tarnish their perfection. He further warned that believing that the gods control natural phenomena would only mislead people into believing the superstitious view that the gods punish humans for wrongdoing, which only instills fear and prevents people from attaining ataraxia.
Epicurus himself criticizes popular religion in both his Letter to Menoeceus and his Letter to Herodotus, but in a restrained and moderate tone. Later Epicureans mainly followed the same ideas as Epicurus, believing in the existence of the gods, but emphatically rejecting the idea of divine providence. Their criticisms of popular religion, however, are often less gentle than those of Epicurus himself. The Letter to Pythocles, written by a later Epicurean, is dismissive and contemptuous towards popular religion and Epicurus's devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC), passionately assailed popular religion in his philosophical poem On the Nature of Things. In this poem, Lucretius declares that popular religious practices not only do not instill virtue, but rather result in "misdeeds both wicked and ungodly", citing the mythical sacrifice of Iphigenia as an example. Lucretius argues that divine creation and providence are illogical, not because the gods do not exist, but rather because these notions are incompatible with the Epicurean principles of the gods' indestructibility and blessedness. The later Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus (c. 160 – c. 210 AD) rejected the teachings of the Epicureans specifically because he regarded them as theological "Dogmaticists".
The Epicurean paradox or riddle of Epicurus or Epicurus' trilemma is a version of the problem of evil. Lactantius attributes this trilemma to Epicurus in De Ira Dei, 13, 20-21:
God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?
In Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), David Hume also attributes the argument to Epicurus:
Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?
No extant writings of Epicurus contain this argument. However, the vast majority of Epicurus's writings have been lost and it is possible that some form of this argument may have been found in his lost treatise On the Gods, which Diogenes Laërtius describes as one of his greatest works. If Epicurus really did make some form of this argument, it would not have been an argument against the existence of deities, but rather an argument against divine providence. Epicurus's extant writings demonstrate that he did believe in the existence of deities. Furthermore, religion was such an integral part of daily life in Greece during the early Hellenistic Period that it is doubtful anyone during that period could have been an atheist in the modern sense of the word. Instead, the Greek word ἄθεος (átheos), meaning "without a god", was used as a term of abuse, not as an attempt to describe a person's beliefs.
Epicurus promoted an innovative theory of justice as a social contract. Justice, Epicurus said, is an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed, and we need to have such a contract in order to enjoy fully the benefits of living together in a well-ordered society. Laws and punishments are needed to keep misguided fools in line who would otherwise break the contract. But the wise person sees the usefulness of justice, and because of his limited desires, he has no need to engage in the conduct prohibited by the laws in any case. Laws that are useful for promoting happiness are just, but those that are not useful are not just. (Principal Doctrines 31–40)
Epicurus discouraged participation in politics, as doing so leads to perturbation and status seeking. He instead advocated not drawing attention to oneself. This principle is epitomised by the phrase lathe biōsas (λάθε βιώσας), meaning "live in obscurity", "get through life without drawing attention to yourself", i.e., live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends, etc. Plutarch elaborated on this theme in his essay Is the Saying "Live in Obscurity" Right? (Εἰ καλῶς εἴρηται τὸ λάθε βιώσας, An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum) 1128c; cf. Flavius Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 8.28.12.
Epicurus was an extremely prolific writer. According to Diogenes Laërtius, he wrote around 300 treatises on a variety of subjects. Although more original writings of Epicurus have survived to the present day than of any other Hellenistic Greek philosopher, the vast majority of everything he wrote has still been lost, and most of what is known about Epicurus's teachings come from the writings of his later followers, particularly the Roman poet Lucretius. The only surviving complete works by Epicurus are three relatively lengthy letters, which are quoted in their entirety in Book X of Diogenes Laërtius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, and two groups of quotes: the Principal Doctrines (Κύριαι Δόξαι), which are likewise preserved through quotation by Diogenes Laërtius, and the Vatican Sayings, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library that was first discovered in 1888. In the Letter to Herodotus and the Letter to Pythocles, Epicurus summarizes his philosophy on nature and, in the Letter to Menoeceus, he summarizes his moral teachings. Numerous fragments of Epicurus's lost thirty-seven volume treatise On Nature have been found among the charred papyrus fragments at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Scholars first began attempting to unravel and decipher these scrolls in 1800, but the efforts are painstaking and are still ongoing. According to Diogenes Laertius (10.27-9), the major works of Epicurus include:
Epicureanism was extremely popular from the very beginning. Diogenes Laërtius records that the number of Epicureans throughout the world exceeded the populations of entire cities. Nonetheless, Epicurus was not universally admired and, within his own lifetime, he was vilified as an ignorant buffoon and egoistic sybarite. He remained the most simultaneously admired and despised philosopher in the Mediterranean for the next nearly five centuries. Epicureanism rapidly spread beyond the Greek mainland all across the Mediterranean world. By the first century BC, it had established a strong foothold in Italy. The Roman orator Cicero (106 – 43 BC), who deplored Epicurean ethics, lamented, "the Epicureans have taken Italy by storm."
The overwhelming majority of surviving Greek and Roman sources are vehemently negative towards Epicureanism and, according to Pamela Gordon, they routinely depict Epicurus himself as "monstrous or laughable". Many Romans in particular took a negative view of Epicureanism, seeing its advocacy of the pursuit of voluptas ("pleasure") as contrary to the Roman ideal of virtus ("manly virtue"). The Romans therefore often stereotyped Epicurus and his followers as weak and effeminate. Prominent critics of his philosophy include prominent authors such as the Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) and the Greek Middle Platonist Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 120), who both derided these stereotypes as immoral and disreputable. Gordon characterizes anti-Epicurean rhetoric as so "heavy-handed" and misrepresentative of Epicurus's actual teachings that they sometimes come across as "comical". In his De vita beata, Seneca states that the "sect of Epicurus... has a bad reputation, and yet it does not deserve it." and compares it to "a man in a dress: your chastity remains, your virility is unimpaired, your body has not submitted sexually, but in your hand is a tympanum."
Epicureanism was a notoriously conservative philosophical school; although Epicurus's later followers did expand on his philosophy, they dogmatically retained what he himself had originally taught without modifying it. Epicureans and admirers of Epicureanism revered Epicurus himself as a great teacher of ethics, a savior, and even a god. His image was worn on finger rings, portraits of him were displayed in living rooms, and wealthy followers venerated likenesses of him in marble sculpture. His admirers revered his sayings as divine oracles, carried around copies of his writings, and cherished copies of his letters like the letters of an apostle. On the twentieth day of every month, admirers of his teachings would perform a solemn ritual to honor his memory. At the same time, opponents of his teachings denounced him with vehemence and persistence.
However, in the first and second centuries AD, Epicureanism gradually began to decline as it failed to compete with Stoicism, which had an ethical system more in line with traditional Roman values. Epicureanism also suffered decay in the wake of Christianity, which was also rapidly expanding throughout the Roman Empire. Of all the Greek philosophical schools, Epicureanism was the one most at odds with the new Christian teachings, since Epicureans believed that the soul was mortal, denied the existence of an afterlife, denied that the divine had any active role in human life, and advocated pleasure as the foremost goal of human existence. As such, Christian writers such as Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 165 AD), Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–c. 190), Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240), and Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215), Arnobius (died c. 330), and Lactantius (c. 250-c.325) all singled it out for the most vitriolic criticism.
In spite of this, DeWitt argues that Epicureanism and Christianity share much common language, calling Epicureanism "the first missionary philosophy" and "the first world philosophy". Both Epicureanism and Christianity placed strong emphasis on the importance of love and forgiveness and early Christian portrayals of Jesus are often similar to Epicurean portrayals of Epicurus. DeWitt argues that Epicureanism, in many ways, helped pave the way for the spread of Christianity by "helping to bridge the gap between Greek intellectualism and a religious way of life" and "shunt[ing] the emphasis from the political to the social virtues and offer[ing] what may be called a religion of humanity."
By the early fifth century AD, Epicureanism was virtually extinct. The Christian Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) declared, "its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be struck from them." While the ideas of Plato and Aristotle could easily be adapted to suit a Christian worldview, the ideas of Epicurus were not nearly as easily amenable. As such, while Plato and Aristotle enjoyed a privileged place in Christian philosophy throughout the Middle Ages, Epicurus was not held in such esteem. Information about Epicurus's teachings was available, through Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, quotations of it found in medieval Latin grammars and florilegia, and encyclopedias, such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (seventh century) and Hrabanus Maurus's De universo (ninth century), but there is little evidence that these teachings were systematically studied or comprehended.
During the Middle Ages, Epicurus was remembered by the educated as a philosopher, but he frequently appeared in popular culture as a gatekeeper to the Garden of Delights, the "proprietor of the kitchen, the tavern, and the brothel." He appears in this guise in Martianus Capella's Marriage of Mercury and Philology (fifth century), John of Salisbury's Policraticus (1159), John Gower's Mirour de l'Omme, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Epicurus and his followers appear in Dante Alighieri's Inferno in the Sixth Circle of Hell, where they are imprisoned in flaming coffins for having believed that the soul dies with the body.
In 1417, a manuscript-hunter named Poggio Bracciolini discovered a copy of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in a monastery near Lake Constance. The discovery of this manuscript was met with immense excitement, because scholars were eager to analyze and study the teachings of classical philosophers and this previously-forgotten text contained the most comprehensive account of Epicurus's teachings known in Latin. The first scholarly dissertation on Epicurus, De voluptate (On Pleasure) by the Italian Humanist and Catholic priest Lorenzo Valla was published in 1431. Valla made no mention of Lucretius or his poem. Instead, he presented the treatise as a discussion on the nature of the highest good between an Epicurean, a Stoic, and a Christian. Valla's dialogue ultimately rejects Epicureanism, but, by presenting an Epicurean as a member of the dispute, Valla lent Epicureanism credibility as a philosophy that deserved to be taken seriously.
None of the Quattrocento Humanists ever clearly endorsed Epicureanism, but scholars such as Francesco Zabarella (1360–1417), Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), Cristoforo Landino (1424–1498), and Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444) did give Epicureanism a fairer analysis than it had traditionally received and provided a less overtly hostile assessment of Epicurus himself. Nonetheless, "Epicureanism" remained a pejorative, synonymous with extreme egoistic pleasure-seeking, rather than a name of a philosophical school. This reputation discouraged orthodox Christian scholars from taking what others might regard as an inappropriately keen interest in Epicurean teachings. Epicureanism did not take hold in Italy, France, or England until the seventeenth century. Even the liberal religious skeptics who might have been expected to take an interest in Epicureanism evidently did not; Étienne Dolet (1509–1546) only mentions Epicurus once in all his writings and François Rabelais (between 1483 and 1494–1553) never mentions him at all. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) is the exception to this trend, quoting a full 450 lines of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in his Essays. His interest in Lucretius, however, seems to have been primarily literary and he is ambiguous about his feelings on Lucretius's Epicurean worldview. During the Protestant Reformation, the label "Epicurean" was bandied back and forth as an insult between Protestants and Catholics.
In the seventeenth century, the French Catholic priest and scholar Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) sought to dislodge Aristotelianism from its position of the highest dogma by presenting Epicureanism as a better and more rational alternative. In 1647, Gassendi published his book De vita et moribus Epicuri (The Life and Morals of Epicurus), a passionate defense of Epicureanism. In 1649, he published a commentary on Diogenes Laërtius's Life of Epicurus. He left Syntagma philosophicum (Philosophical Compendium), a synthesis of Epicurean doctrines, unfinished at the time of his death in 1655. It was finally published in 1658, after undergoing revision by his editors. Gassendi modified Epicurus's teachings to make them palatable for a Christian audience. For instance, he argued that atoms were not eternal, uncreated, and infinite in number, instead contending that an extremely large but finite number of atoms were created by God at creation.
As a result of Gassendi's modifications, his books were never censored by the Catholic Church. They came to exert profound influence on later writings about Epicurus. Gassendi's version of Epicurus's teachings became popular among some members of English scientific circles. For these scholars, however, Epicurean atomism was merely a starting point for their own idiosyncratic adaptations of it. To orthodox thinkers, Epicureanism was still regarded as immoral and heretical. For instance, Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681), the first translator of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things into English, railed against Epicurus as "a lunatic dog" who formulated "ridiculous, impious, execrable doctrines".
Epicurus's teachings were made respectable in England by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton (1619–1707), whose first Epicurean work, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature (1652), advanced Epicureanism as a "new" atomism. His next work Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana, or a Fabrick of Science Natural, upon a Hypothesis of Atoms, Founded by Epicurus, Repaired by Petrus Gassendus, and Augmented by Walter Charleton (1654) emphasized this idea. These works, together with Charleton's Epicurus's Morals (1658), provided the English public with readily available descriptions of Epicurus's philosophy and assured orthodox Christians that Epicureanism was no threat to their beliefs. The Royal Society, chartered in 1662, advanced Epicurean atomism. One of the most prolific defenders of atomism was the chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who argued for it in publications such as The Origins of Forms and Qualities (1666), Experiments, Notes, etc. about the Mechanical Origin and Production of Divers Particular Qualities (1675), and Of the Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis (1674). By the end of the seventeenth century, Epicurean atomism was widely accepted by members of the English scientific community as the best model for explaining the physical world, but it had been modified so greatly that Epicurus was no longer seen as its original parent.
The Anglican bishop Joseph Butler's anti-Epicurean polemics in his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726) and Analogy of Religion (1736) set the tune for what most orthodox Christians believed about Epicureanism for the remainder of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, there are a few indications from this time period of Epicurus's improving reputation. Epicureanism was beginning to lose its associations with indiscriminate and insatiable gluttony, which had been characteristic of its reputation ever since antiquity. Instead, the word "epicure" began to refer to a person with extremely refined taste in food. Examples of this usage include "Epicurean cooks / sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite" from William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (Act II. scene i; c. 1607) and "such an epicure was Potiphar—to please his tooth and pamper his flesh with delicacies" from William Whately's Prototypes (1646).
Around the same time, the Epicurean injunction to "live in obscurity" was beginning to gain popularity as well. In 1685, Sir William Temple (1628–1699) abandoned a promising career as a diplomat and instead retired to his garden, devoting himself to writing essays on Epicurus's moral teachings. That same year, John Dryden translated the celebrated lines from Book II of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things: "'Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore / The rowling ship, and hear the Tempest roar." Meanwhile, John Locke (1632–1704) adapted Gassendi's modified version of Epicurus's epistemology, which became highly influential on English empiricism. Many thinkers with sympathies towards the Enlightenment endorsed Epicureanism as an admirable moral philosophy. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, declared in 1819, "I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."
The German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883), whose ideas are the basis of Marxism, was profoundly influenced as a young man by the teachings of Epicurus and his doctoral thesis was a Hegelian dialectical analysis of the differences between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. Marx viewed Democritus as a rationalist skeptic, whose epistemology was inherently contradictory, but saw Epicurus as a dogmatic empiricist, whose worldview is internally consistent and practically applicable. The British poet Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) praised "the sober majesties / of settled, sweet, Epicurean life" in his 1868 poem "Lucretius". Epicurus's ethical teachings also had an indirect impact on the philosophy of Utilitarianism in England during the nineteenth century. Soviet politician Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) lauded Epicurus by stating: "He was the greatest philosopher of all time. He was the one who recommended practicing virtue to derive the greatest joy from life".
Friedrich Nietzsche once noted: "Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former – although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity."
Academic interest in Epicurus and other Hellenistic philosophers increased over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with an unprecedented number of monographs, articles, abstracts, and conference papers being published on the subject. The texts from the library of Philodemus of Gadara in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, first discovered between 1750 and 1765, are being deciphered, translated, and published by scholars part of the Philodemus Translation Project, funded by the United States National Endowment for the Humanities, and part of the Centro per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in Naples. Epicurus's popular appeal among non-scholars is difficult to gauge, but it seems to be relatively comparable to the appeal of more traditionally popular ancient Greek philosophical subjects such as Stoicism, Aristotle, and Plato. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Epicurus (/ˌɛpɪˈkjʊərəs/, EH-pih-KURE-əs; Greek: Ἐπίκουρος Epikouros; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as \"the Garden\", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed. Only three letters written by him—the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings. As a result of his work's destruction, most knowledge about his philosophy is due to later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, and with hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Epicurus asserted that philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others attain happy (eudaimonic), tranquil lives characterized by ataraxia (peace and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of pain). He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that the root of all human neuroses is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy. According to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. He taught that people should act ethically not because the gods punish or reward them for their actions but because, due to the power of guilt, amoral behavior would inevitably lead to remorse weighing on their consciences and as a result, they would be prevented from attaining ataraxia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Epicurus was an empiricist, meaning he believed that only the senses are a reliable source of knowledge about the world. He derived much of his physics and cosmology from the earlier philosopher Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 BC). Like Democritus, Epicurus taught that the universe is infinite and eternal and that all matter is made up of extremely tiny, invisible particles known as atoms. All occurrences in the natural world are ultimately the result of atoms moving and interacting in empty space. Epicurus deviated from Democritus by proposing the idea of atomic \"swerve\", which holds that atoms may deviate from their expected course, thus permitting humans to possess free will in an otherwise deterministic universe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Though popular, Epicurean teachings were controversial from the beginning. Epicureanism reached the height of its popularity during the late years of the Roman Republic. It died out in late antiquity, subject to hostility from early Christianity. Throughout the Middle Ages Epicurus was popularly, though inaccurately, remembered as a patron of drunkards, whoremongers, and gluttons. His teachings gradually became more widely known in the fifteenth century with the rediscovery of important texts, but his ideas did not become acceptable until the seventeenth century, when the French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi revived a modified version of them, which was promoted by other writers, including Walter Charleton and Robert Boyle. His influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment, profoundly impacting the ideas of major thinkers, including John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl Marx.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Epicurus was born in the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos in February 341 BC. His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen. Epicurus grew up during the final years of the Greek Classical Period. Plato had died seven years before Epicurus was born and Epicurus was seven years old when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Persia. As a child, Epicurus would have received a typical ancient Greek education. As such, according to Norman Wentworth DeWitt, \"it is inconceivable that he would have escaped the Platonic training in geometry, dialectic, and rhetoric.\" Epicurus is known to have studied under the instruction of a Samian Platonist named Pamphilus, probably for about four years. His Letter of Menoeceus and surviving fragments of his other writings strongly suggest that he had extensive training in rhetoric. After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey. Epicurus joined his family there after the completion of his military service. He studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus, and later those of Pyrrho, whose way of life Epicurus greatly admired.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Epicurus's teachings were heavily influenced by those of earlier philosophers, particularly Democritus. Nonetheless, Epicurus differed from his predecessors on several key points of determinism and vehemently denied having been influenced by any previous philosophers, whom he denounced as \"confused\". Instead, he insisted that he had been \"self-taught\". According to DeWitt, Epicurus's teachings also show influences from the contemporary philosophical school of Cynicism. The Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope was still alive when Epicurus would have been in Athens for his required military training and it is possible they may have met. Diogenes's pupil Crates of Thebes (c. 365 – c. 285 BC) was a close contemporary of Epicurus. Epicurus agreed with the Cynics' quest for honesty, but rejected their \"insolence and vulgarity\", instead teaching that honesty must be coupled with courtesy and kindness. Epicurus shared this view with his contemporary, the comic playwright Menander.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Epicurus's Letter to Menoeceus, possibly an early work of his, is written in an eloquent style similar to that of the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates (436–338 BC), but, for his later works, he seems to have adopted the bald, intellectual style of the mathematician Euclid. Epicurus's epistemology also bears an unacknowledged debt to the later writings of Aristotle (384–322 BC), who rejected the Platonic idea of hypostatic Reason and instead relied on nature and empirical evidence for knowledge about the universe. During Epicurus's formative years, Greek knowledge about the rest of the world was rapidly expanding due to the Hellenization of the Near East and the rise of Hellenistic kingdoms. Epicurus's philosophy was consequently more universal in its outlook than those of his predecessors, since it took cognizance of non-Greek peoples as well as Greeks. He may have had access to the now-lost writings of the historian and ethnographer Megasthenes, who wrote during the reign of Seleucus I Nicator (ruled 305–281 BC).",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "During Epicurus's lifetime, Platonism was the dominant philosophy in higher education. Epicurus's opposition to Platonism formed a large part of his thought. Over half of the forty Principal Doctrines of Epicureanism are flat contradictions of Platonism. In around 311 BC, Epicurus, when he was around thirty years old, began teaching in Mytilene. Around this time, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, arrived in Athens, at the age of about twenty-one, but Zeno did not begin teaching what would become Stoicism for another twenty years. Although later texts, such as the writings of the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero, portray Epicureanism and Stoicism as rivals, this rivalry seems to have only emerged after Epicurus's death.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Epicurus's teachings caused strife in Mytilene and he was forced to leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in c. 306 BC, where he remained until his death. There he founded The Garden (κῆπος), a school named for the garden he owned that served as the school's meeting place, about halfway between the locations of two other schools of philosophy, the Stoa and the Academy. The Garden was more than just a school; it was \"a community of like-minded and aspiring practitioners of a particular way of life.\" The primary members were Hermarchus, the financier Idomeneus, Leonteus and his wife Themista, the satirist Colotes, the mathematician Polyaenus of Lampsacus, and Metrodorus of Lampsacus, the most famous popularizer of Epicureanism. His school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception, and the biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laërtius lists female students such as Leontion and Nikidion. An inscription on the gate to The Garden is recorded by Seneca the Younger in epistle XXI of Epistulae morales ad Lucilium: \"Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.\"",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "According to Diskin Clay, Epicurus himself established a custom of celebrating his birthday annually with common meals, befitting his stature as heros ktistes (\"founding hero\") of the Garden. He ordained in his will annual memorial feasts for himself on the same date (10th of Gamelion month). Epicurean communities continued this tradition, referring to Epicurus as their \"saviour\" (soter) and celebrating him as hero. The hero cult of Epicurus may have operated as a Garden variety civic religion. However, clear evidence of an Epicurean hero cult, as well as the cult itself, seems buried by the weight of posthumous philosophical interpretation. Epicurus never married and had no known children. He was most likely a vegetarian.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Diogenes Laërtius records that, according to Epicurus's successor Hermarchus, Epicurus died a slow and painful death in 270 BC at the age of seventy-two from a stone blockage of his urinary tract. Despite being in immense pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and to have continued to teach until the very end. Possible insights into Epicurus's death may be offered by the extremely brief Epistle to Idomeneus, included by Diogenes Laërtius in Book X of his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The authenticity of this letter is uncertain and it may be a later pro-Epicurean forgery intended to paint an admirable portrait of the philosopher to counter the large number of forged epistles in Epicurus's name portraying him unfavorably.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "If authentic, this letter would support the tradition that Epicurus was able to remain joyful to the end, even in the midst of his suffering. It would also indicate that he maintained a special concern for the wellbeing of children.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Epicurus and his followers had a well-developed epistemology, which developed as a result of their rivalry with other philosophical schools. Epicurus wrote a treatise entitled Κανών, or Rule, in which he explained his methods of investigation and theory of knowledge. This book, however, has not survived, nor does any other text that fully and clearly explains Epicurean epistemology, leaving only mentions of this epistemology by several authors to reconstruct it. Epicurus was an ardent Empiricist; believing that the senses are the only reliable sources of information about the world. He rejected the Platonic idea of \"Reason\" as a reliable source of knowledge about the world apart from the senses and was bitterly opposed to the Pyrrhonists and Academic Skeptics, who not only questioned the ability of the senses to provide accurate knowledge about the world, but also whether it is even possible to know anything about the world at all.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Epicurus maintained that the senses never deceive humans, but that the senses can be misinterpreted. Epicurus held that the purpose of all knowledge is to aid humans in attaining ataraxia. He taught that knowledge is learned through experiences rather than innate and that the acceptance of the fundamental truth of the things a person perceives is essential to a person's moral and spiritual health. In the Letter to Pythocles, he states, \"If a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquility.\" Epicurus regarded gut feelings as the ultimate authority on matters of morality and held that whether a person feels an action is right or wrong is a far more cogent guide to whether that act really is right or wrong than abstracts maxims, strict codified rules of ethics, or even reason itself.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Epicurus permitted that any and every statement that is not directly contrary to human perception has the possibility to be true. Nonetheless, anything contrary to a person's experience can be ruled out as false. Epicureans often used analogies to everyday experience to support their argument of so-called \"imperceptibles\", which included anything that a human being cannot perceive, such as the motion of atoms. In line with this principle of non-contradiction, the Epicureans believed that events in the natural world may have multiple causes that are all equally possible and probable. Lucretius writes in On the Nature of Things, as translated by William Ellery Leonard:",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "There be, besides, some thing Of which 'tis not enough one only cause To state—but rather several, whereof one Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy Lying afar some fellow's lifeless corse, 'Twere meet to name all causes of a death, That cause of his death might thereby be named: For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel, By cold, nor even by poison nor disease, Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him We know—And thus we have to say the same In divers cases.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Epicurus strongly favored naturalistic explanations over theological ones. In his Letter to Pythocles, he offers four different possible natural explanations for thunder, six different possible natural explanations for lightning, three for snow, three for comets, two for rainbows, two for earthquakes, and so on. Although all of these explanations are now known to be false, they were an important step in the history of science, because Epicurus was trying to explain natural phenomena using natural explanations, rather than resorting to inventing elaborate stories about gods and mythic heroes.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Epicurus was a hedonist, meaning he taught that what is pleasurable is morally good and what is painful is morally evil. He idiosyncratically defined \"pleasure\" as the absence of suffering and taught that all humans should seek to attain the state of ataraxia, meaning \"untroubledness\", a state in which the person is completely free from all pain or suffering. He argued that most of the suffering which human beings experience is caused by the irrational fears of death, divine retribution, and punishment in the afterlife. In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus explains that people seek wealth and power on account of these fears, believing that having more money, prestige, or political clout will save them from death. He, however, maintains that death is the end of existence, that the terrifying stories of punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions, and that death is therefore nothing to be feared. He writes in his Letter to Menoeceus: \"Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience;... Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.\" From this doctrine arose the Epicurean epitaph: Non fui, fui, non-sum, non-curo (\"I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care\"), which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of the Roman Empire. This quotation is often used today at humanist funerals.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Tetrapharmakos presents a summary of the key points of Epicurean ethics:",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Although Epicurus has been commonly misunderstood as an advocate of the rampant pursuit of pleasure, he, in fact, maintained that a person can only be happy and free from suffering by living wisely, soberly, and morally. He strongly disapproved of raw, excessive sensuality and warned that a person must take into account whether the consequences of his actions will result in suffering, writing, \"the pleasant life is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by the enjoyment of boys and women, nor by fish and the other items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning.\" He also wrote that a single good piece of cheese could be equally pleasing as an entire feast. Furthermore, Epicurus taught that \"it is not possible to live pleasurably without living sensibly and nobly and justly\", because a person who engages in acts of dishonesty or injustice will be \"loaded with troubles\" on account of his own guilty conscience and will live in constant fear that his wrongdoings will be discovered by others. A person who is kind and just to others, however, will have no fear and will be more likely to attain ataraxia.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Epicurus distinguished between two different types of pleasure: \"moving\" pleasures (κατὰ κίνησιν ἡδοναί) and \"static\" pleasures (καταστηματικαὶ ἡδοναί). \"Moving\" pleasures occur when one is in the process of satisfying a desire and involve an active titillation of the senses. After one's desires have been satisfied (e.g. when one is full after eating), the pleasure quickly goes away and the suffering of wanting to fulfill the desire again returns. For Epicurus, static pleasures are the best pleasures because moving pleasures are always bound up with pain. Epicurus had a low opinion of sex and marriage, regarding both as having dubious value. Instead, he maintained that platonic friendships are essential to living a happy life. One of the Principal Doctrines states, \"Of the things wisdom acquires for the blessedness of life as a whole, far the greatest is the possession of friendship.\" He also taught that philosophy is itself a pleasure to engage in. One of the quotes from Epicurus recorded in the Vatican Sayings declares, \"In other pursuits, the hard-won fruit comes at the end. But in philosophy, delight keeps pace with knowledge. It is not after the lesson that enjoyment comes: learning and enjoyment happen at the same time.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Epicurus distinguishes between three types of desires: natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, and vain and empty. Natural and necessary desires include the desires for food and shelter. These are easy to satisfy, difficult to eliminate, bring pleasure when satisfied, and are naturally limited. Going beyond these limits produces unnecessary desires, such as the desire for luxury foods. Although food is necessary, luxury food is not necessary. Correspondingly, Epicurus advocates a life of hedonistic moderation by reducing desire, thus eliminating the unhappiness caused by unfulfilled desires. Vain desires include desires for power, wealth, and fame. These are difficult to satisfy because no matter how much one gets, one can always want more. These desires are inculcated by society and by false beliefs about what we need. They are not natural and are to be shunned.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Epicurus' teachings were introduced into medical philosophy and practice by the Epicurean doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia, who was the first physician who introduced Greek medicine in Rome. Asclepiades introduced the friendly, sympathetic, pleasing and painless treatment of patients. He advocated humane treatment of mental disorders, had insane persons freed from confinement and treated them with natural therapy, such as diet and massages. His teachings are surprisingly modern; therefore Asclepiades is considered to be a pioneer physician in psychotherapy, physical therapy and molecular medicine.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Epicurus writes in his Letter to Herodotus (not the historian) that \"nothing ever arises from the nonexistent\", indicating that all events therefore have causes, regardless of whether those causes are known or unknown. Similarly, he also writes that nothing ever passes away into nothingness, because, \"if an object that passes from our view were completely annihilated, everything in the world would have perished, since that into which things were dissipated would be nonexistent.\" He therefore states: \"The totality of things was always just as it is at present and will always remain the same because there is nothing into which it can change, inasmuch as there is nothing outside the totality that could intrude and effect change.\" Like Democritus before him, Epicurus taught that all matter is entirely made of extremely tiny particles called \"atoms\" (Greek: ἄτομος; atomos, meaning \"indivisible\"). For Epicurus and his followers, the existence of atoms was a matter of empirical observation; Epicurus's devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius, cites the gradual wearing down of rings from being worn, statues from being kissed, stones from being dripped on by water, and roads from being walked on in On the Nature of Things as evidence for the existence of atoms as tiny, imperceptible particles.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Also like Democritus, Epicurus was a materialist who taught that the only things that exist are atoms and void. Void occurs in any place where there are no atoms. Epicurus and his followers believed that atoms and void are both infinite and that the universe is therefore boundless. In On the Nature of Things, Lucretius argues this point using the example of a man throwing a javelin at the theoretical boundary of a finite universe. He states that the javelin must either go past the edge of the universe, in which case it is not really a boundary, or it must be blocked by something and prevented from continuing its path, but, if that happens, then the object blocking it must be outside the confines of the universe. As a result of this belief that the universe and the number of atoms in it are infinite, Epicurus and the Epicureans believed that there must also be infinitely many worlds within the universe.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Epicurus taught that the motion of atoms is constant, eternal, and without beginning or end. He held that there are two kinds of motion: the motion of atoms and the motion of visible objects. Both kinds of motion are real and not illusory. Democritus had described atoms as not only eternally moving, but also eternally flying through space, colliding, coalescing, and separating from each other as necessary. In a rare departure from Democritus's physics, Epicurus posited the idea of atomic \"swerve\" (παρέγκλισις parénklisis; Latin: clinamen), one of his best-known original ideas. According to this idea, atoms, as they are travelling through space, may deviate slightly from the course they would ordinarily be expected to follow. Epicurus's reason for introducing this doctrine was because he wanted to preserve the concepts of free will and ethical responsibility while still maintaining the deterministic physical model of atomism. Lucretius describes it, saying, \"It is this slight deviation of primal bodies, at indeterminate times and places, which keeps the mind as such from experiencing an inner compulsion in doing everything it does and from being forced to endure and suffer like a captive in chains.\"",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Epicurus was first to assert human freedom as a result of the fundamental indeterminism in the motion of atoms. This has led some philosophers to think that, for Epicurus, free will was caused directly by chance. In his On the Nature of Things, Lucretius appears to suggest this in the best-known passage on Epicurus' position. In his Letter to Menoeceus, however, Epicurus follows Aristotle and clearly identifies three possible causes: \"some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency.\" Aristotle said some things \"depend on us\" (eph'hemin). Epicurus agreed, and said it is to these last things that praise and blame naturally attach. For Epicurus, the \"swerve\" of the atoms simply defeated determinism to leave room for autonomous agency.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In his Letter to Menoeceus, a summary of his own moral and theological teachings, the first piece of advice Epicurus himself gives to his student is: \"First, believe that a god is an indestructible and blessed animal, in accordance with the general conception of god commonly held, and do not ascribe to god anything foreign to his indestructibility or repugnant to his blessedness.\" Epicurus maintained that he and his followers knew that the gods exist because \"our knowledge of them is a matter of clear and distinct perception\", meaning that people can empirically sense their presences. He did not mean that people can see the gods as physical objects, but rather that they can see visions of the gods sent from the remote regions of interstellar space in which they actually reside. According to George K. Strodach, Epicurus could have easily dispensed of the gods entirely without greatly altering his materialist worldview, but the gods still play one important function in Epicurus's theology as the paragons of moral virtue to be emulated and admired.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Epicurus rejected the conventional Greek view of the gods as anthropomorphic beings who walked the earth like ordinary people, fathered illegitimate offspring with mortals, and pursued personal feuds. Instead, he taught that the gods are morally perfect, but detached and immobile beings who live in the remote regions of interstellar space. In line with these teachings, Epicurus adamantly rejected the idea that deities were involved in human affairs in any way. Epicurus maintained that the gods are so utterly perfect and removed from the world that they are incapable of listening to prayers or supplications or doing virtually anything aside from contemplating their own perfections. In his Letter to Herodotus, he specifically denies that the gods have any control over natural phenomena, arguing that this would contradict their fundamental nature, which is perfect, because any kind of worldly involvement would tarnish their perfection. He further warned that believing that the gods control natural phenomena would only mislead people into believing the superstitious view that the gods punish humans for wrongdoing, which only instills fear and prevents people from attaining ataraxia.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Epicurus himself criticizes popular religion in both his Letter to Menoeceus and his Letter to Herodotus, but in a restrained and moderate tone. Later Epicureans mainly followed the same ideas as Epicurus, believing in the existence of the gods, but emphatically rejecting the idea of divine providence. Their criticisms of popular religion, however, are often less gentle than those of Epicurus himself. The Letter to Pythocles, written by a later Epicurean, is dismissive and contemptuous towards popular religion and Epicurus's devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius (c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC), passionately assailed popular religion in his philosophical poem On the Nature of Things. In this poem, Lucretius declares that popular religious practices not only do not instill virtue, but rather result in \"misdeeds both wicked and ungodly\", citing the mythical sacrifice of Iphigenia as an example. Lucretius argues that divine creation and providence are illogical, not because the gods do not exist, but rather because these notions are incompatible with the Epicurean principles of the gods' indestructibility and blessedness. The later Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus (c. 160 – c. 210 AD) rejected the teachings of the Epicureans specifically because he regarded them as theological \"Dogmaticists\".",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Epicurean paradox or riddle of Epicurus or Epicurus' trilemma is a version of the problem of evil. Lactantius attributes this trilemma to Epicurus in De Ira Dei, 13, 20-21:",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them?",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), David Hume also attributes the argument to Epicurus:",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "No extant writings of Epicurus contain this argument. However, the vast majority of Epicurus's writings have been lost and it is possible that some form of this argument may have been found in his lost treatise On the Gods, which Diogenes Laërtius describes as one of his greatest works. If Epicurus really did make some form of this argument, it would not have been an argument against the existence of deities, but rather an argument against divine providence. Epicurus's extant writings demonstrate that he did believe in the existence of deities. Furthermore, religion was such an integral part of daily life in Greece during the early Hellenistic Period that it is doubtful anyone during that period could have been an atheist in the modern sense of the word. Instead, the Greek word ἄθεος (átheos), meaning \"without a god\", was used as a term of abuse, not as an attempt to describe a person's beliefs.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Epicurus promoted an innovative theory of justice as a social contract. Justice, Epicurus said, is an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed, and we need to have such a contract in order to enjoy fully the benefits of living together in a well-ordered society. Laws and punishments are needed to keep misguided fools in line who would otherwise break the contract. But the wise person sees the usefulness of justice, and because of his limited desires, he has no need to engage in the conduct prohibited by the laws in any case. Laws that are useful for promoting happiness are just, but those that are not useful are not just. (Principal Doctrines 31–40)",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Epicurus discouraged participation in politics, as doing so leads to perturbation and status seeking. He instead advocated not drawing attention to oneself. This principle is epitomised by the phrase lathe biōsas (λάθε βιώσας), meaning \"live in obscurity\", \"get through life without drawing attention to yourself\", i.e., live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends, etc. Plutarch elaborated on this theme in his essay Is the Saying \"Live in Obscurity\" Right? (Εἰ καλῶς εἴρηται τὸ λάθε βιώσας, An recte dictum sit latenter esse vivendum) 1128c; cf. Flavius Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 8.28.12.",
"title": "Philosophy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Epicurus was an extremely prolific writer. According to Diogenes Laërtius, he wrote around 300 treatises on a variety of subjects. Although more original writings of Epicurus have survived to the present day than of any other Hellenistic Greek philosopher, the vast majority of everything he wrote has still been lost, and most of what is known about Epicurus's teachings come from the writings of his later followers, particularly the Roman poet Lucretius. The only surviving complete works by Epicurus are three relatively lengthy letters, which are quoted in their entirety in Book X of Diogenes Laërtius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, and two groups of quotes: the Principal Doctrines (Κύριαι Δόξαι), which are likewise preserved through quotation by Diogenes Laërtius, and the Vatican Sayings, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library that was first discovered in 1888. In the Letter to Herodotus and the Letter to Pythocles, Epicurus summarizes his philosophy on nature and, in the Letter to Menoeceus, he summarizes his moral teachings. Numerous fragments of Epicurus's lost thirty-seven volume treatise On Nature have been found among the charred papyrus fragments at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. Scholars first began attempting to unravel and decipher these scrolls in 1800, but the efforts are painstaking and are still ongoing. According to Diogenes Laertius (10.27-9), the major works of Epicurus include:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Epicureanism was extremely popular from the very beginning. Diogenes Laërtius records that the number of Epicureans throughout the world exceeded the populations of entire cities. Nonetheless, Epicurus was not universally admired and, within his own lifetime, he was vilified as an ignorant buffoon and egoistic sybarite. He remained the most simultaneously admired and despised philosopher in the Mediterranean for the next nearly five centuries. Epicureanism rapidly spread beyond the Greek mainland all across the Mediterranean world. By the first century BC, it had established a strong foothold in Italy. The Roman orator Cicero (106 – 43 BC), who deplored Epicurean ethics, lamented, \"the Epicureans have taken Italy by storm.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The overwhelming majority of surviving Greek and Roman sources are vehemently negative towards Epicureanism and, according to Pamela Gordon, they routinely depict Epicurus himself as \"monstrous or laughable\". Many Romans in particular took a negative view of Epicureanism, seeing its advocacy of the pursuit of voluptas (\"pleasure\") as contrary to the Roman ideal of virtus (\"manly virtue\"). The Romans therefore often stereotyped Epicurus and his followers as weak and effeminate. Prominent critics of his philosophy include prominent authors such as the Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) and the Greek Middle Platonist Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 120), who both derided these stereotypes as immoral and disreputable. Gordon characterizes anti-Epicurean rhetoric as so \"heavy-handed\" and misrepresentative of Epicurus's actual teachings that they sometimes come across as \"comical\". In his De vita beata, Seneca states that the \"sect of Epicurus... has a bad reputation, and yet it does not deserve it.\" and compares it to \"a man in a dress: your chastity remains, your virility is unimpaired, your body has not submitted sexually, but in your hand is a tympanum.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Epicureanism was a notoriously conservative philosophical school; although Epicurus's later followers did expand on his philosophy, they dogmatically retained what he himself had originally taught without modifying it. Epicureans and admirers of Epicureanism revered Epicurus himself as a great teacher of ethics, a savior, and even a god. His image was worn on finger rings, portraits of him were displayed in living rooms, and wealthy followers venerated likenesses of him in marble sculpture. His admirers revered his sayings as divine oracles, carried around copies of his writings, and cherished copies of his letters like the letters of an apostle. On the twentieth day of every month, admirers of his teachings would perform a solemn ritual to honor his memory. At the same time, opponents of his teachings denounced him with vehemence and persistence.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "However, in the first and second centuries AD, Epicureanism gradually began to decline as it failed to compete with Stoicism, which had an ethical system more in line with traditional Roman values. Epicureanism also suffered decay in the wake of Christianity, which was also rapidly expanding throughout the Roman Empire. Of all the Greek philosophical schools, Epicureanism was the one most at odds with the new Christian teachings, since Epicureans believed that the soul was mortal, denied the existence of an afterlife, denied that the divine had any active role in human life, and advocated pleasure as the foremost goal of human existence. As such, Christian writers such as Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 165 AD), Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–c. 190), Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240), and Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215), Arnobius (died c. 330), and Lactantius (c. 250-c.325) all singled it out for the most vitriolic criticism.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In spite of this, DeWitt argues that Epicureanism and Christianity share much common language, calling Epicureanism \"the first missionary philosophy\" and \"the first world philosophy\". Both Epicureanism and Christianity placed strong emphasis on the importance of love and forgiveness and early Christian portrayals of Jesus are often similar to Epicurean portrayals of Epicurus. DeWitt argues that Epicureanism, in many ways, helped pave the way for the spread of Christianity by \"helping to bridge the gap between Greek intellectualism and a religious way of life\" and \"shunt[ing] the emphasis from the political to the social virtues and offer[ing] what may be called a religion of humanity.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "By the early fifth century AD, Epicureanism was virtually extinct. The Christian Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) declared, \"its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be struck from them.\" While the ideas of Plato and Aristotle could easily be adapted to suit a Christian worldview, the ideas of Epicurus were not nearly as easily amenable. As such, while Plato and Aristotle enjoyed a privileged place in Christian philosophy throughout the Middle Ages, Epicurus was not held in such esteem. Information about Epicurus's teachings was available, through Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, quotations of it found in medieval Latin grammars and florilegia, and encyclopedias, such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (seventh century) and Hrabanus Maurus's De universo (ninth century), but there is little evidence that these teachings were systematically studied or comprehended.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "During the Middle Ages, Epicurus was remembered by the educated as a philosopher, but he frequently appeared in popular culture as a gatekeeper to the Garden of Delights, the \"proprietor of the kitchen, the tavern, and the brothel.\" He appears in this guise in Martianus Capella's Marriage of Mercury and Philology (fifth century), John of Salisbury's Policraticus (1159), John Gower's Mirour de l'Omme, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Epicurus and his followers appear in Dante Alighieri's Inferno in the Sixth Circle of Hell, where they are imprisoned in flaming coffins for having believed that the soul dies with the body.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "In 1417, a manuscript-hunter named Poggio Bracciolini discovered a copy of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in a monastery near Lake Constance. The discovery of this manuscript was met with immense excitement, because scholars were eager to analyze and study the teachings of classical philosophers and this previously-forgotten text contained the most comprehensive account of Epicurus's teachings known in Latin. The first scholarly dissertation on Epicurus, De voluptate (On Pleasure) by the Italian Humanist and Catholic priest Lorenzo Valla was published in 1431. Valla made no mention of Lucretius or his poem. Instead, he presented the treatise as a discussion on the nature of the highest good between an Epicurean, a Stoic, and a Christian. Valla's dialogue ultimately rejects Epicureanism, but, by presenting an Epicurean as a member of the dispute, Valla lent Epicureanism credibility as a philosophy that deserved to be taken seriously.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "None of the Quattrocento Humanists ever clearly endorsed Epicureanism, but scholars such as Francesco Zabarella (1360–1417), Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), Cristoforo Landino (1424–1498), and Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444) did give Epicureanism a fairer analysis than it had traditionally received and provided a less overtly hostile assessment of Epicurus himself. Nonetheless, \"Epicureanism\" remained a pejorative, synonymous with extreme egoistic pleasure-seeking, rather than a name of a philosophical school. This reputation discouraged orthodox Christian scholars from taking what others might regard as an inappropriately keen interest in Epicurean teachings. Epicureanism did not take hold in Italy, France, or England until the seventeenth century. Even the liberal religious skeptics who might have been expected to take an interest in Epicureanism evidently did not; Étienne Dolet (1509–1546) only mentions Epicurus once in all his writings and François Rabelais (between 1483 and 1494–1553) never mentions him at all. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) is the exception to this trend, quoting a full 450 lines of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in his Essays. His interest in Lucretius, however, seems to have been primarily literary and he is ambiguous about his feelings on Lucretius's Epicurean worldview. During the Protestant Reformation, the label \"Epicurean\" was bandied back and forth as an insult between Protestants and Catholics.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In the seventeenth century, the French Catholic priest and scholar Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) sought to dislodge Aristotelianism from its position of the highest dogma by presenting Epicureanism as a better and more rational alternative. In 1647, Gassendi published his book De vita et moribus Epicuri (The Life and Morals of Epicurus), a passionate defense of Epicureanism. In 1649, he published a commentary on Diogenes Laërtius's Life of Epicurus. He left Syntagma philosophicum (Philosophical Compendium), a synthesis of Epicurean doctrines, unfinished at the time of his death in 1655. It was finally published in 1658, after undergoing revision by his editors. Gassendi modified Epicurus's teachings to make them palatable for a Christian audience. For instance, he argued that atoms were not eternal, uncreated, and infinite in number, instead contending that an extremely large but finite number of atoms were created by God at creation.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "As a result of Gassendi's modifications, his books were never censored by the Catholic Church. They came to exert profound influence on later writings about Epicurus. Gassendi's version of Epicurus's teachings became popular among some members of English scientific circles. For these scholars, however, Epicurean atomism was merely a starting point for their own idiosyncratic adaptations of it. To orthodox thinkers, Epicureanism was still regarded as immoral and heretical. For instance, Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681), the first translator of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things into English, railed against Epicurus as \"a lunatic dog\" who formulated \"ridiculous, impious, execrable doctrines\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Epicurus's teachings were made respectable in England by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton (1619–1707), whose first Epicurean work, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature (1652), advanced Epicureanism as a \"new\" atomism. His next work Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana, or a Fabrick of Science Natural, upon a Hypothesis of Atoms, Founded by Epicurus, Repaired by Petrus Gassendus, and Augmented by Walter Charleton (1654) emphasized this idea. These works, together with Charleton's Epicurus's Morals (1658), provided the English public with readily available descriptions of Epicurus's philosophy and assured orthodox Christians that Epicureanism was no threat to their beliefs. The Royal Society, chartered in 1662, advanced Epicurean atomism. One of the most prolific defenders of atomism was the chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who argued for it in publications such as The Origins of Forms and Qualities (1666), Experiments, Notes, etc. about the Mechanical Origin and Production of Divers Particular Qualities (1675), and Of the Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis (1674). By the end of the seventeenth century, Epicurean atomism was widely accepted by members of the English scientific community as the best model for explaining the physical world, but it had been modified so greatly that Epicurus was no longer seen as its original parent.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The Anglican bishop Joseph Butler's anti-Epicurean polemics in his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726) and Analogy of Religion (1736) set the tune for what most orthodox Christians believed about Epicureanism for the remainder of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, there are a few indications from this time period of Epicurus's improving reputation. Epicureanism was beginning to lose its associations with indiscriminate and insatiable gluttony, which had been characteristic of its reputation ever since antiquity. Instead, the word \"epicure\" began to refer to a person with extremely refined taste in food. Examples of this usage include \"Epicurean cooks / sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite\" from William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (Act II. scene i; c. 1607) and \"such an epicure was Potiphar—to please his tooth and pamper his flesh with delicacies\" from William Whately's Prototypes (1646).",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Around the same time, the Epicurean injunction to \"live in obscurity\" was beginning to gain popularity as well. In 1685, Sir William Temple (1628–1699) abandoned a promising career as a diplomat and instead retired to his garden, devoting himself to writing essays on Epicurus's moral teachings. That same year, John Dryden translated the celebrated lines from Book II of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things: \"'Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore / The rowling ship, and hear the Tempest roar.\" Meanwhile, John Locke (1632–1704) adapted Gassendi's modified version of Epicurus's epistemology, which became highly influential on English empiricism. Many thinkers with sympathies towards the Enlightenment endorsed Epicureanism as an admirable moral philosophy. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, declared in 1819, \"I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883), whose ideas are the basis of Marxism, was profoundly influenced as a young man by the teachings of Epicurus and his doctoral thesis was a Hegelian dialectical analysis of the differences between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. Marx viewed Democritus as a rationalist skeptic, whose epistemology was inherently contradictory, but saw Epicurus as a dogmatic empiricist, whose worldview is internally consistent and practically applicable. The British poet Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) praised \"the sober majesties / of settled, sweet, Epicurean life\" in his 1868 poem \"Lucretius\". Epicurus's ethical teachings also had an indirect impact on the philosophy of Utilitarianism in England during the nineteenth century. Soviet politician Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) lauded Epicurus by stating: \"He was the greatest philosopher of all time. He was the one who recommended practicing virtue to derive the greatest joy from life\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Friedrich Nietzsche once noted: \"Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former – although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Academic interest in Epicurus and other Hellenistic philosophers increased over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with an unprecedented number of monographs, articles, abstracts, and conference papers being published on the subject. The texts from the library of Philodemus of Gadara in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, first discovered between 1750 and 1765, are being deciphered, translated, and published by scholars part of the Philodemus Translation Project, funded by the United States National Endowment for the Humanities, and part of the Centro per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in Naples. Epicurus's popular appeal among non-scholars is difficult to gauge, but it seems to be relatively comparable to the appeal of more traditionally popular ancient Greek philosophical subjects such as Stoicism, Aristotle, and Plato.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects. He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy. Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed. Only three letters written by him—the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings. As a result of his work's destruction, most knowledge about his philosophy is due to later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, and with hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero. Epicurus asserted that philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others attain happy (eudaimonic), tranquil lives characterized by ataraxia and aponia. He advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that the root of all human neuroses is death denial and the tendency for human beings to assume that death will be horrific and painful, which he claimed causes unnecessary anxiety, selfish self-protective behaviors, and hypocrisy. According to Epicurus, death is the end of both the body and the soul and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. He taught that people should act ethically not because the gods punish or reward them for their actions but because, due to the power of guilt, amoral behavior would inevitably lead to remorse weighing on their consciences and as a result, they would be prevented from attaining ataraxia. Epicurus was an empiricist, meaning he believed that only the senses are a reliable source of knowledge about the world. He derived much of his physics and cosmology from the earlier philosopher Democritus. Like Democritus, Epicurus taught that the universe is infinite and eternal and that all matter is made up of extremely tiny, invisible particles known as atoms. All occurrences in the natural world are ultimately the result of atoms moving and interacting in empty space. Epicurus deviated from Democritus by proposing the idea of atomic "swerve", which holds that atoms may deviate from their expected course, thus permitting humans to possess free will in an otherwise deterministic universe. Though popular, Epicurean teachings were controversial from the beginning. Epicureanism reached the height of its popularity during the late years of the Roman Republic. It died out in late antiquity, subject to hostility from early Christianity. Throughout the Middle Ages Epicurus was popularly, though inaccurately, remembered as a patron of drunkards, whoremongers, and gluttons. His teachings gradually became more widely known in the fifteenth century with the rediscovery of important texts, but his ideas did not become acceptable until the seventeenth century, when the French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi revived a modified version of them, which was promoted by other writers, including Walter Charleton and Robert Boyle. His influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment, profoundly impacting the ideas of major thinkers, including John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl Marx. | 2001-11-09T02:12:48Z | 2023-12-18T03:56:24Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus |
10,074 | Epitaph | An epitaph (from Ancient Greek ἐπιτάφιος (epitáphios) 'a funeral oration'; from ἐπι- (epi-) 'at, over', and τάφος (táphos) 'tomb') is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves before their death, while others are chosen by those responsible for the burial. An epitaph may be written in prose or in poem verse.
Most epitaphs are brief records of the family, and perhaps the career, of the deceased, often with a common expression of love or respect—for example, "beloved father of ..."—but others are more ambitious. From the Renaissance to the 19th century in Western culture, epitaphs for notable people became increasingly lengthy and pompous descriptions of their family origins, career, virtues and immediate family, often in Latin. Notably, the Laudatio Turiae, the longest known Ancient Roman epitaph, exceeds almost all of these at 180 lines; it celebrates the virtues of an honored wife, probably of a consul.
Some are quotes from holy texts, or aphorisms. One approach of many epitaphs is to "speak" to the reader and warn them about their own mortality. A wry trick of others is to request the reader to get off their resting place, inasmuch as the reader would have to be standing on the ground above the coffin to read the inscription. Some record achievements (e.g., past politicians note the years of their terms of office). Nearly all (excepting those where this is impossible by definition, such as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) note name, year or date of birth, and date of death. Many list family members and the relationship of the deceased to them (for example, "Father / Mother / Son / Daughter of").
In English, and in accordance with the word's etymology, the word "epitaph" refers to a textual commemoration of a person, which may or may not be inscribed on a monument. In many European languages, however, the meaning of the word (or its close equivalent) has broadened to mean the monument itself, specifically a mural monument or plaque erected in a church, often close to, but not directly over, a person's place of burial. Examples include German Epitaph; Dutch epitaaf; Hungarian epitáfium; Polish epitafium; Danish epitafium; Swedish epitafium; and Estonian epitaaf.
The history of epitaphs extends as far back as the ancient Egyptians and have differed in delivery. The ancient Greeks utilised emotive expression, written in elegiac verse, later in prose. Ancient Romans' use of epitaphs was more blunt and uniform, typically detailing facts of the deceased – as did the earliest epitaphs in English churches. "May the earth lie light upon thee" was a common inscription for them. Due to the influence of Roman occupiers, the dominant language of epitaphs was Latin, evidenced by the oldest existing epitaphs in Britain. French and English came into fashion around the 13th and 14th centuries, respectively.
By the 16th century, epitaphs had become more literary in nature and those written in verse were involved in trade. In America and Britain, comedic epitaphs are common in the form of acrostics, palindromes, riddles, and puns on names and professions – Robert Burns, the most prolific pre-Romantic epitaphist, wrote 35 pieces, them being largely satirical. The rate of literary epitaphs has been historically overshadowed by "popular sepulchral inscriptions which are produced in countless numbers at all time"; "strictly literary" epitaphs were most present during the start of the Romantic period.
The Lake Poets have been credited with providing success to epitaph-writing adjacent to that of poetry significance – Robert Southey, in focusing simultaneously upon transience and eternity, contributed substantially. General interest for epitaphs was waning at the cusp of the 19th century, in contrast to a considerable burgeoning intellectual interest. Critical essays had been published before on the matter, possibly contributing towards its flourishing in the latter half of the 18th century. Epitaphs never became a major poetic form and, according to Romantic scholar Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch, they had "virtually disappeared" by 1810. "The art of the epitaph was largely lost in the 20th century", wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Sarcophagi and coffins were the choice of ancient Egyptians for epitaphs; brasses was the prominent format for a significant period of time. Epitaphs upon stone monuments became a common feature by the Elizabethan era.
Stock phrases or standard elements present in epitaphs on mediaeval church monuments and ledger stones in England include:
While you live, shine have no grief at all life exists only for a short while and Time demands his due.
This is my father's crime against me, which I myself committed against none.
Good frend for İesvs sake forebeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones, And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones. (In modern spelling): Good friend, for Jesus's sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water
Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
Heroes and Kings your distance keep; In peace let one poor poet sleep, Who never flattered folks like you; Let Horace blush and Virgil too.
Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.
Homo sum! the adventurer
Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!
Oh God (Devanagari: हे राम)
I've finally stopped getting dumber. (Hungarian: Végre nem butulok tovább.)
We must know. We will know. (German: Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen.)
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by that here, obedient to their law, we lie.
Here sleeps at peace a Hampshire Grenadier Who caught his early death by drinking cold small beer. Soldiers, be wise at his untimely fall, And when you're hot, drink strong or none at all.
To save your world you asked this man to die: Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today
There is borne an empty hearse covered over for such as appear not. Heroes have the whole earth for their tomb.
And the beat goes on.
That's all folks!
I told you I was ill. (Irish: Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.)
Free at last, Free at last,Thank God AlmightyI'm Free at last.
He never killed a man that did not need killing.
In a more figurative sense, the term may be used for music composed in memory of the deceased. Igor Stravinsky composed in 1958 Epitaphium for flute, clarinet and harp. In 1967 Krzysztof Meyer called his Symphony No. 2 for choir and orchestra Epitaphium Stanisław Wiechowicz in memoriam. Jeffrey Lewis composed Epitaphium – Children of the Sun for narrator, chamber choir, piano, flute, clarinet and percussion. In 1969, King Crimson released the song Epitaph, giving a reference to epitaphs within the song. Bronius Kutavičius composed in 1998 Epitaphium temporum pereunti. Valentin Silvestrov composed in 1999 Epitaph L.B. (Епітафія Л.Б.) for viola (or cello) and piano. In 2007 Graham Waterhouse composed Epitaphium for string trio as a tribute to the memory of his father William Waterhouse. The South African poet Gert Vlok Nel wrote an (originally) untitled song, which appeared on his first music album "Beaufort-Wes se Beautiful Woorde" as "Epitaph", because his producer Eckard Potgieter told him that the song sounded like an epitaph. David Bowie's final album, Blackstar, released in 2016, is generally seen as his musical epitaph, with singles "Blackstar" and "Lazarus" often singled out. | [
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"text": "Most epitaphs are brief records of the family, and perhaps the career, of the deceased, often with a common expression of love or respect—for example, \"beloved father of ...\"—but others are more ambitious. From the Renaissance to the 19th century in Western culture, epitaphs for notable people became increasingly lengthy and pompous descriptions of their family origins, career, virtues and immediate family, often in Latin. Notably, the Laudatio Turiae, the longest known Ancient Roman epitaph, exceeds almost all of these at 180 lines; it celebrates the virtues of an honored wife, probably of a consul.",
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"text": "Some are quotes from holy texts, or aphorisms. One approach of many epitaphs is to \"speak\" to the reader and warn them about their own mortality. A wry trick of others is to request the reader to get off their resting place, inasmuch as the reader would have to be standing on the ground above the coffin to read the inscription. Some record achievements (e.g., past politicians note the years of their terms of office). Nearly all (excepting those where this is impossible by definition, such as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) note name, year or date of birth, and date of death. Many list family members and the relationship of the deceased to them (for example, \"Father / Mother / Son / Daughter of\").",
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"text": "In English, and in accordance with the word's etymology, the word \"epitaph\" refers to a textual commemoration of a person, which may or may not be inscribed on a monument. In many European languages, however, the meaning of the word (or its close equivalent) has broadened to mean the monument itself, specifically a mural monument or plaque erected in a church, often close to, but not directly over, a person's place of burial. Examples include German Epitaph; Dutch epitaaf; Hungarian epitáfium; Polish epitafium; Danish epitafium; Swedish epitafium; and Estonian epitaaf.",
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"text": "The history of epitaphs extends as far back as the ancient Egyptians and have differed in delivery. The ancient Greeks utilised emotive expression, written in elegiac verse, later in prose. Ancient Romans' use of epitaphs was more blunt and uniform, typically detailing facts of the deceased – as did the earliest epitaphs in English churches. \"May the earth lie light upon thee\" was a common inscription for them. Due to the influence of Roman occupiers, the dominant language of epitaphs was Latin, evidenced by the oldest existing epitaphs in Britain. French and English came into fashion around the 13th and 14th centuries, respectively.",
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"text": "The Lake Poets have been credited with providing success to epitaph-writing adjacent to that of poetry significance – Robert Southey, in focusing simultaneously upon transience and eternity, contributed substantially. General interest for epitaphs was waning at the cusp of the 19th century, in contrast to a considerable burgeoning intellectual interest. Critical essays had been published before on the matter, possibly contributing towards its flourishing in the latter half of the 18th century. Epitaphs never became a major poetic form and, according to Romantic scholar Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch, they had \"virtually disappeared\" by 1810. \"The art of the epitaph was largely lost in the 20th century\", wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica.",
"title": "History"
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"title": "In England"
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"text": "While you live, shine have no grief at all life exists only for a short while and Time demands his due.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
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"text": "This is my father's crime against me, which I myself committed against none.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Good frend for İesvs sake forebeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Bleste be yͤ man yͭ spares thes stones, And cvrst be he yͭ moves my bones. (In modern spelling): Good friend, for Jesus's sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Heroes and Kings your distance keep; In peace let one poor poet sleep, Who never flattered folks like you; Let Horace blush and Virgil too.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Homo sum! the adventurer",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Oh God (Devanagari: हे राम)",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "I've finally stopped getting dumber. (Hungarian: Végre nem butulok tovább.)",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "We must know. We will know. (German: Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen.)",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by that here, obedient to their law, we lie.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Here sleeps at peace a Hampshire Grenadier Who caught his early death by drinking cold small beer. Soldiers, be wise at his untimely fall, And when you're hot, drink strong or none at all.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "To save your world you asked this man to die: Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "When you go home, tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow, we gave our today",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "There is borne an empty hearse covered over for such as appear not. Heroes have the whole earth for their tomb.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "And the beat goes on.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "That's all folks!",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "I told you I was ill. (Irish: Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.)",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Free at last, Free at last,Thank God AlmightyI'm Free at last.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "He never killed a man that did not need killing.",
"title": "Notable examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In a more figurative sense, the term may be used for music composed in memory of the deceased. Igor Stravinsky composed in 1958 Epitaphium for flute, clarinet and harp. In 1967 Krzysztof Meyer called his Symphony No. 2 for choir and orchestra Epitaphium Stanisław Wiechowicz in memoriam. Jeffrey Lewis composed Epitaphium – Children of the Sun for narrator, chamber choir, piano, flute, clarinet and percussion. In 1969, King Crimson released the song Epitaph, giving a reference to epitaphs within the song. Bronius Kutavičius composed in 1998 Epitaphium temporum pereunti. Valentin Silvestrov composed in 1999 Epitaph L.B. (Епітафія Л.Б.) for viola (or cello) and piano. In 2007 Graham Waterhouse composed Epitaphium for string trio as a tribute to the memory of his father William Waterhouse. The South African poet Gert Vlok Nel wrote an (originally) untitled song, which appeared on his first music album \"Beaufort-Wes se Beautiful Woorde\" as \"Epitaph\", because his producer Eckard Potgieter told him that the song sounded like an epitaph. David Bowie's final album, Blackstar, released in 2016, is generally seen as his musical epitaph, with singles \"Blackstar\" and \"Lazarus\" often singled out.",
"title": "In music"
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]
| An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves before their death, while others are chosen by those responsible for the burial. An epitaph may be written in prose or in poem verse. Most epitaphs are brief records of the family, and perhaps the career, of the deceased, often with a common expression of love or respect—for example, "beloved father of ..."—but others are more ambitious. From the Renaissance to the 19th century in Western culture, epitaphs for notable people became increasingly lengthy and pompous descriptions of their family origins, career, virtues and immediate family, often in Latin. Notably, the Laudatio Turiae, the longest known Ancient Roman epitaph, exceeds almost all of these at 180 lines; it celebrates the virtues of an honored wife, probably of a consul. Some are quotes from holy texts, or aphorisms. One approach of many epitaphs is to "speak" to the reader and warn them about their own mortality. A wry trick of others is to request the reader to get off their resting place, inasmuch as the reader would have to be standing on the ground above the coffin to read the inscription. Some record achievements. Nearly all note name, year or date of birth, and date of death. Many list family members and the relationship of the deceased to them. | 2001-11-12T21:15:07Z | 2023-09-27T18:20:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitaph |
10,075 | Epigram | An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα (epígramma, "inscription", from ἐπιγράφειν [epigráphein], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia.
The presence of wit or sarcasm tends to distinguish non-poetic epigrams from aphorisms and adages, which typically do not show those qualities.
The Greek tradition of epigrams began as poems inscribed on votive offerings at sanctuaries – including statues of athletes – and on funerary monuments, for example "Go tell it to the Spartans, passersby...". These original epigrams did the same job as a short prose text might have done, but in verse. Epigram became a literary genre in the Hellenistic period, probably developing out of scholarly collections of inscriptional epigrams.
Though modern epigrams are usually thought of as very short, Greek literary epigram was not always as short as later examples, and the divide between "epigram" and "elegy" is sometimes indistinct (they share a characteristic metre, elegiac couplets). In the classical period, the clear distinction between them was that epigrams were inscribed and meant to be read, while elegies were recited and meant to be heard. Some elegies could be quite short, but only public epigrams were longer than ten lines. All the same, the origin of epigram in inscription exerted a residual pressure to keep things concise, even when they were recited in Hellenistic times. Many of the characteristic types of literary epigram look back to inscriptional contexts, particularly funerary epigram, which in the Hellenistic era becomes a literary exercise. Many "sympotic" epigrams combine sympotic and funerary elements – they tell their readers (or listeners) to drink and live for today because life is short. Generally, any theme found in classical elegies could be and were adapted for later literary epigrams.
Hellenistic epigrams are also thought of as having a "point" – that is, the poem ends in a punchline or satirical twist. By no means do all Greek epigrams behave this way; many are simply descriptive, but Meleager of Gadara and Philippus of Thessalonica, the first comprehensive anthologists, preferred the short and witty epigram. Since their collections helped form knowledge of the genre in Rome and then later throughout Europe, Epigram came to be associated with 'point', especially because the European epigram tradition takes the Latin poet Martial as its principal model; he copied and adapted Greek models (particularly the contemporary poets Lucillius and Nicarchus) selectively and in the process redefined the genre, aligning it with the indigenous Roman tradition of "satura", hexameter satire, as practised by (among others) his contemporary Juvenal. Greek epigram was actually much more diverse, as the Milan Papyrus now indicates.
A major source for Greek literary epigram is the Greek Anthology, a compilation from the 10th century AD based on older collections, including those of Meleager and Philippus. It contains epigrams ranging from the Hellenistic period through the Imperial period and Late Antiquity into the compiler's own Byzantine era – a thousand years of short elegiac texts on every topic under the sun. The Anthology includes one book of Christian epigrams as well as one book of erotic and amorous homosexual epigrams called the Μοῦσα Παιδικἠ (Mousa Paidike, "The Boyish Muse").
Roman epigrams owe much to their Greek predecessors and contemporaries. Roman epigrams, however, were often more satirical than Greek ones, and at times used obscene language for effect. Latin epigrams could be composed as inscriptions or graffiti, such as this one from Pompeii, which exists in several versions and seems from its inexact meter to have been composed by a less educated person. Its content makes it clear how popular such poems were:
However, in the literary world, epigrams were most often gifts to patrons or entertaining verse to be published, not inscriptions. Many Roman writers seem to have composed epigrams, including Domitius Marsus, whose collection Cicuta (now lost) was named after the poisonous plant Cicuta for its biting wit, and Lucan, more famous for his epic Pharsalia. Authors whose epigrams survive include Catullus, who wrote both invectives and love epigrams – his poem 85 is one of the latter.
Martial, however, is considered to be the master of the Latin epigram. His technique relies heavily on the satirical poem with a joke in the last line, thus drawing him closer to the modern idea of epigram as a genre. Here he defines his genre against a (probably fictional) critic (in the latter half of 2.77):
Poets known for their epigrams whose work has been lost include Cornificia.
In early English literature the short couplet poem was dominated by the poetic epigram and proverb, especially in the translations of the Bible and the Greek and Roman poets.
Two successive lines of verse that rhyme with each other are known as a couplet. Since 1600, the couplet has been featured as a part of the longer sonnet form, most notably in William Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 76 is an example. The two-line poetic form as a closed couplet was also used by William Blake in his poem "Auguries of Innocence", and also by Byron in his poem Don Juan, by John Gay in his fables, and by Alexander Pope in his An Essay on Man.
The first work of English literature penned in North America was Robert Hayman's Quodlibets, Lately Come Over from New Britaniola, Old Newfoundland, which is a collection of over 300 epigrams, many of which do not conform to the two-line rule or trend. While the collection was written between 1618 and 1628 in what is now Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, it was published shortly after his return to Britain.
In Victorian times the epigram couplet was often used by the prolific American poet Emily Dickinson. Her poem No. 1534 is a typical example of her eleven poetic epigrams. The novelist George Eliot also included couplets throughout her writings. Her best example is in her sequenced sonnet poem entitled Brother and Sister in which each of the eleven sequenced sonnet ends with a couplet. In her sonnets, the preceding lead-in-line, to the couplet ending of each, could be thought of as a title for the couplet, as is shown in Sonnet VIII of the sequence.
During the early 20th century, the rhymed epigram couplet form developed into a fixed verse image form, with an integral title as the third line. Adelaide Crapsey codified the couplet form into a two-line rhymed verse of ten syllables per line with her image couplet poem On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees, first published in 1915.
By the 1930s, the five-line cinquain verse form became widely known in the poetry of the Scottish poet William Soutar. These were originally labelled epigrams but later identified as image cinquains in the style of Adelaide Crapsey.
J. V. Cunningham was also a noted writer of epigrams (a medium suited to a "short-breathed" person). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα (epígramma, \"inscription\", from ἐπιγράφειν [epigráphein], \"to write on, to inscribe\"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The presence of wit or sarcasm tends to distinguish non-poetic epigrams from aphorisms and adages, which typically do not show those qualities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Greek tradition of epigrams began as poems inscribed on votive offerings at sanctuaries – including statues of athletes – and on funerary monuments, for example \"Go tell it to the Spartans, passersby...\". These original epigrams did the same job as a short prose text might have done, but in verse. Epigram became a literary genre in the Hellenistic period, probably developing out of scholarly collections of inscriptional epigrams.",
"title": "Ancient Greek"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Though modern epigrams are usually thought of as very short, Greek literary epigram was not always as short as later examples, and the divide between \"epigram\" and \"elegy\" is sometimes indistinct (they share a characteristic metre, elegiac couplets). In the classical period, the clear distinction between them was that epigrams were inscribed and meant to be read, while elegies were recited and meant to be heard. Some elegies could be quite short, but only public epigrams were longer than ten lines. All the same, the origin of epigram in inscription exerted a residual pressure to keep things concise, even when they were recited in Hellenistic times. Many of the characteristic types of literary epigram look back to inscriptional contexts, particularly funerary epigram, which in the Hellenistic era becomes a literary exercise. Many \"sympotic\" epigrams combine sympotic and funerary elements – they tell their readers (or listeners) to drink and live for today because life is short. Generally, any theme found in classical elegies could be and were adapted for later literary epigrams.",
"title": "Ancient Greek"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hellenistic epigrams are also thought of as having a \"point\" – that is, the poem ends in a punchline or satirical twist. By no means do all Greek epigrams behave this way; many are simply descriptive, but Meleager of Gadara and Philippus of Thessalonica, the first comprehensive anthologists, preferred the short and witty epigram. Since their collections helped form knowledge of the genre in Rome and then later throughout Europe, Epigram came to be associated with 'point', especially because the European epigram tradition takes the Latin poet Martial as its principal model; he copied and adapted Greek models (particularly the contemporary poets Lucillius and Nicarchus) selectively and in the process redefined the genre, aligning it with the indigenous Roman tradition of \"satura\", hexameter satire, as practised by (among others) his contemporary Juvenal. Greek epigram was actually much more diverse, as the Milan Papyrus now indicates.",
"title": "Ancient Greek"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A major source for Greek literary epigram is the Greek Anthology, a compilation from the 10th century AD based on older collections, including those of Meleager and Philippus. It contains epigrams ranging from the Hellenistic period through the Imperial period and Late Antiquity into the compiler's own Byzantine era – a thousand years of short elegiac texts on every topic under the sun. The Anthology includes one book of Christian epigrams as well as one book of erotic and amorous homosexual epigrams called the Μοῦσα Παιδικἠ (Mousa Paidike, \"The Boyish Muse\").",
"title": "Ancient Greek"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Roman epigrams owe much to their Greek predecessors and contemporaries. Roman epigrams, however, were often more satirical than Greek ones, and at times used obscene language for effect. Latin epigrams could be composed as inscriptions or graffiti, such as this one from Pompeii, which exists in several versions and seems from its inexact meter to have been composed by a less educated person. Its content makes it clear how popular such poems were:",
"title": "Ancient Roman"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "However, in the literary world, epigrams were most often gifts to patrons or entertaining verse to be published, not inscriptions. Many Roman writers seem to have composed epigrams, including Domitius Marsus, whose collection Cicuta (now lost) was named after the poisonous plant Cicuta for its biting wit, and Lucan, more famous for his epic Pharsalia. Authors whose epigrams survive include Catullus, who wrote both invectives and love epigrams – his poem 85 is one of the latter.",
"title": "Ancient Roman"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Martial, however, is considered to be the master of the Latin epigram. His technique relies heavily on the satirical poem with a joke in the last line, thus drawing him closer to the modern idea of epigram as a genre. Here he defines his genre against a (probably fictional) critic (in the latter half of 2.77):",
"title": "Ancient Roman"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Poets known for their epigrams whose work has been lost include Cornificia.",
"title": "Ancient Roman"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In early English literature the short couplet poem was dominated by the poetic epigram and proverb, especially in the translations of the Bible and the Greek and Roman poets.",
"title": "English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Two successive lines of verse that rhyme with each other are known as a couplet. Since 1600, the couplet has been featured as a part of the longer sonnet form, most notably in William Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 76 is an example. The two-line poetic form as a closed couplet was also used by William Blake in his poem \"Auguries of Innocence\", and also by Byron in his poem Don Juan, by John Gay in his fables, and by Alexander Pope in his An Essay on Man.",
"title": "English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The first work of English literature penned in North America was Robert Hayman's Quodlibets, Lately Come Over from New Britaniola, Old Newfoundland, which is a collection of over 300 epigrams, many of which do not conform to the two-line rule or trend. While the collection was written between 1618 and 1628 in what is now Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, it was published shortly after his return to Britain.",
"title": "English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In Victorian times the epigram couplet was often used by the prolific American poet Emily Dickinson. Her poem No. 1534 is a typical example of her eleven poetic epigrams. The novelist George Eliot also included couplets throughout her writings. Her best example is in her sequenced sonnet poem entitled Brother and Sister in which each of the eleven sequenced sonnet ends with a couplet. In her sonnets, the preceding lead-in-line, to the couplet ending of each, could be thought of as a title for the couplet, as is shown in Sonnet VIII of the sequence.",
"title": "English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During the early 20th century, the rhymed epigram couplet form developed into a fixed verse image form, with an integral title as the third line. Adelaide Crapsey codified the couplet form into a two-line rhymed verse of ten syllables per line with her image couplet poem On Seeing Weather-Beaten Trees, first published in 1915.",
"title": "English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "By the 1930s, the five-line cinquain verse form became widely known in the poetry of the Scottish poet William Soutar. These were originally labelled epigrams but later identified as image cinquains in the style of Adelaide Crapsey.",
"title": "English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "J. V. Cunningham was also a noted writer of epigrams (a medium suited to a \"short-breathed\" person).",
"title": "English"
}
]
| An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα. This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia. The presence of wit or sarcasm tends to distinguish non-poetic epigrams from aphorisms and adages, which typically do not show those qualities. | 2001-11-11T14:36:23Z | 2023-09-13T05:19:14Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigram |
10,076 | El Cid | Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1043 – 10 July 1099) was a Castilian knight and ruler in medieval Spain. Fighting with both Christian and Muslim armies during his lifetime, he earned the Arabic honorific as-Sayyid ("the Lord" or "the Master"), which would evolve into El Çid (Spanish: [el ˈθið], Old Spanish: [el ˈts̻id]), and the Spanish honorific El Campeador ("the Champion"). He was born in Vivar, a village near the city of Burgos. As the head of his loyal knights, he came to dominate the Levante of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 11th century. He reclaimed the Taifa of Valencia from Muslim control for a brief period during the Reconquista, ruling the principality as its lord [es] from 17 June 1094 until his death in 1099. His wife, Jimena Díaz, inherited the city and maintained it until 1102 when it was reconquered by the Moors.
Díaz de Vivar became well known for his service in the armies of both Christian and Muslim rulers. After his death, El Cid became Spain's celebrated national hero and the protagonist of the most significant medieval Spanish epic poem, El Cantar de mio Cid, which presents him as the ideal medieval knight: strong, valiant, loyal, just, and pious.
There are various theories on his family history, which remains uncertain; however, he was the grandfather of García Ramírez de Pamplona, King of Navarre, the first son of his daughter Cristina Rodríguez. To this day, El Cid remains a popular Spanish folk hero and national icon, with his life and deeds remembered in popular culture.
Rodrigo Díaz was recognized with the honorary title of "Campeador" during his lifetime, as is evidenced by a document that he signed in 1098, which he signed in the Latinized expression, ego Rudericus Campidoctor. The title "Campeador" thus comes from the Latin Campidoctor, literally meaning "Teacher of the Field", but translatable as "Master of the Battlefield". Arabic sources from the late 11th century and early 12th century call him الكنبيطور (al-Kanbīṭūr), القنبيطور (al-Qanbīṭūr), also preceded by Rudrīq or Ludrīq, which are Arabized forms of his name and title.
The epithet of "El Cid" meant "the Lord", probably from the original Arabic (Arabic: السَّيِّد, romanized: as-Sayyid), and was a title given to other Christian leaders. It has been conjectured that Rodrigo Díaz received the honorific title and respectful treatment of contemporaries in Zaragoza because of his victories in the service of the King of the Taifa of Zaragoza between 1081 and 1086; however, he more likely received the epithet after his conquest of Valencia in 1094. This title appears for the first time, as Meo Çidi, in the Poema de Almería, composed between 1147 and 1149.
The combination of "Cid Campeador" is documented from 1195 in Linaje de Rodrigo Díaz (The Lineage of Rodrigo Díaz) in Navarro-Aragonese which form part of the Liber regum written as mio Cit el Campiador; and in El Cantar de mio Cid.
Born a member of the minor nobility, El Cid was brought up at the court of Ferdinand the Great and served Ferdinand's son, Sancho II of León and Castile. He rose to become the commander and royal standard-bearer (armiger regis) of Castile upon Sancho's ascension in 1065. El Cid went on to lead the Castilian military campaigns against Sancho's brothers, Alfonso VI of León and García II of Galicia, as well as in the Muslim kingdoms in al-Andalus. He became renowned for his military prowess in these campaigns, which helped expand the territory of the Crown of Castile at the expense of the Muslims and Sancho's brothers' kingdoms. When conspirators murdered Sancho in 1072, El Cid found himself in a difficult situation. Since Sancho was childless, the throne passed to his brother Alfonso, whom El Cid had helped remove from power. Although El Cid continued to serve the sovereign, he lost his ranking in the new court, which treated him suspiciously and kept him at arm's length. Finally, in 1081, he was exiled.
El Cid found work fighting for the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, whom he defended from its traditional enemy, Aragon. While in exile, he regained his reputation as a strategist and formidable military leader. He was repeatedly victorious in battle against the Muslim rulers of Lérida and their Christian allies, as well as against a large Christian army under King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon. In 1086, an expeditionary army of North African Almoravids inflicted a severe defeat to Castile, compelling Alfonso to overcome the resentment he harboured against El Cid. The terms for El Cid's return to Christian service must have been attractive enough since El Cid soon found himself fighting for his former lord. Over the next several years, however, El Cid set his sights on the kingdom-city of Valencia, operating more or less independently of Alfonso, while politically supporting the Banu Hud and other Muslim dynasties opposed to the Almoravids. He gradually increased his control over Valencia; the Islamic ruler, Yahya al-Qadir, became his tributary in 1092. When the Almoravids instigated an uprising that resulted in the death of Al-Cádir, El Cid responded by laying siege to the city. Valencia finally fell in 1094, and El Cid established an independent principality on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia. He ruled over a pluralistic society with the popular support of Christians and Muslims alike.
El Cid's final years were spent fighting the Almoravid Berbers. He inflicted upon them their first major defeat in 1094, on the plains of Caurte, outside Valencia, and continued opposing them until his death. Although El Cid remained undefeated in Valencia, Diego Rodríguez, his only son and heir, died fighting against the Almoravids in the service of Alfonso in 1097. After El Cid's death in 1099, his wife, Jimena Díaz, succeeded him as ruler of Valencia, but she was eventually forced to surrender the principality to the Almoravids in 1102.
The name El Cid (Spanish: [el ˈθið]) is a modern Spanish denomination composed of the article el meaning "the" and Cid, which derives from the Old Castilian loan word Çid borrowed from the dialectal Arabic word سيد sîdi or sayyid, which means "lord" or "master". The Mozarabs or the Arabs that served in his ranks may have addressed him in this way, which the Christians may have transliterated and adopted. Historians, however, have not yet found contemporary records referring to Rodrigo as Cid. Arab sources use instead Rudriq, Ludriq al-Kanbiyatur or al-Qanbiyatur (Rodrigo el Campeador). The cognomen Campeador derives from Latin campi doctor, which means "battlefield master". He probably gained it during the campaigns of King Sancho II of Castile against his brothers, kings Alfonso VI of León and García II of Galicia. While his contemporaries left no historical sources that would have addressed him as Cid, they left plenty of Christian and Arab records, some even signed documents with his autograph, addressing him as Campeador, which prove that he used the Christian cognomen himself. The whole combination Cid Campeador is first documented c. 1195 in the Navarro-Aragonese Linage de Rodric Díaz [es] included in the Liber Regum under the formula mio Cid el Campeador.
El Cid was born Rodrigo Díaz circa 1043 in Vivar, also known as Castillona de Bivar, a small town about ten kilometers (or six miles) north of Burgos, the capital of Castile. His father, Diego Laínez, was a courtier, bureaucrat, and cavalryman who had fought in several battles. Despite the fact that El Cid's mother's family was aristocratic, in later years, the peasants would consider him one of their own. However, his relatives were not major court officials; documents show that El Cid's paternal grandfather, Laín, confirmed only five documents of Ferdinand I's; his maternal grandfather, Rodrigo Álvarez, certified only two of Sancho II's; and El Cid's father confirmed only one.
As a young man in 1057, El Cid fought against the Moorish stronghold of Zaragoza, making its emir al-Muqtadir a vassal of Sancho. In the spring of 1063, El Cid fought in the Battle of Graus, where Ferdinand's half-brother, Ramiro I of Aragon, was laying siege to the Moorish town of Graus, which was fought on Zaragozan lands in the valley of the river Cinca. Al-Muqtadir, accompanied by Castilian troops including El Cid, fought against the Aragonese. The party slew Ramiro I, setting the Aragonese army on the run, and emerged victorious. One legend has said that during the conflict, El Cid killed an Aragonese knight in single combat, thereby receiving the honorific title "Campeador".
When Ferdinand died, Sancho continued to enlarge his territory, conquering both Christian strongholds and the Moorish cities of Zamora and Badajoz. When Sancho learned that Alfonso was planning on overthrowing him in order to gain his territory, Sancho sent Cid to bring Alfonso back so that Sancho could speak to him.
Sancho was assassinated in 1072, during a siege of his sister's town of Zamora. Since Sancho died unmarried and childless, all of his power passed to his brother Alfonso who, almost immediately, returned from exile in Toledo and took his seat as king of Castile and León. He was, however, deeply suspected of having been involved in Sancho's murder. According to the 11th century epic poem Cantar de mio Cid, the Castilian nobility led by El Cid and a dozen "oath-helpers" forced Alfonso to swear publicly on holy relics multiple times in front of Santa Gadea (Saint Agatha) Church in Burgos that he did not participate in the plot to kill his brother. This is not mentioned in the more reliable 12th century chronicle Historia Roderici, however. El Cid's position as armiger regis was taken away and given to his enemy, Count García Ordóñez."El Cid". Britannica. 9 May 2023.
In 1079, El Cid was sent by Alfonso VI to Seville to the court of al-Mutamid to collect the parias owed by that taifa to León–Castile. While he was there Granada, assisted by other Castilian knights, attacked Seville, and El Cid and his forces repulsed the Christian and Grenadine attackers at the Battle of Cabra, in the (probably mistaken) belief that he was defending the king's tributary. During the aftermath of this battle the Muslim troops under El Cid's command would hail him as Sayyidi. Count García Ordóñez and the other Castilian leaders were taken captive and held for three days before being released.
In the Battle of Cabra (1079), El Cid rallied his troops and turned the battle into a rout of Emir Abdullah of Granada and his ally García Ordóñez. This unauthorized expedition into Granada, however, greatly angered Alfonso and May 8, 1080 was the last time El Cid confirmed a document in King Alfonso's court. The most likely reason was El Cid's incursion into Toledo, which happened to be under the control of Alfonso’s vassal, Yahya Al-Qadir. Alfonso's anger over El Cid's unsanctioned incursion into his vassal's territory would lead him to exile the knight. This is the generally accepted reason for the exile of El Cid, although several others are plausible and indeed may have been contributing factors to the exile: jealous nobles turning Alfonso against El Cid through court intrigue, and Alfonso's own personal animosity towards El Cid. The song of El Cid and subsequent tales state that Alfonso’s and his court’s animosity toward Rodrigo was the primary reason the expulsion of the knights from León, as well as a possible misappropriation of some of the tribute from Seville by El Cid.
At first he went to Barcelona, where Ramon Berenguer II refused his offer of service.
The exile was not the end of El Cid, either physically or as an important figure. After being rejected by Ramon Berenguer II, El Cid journeyed to the Taifa of Zaragoza, where he received a warmer welcome. In 1081, El Cid went on to offer his services to the king of Zaragoza, Yusuf al-Mu'taman ibn Hud, and served both him and his successor, al-Musta'in II. He was given the title El Cid (The Master) and served as a leading figure in a diverse Moorish force consisting of Muwallads, Berbers, Arabs, and Malians within the respective Taifa.
According to Moorish accounts:
Andalusi Knights found El Cid their foe ill, thirsty and exiled from the court of Alfonso, he was presented before the elderly Yusuf al-Mu'taman ibn Hud and accepted command of the forces of the Taifa of Zaragoza as their Master.
In his History of Medieval Spain (Cornell University Press, 1975), Joseph F. O'Callaghan writes:
That kingdom was divided between al-Mutamin (1081–1085) who ruled Zaragoza proper, and his brother al-Mundhir, who ruled Lérida and Tortosa. El Cid entered al-Mutamin's service and successfully defended Zaragoza against the assaults of al-Mundhir, Sancho I of Aragón, and Ramon Berenguer II, whom he held captive briefly in 1082.
In 1082, the army of the Taifa of Zaragoza under El Cid defeated the Taifa of Lleida at the Battle of Almenar. In 1084, he defeated the Aragonese at the Battle of Morella near Tortosa, but in autumn the Castilians started a loose siege of Toledo and later the next year the Christians captured Salamanca, a stronghold of the Taifa of Toledo.
In 1086, the Almoravid invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, through and around Gibraltar, began. The Almoravids, a Berber dynasty from North Africa, led by Yusuf ibn Tashfin, were asked to help defend the divided Moors from Alfonso. The Almoravid army, joined by that of several Taifas, including Badajoz, Málaga, Granada, Tortosa and Seville, defeated a combined army of León, Aragón, and Castile at the Battle of Sagrajas.
In 1087, Raymond of Burgundy and his Christian allies attempted to weaken the Taifa of Zaragoza's northernmost stronghold by initiating the Siege of Tudela and Alfonso captured Aledo, Murcia, blocking the route between the Taifas in the eastern and western Iberian Peninsula.
Terrified after his crushing defeat, Alfonso recalled El Cid, rewarding him lavishly with lands and lordships, such as the fortress of Gormaz. In the year 1087 Alfonso sent him to negotiate with the emboldened Taifa kingdoms.
El Cid returned to Alfonso, but now he had his own plans. He only stayed a short while and then returned to Zaragoza. El Cid was content to let the Almoravid armies and the armies of Alfonso fight without his help, even when there was a chance that the Almoravids might defeat Alfonso and take over all of Alfonso's lands. El Cid chose not to fight because he was hoping that both armies would weaken themselves.
Around this time, El Cid, with a combined Christian and Moorish army, began maneuvering in order to create his own fief in the Moorish Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia. Several obstacles lay in his way. First was Berenguer Ramon II, who ruled nearby Barcelona. In May 1090, El Cid defeated and captured Berenguer in the Battle of Tébar (nowadays Pinar de Tévar, near Monroyo, Teruel). Berenguer was later released and his nephew Ramon Berenguer III married El Cid's youngest daughter Maria to ward against future conflicts.
Along the way to Valencia, El Cid also conquered other towns, many of which were near Valencia, such as El Puig and Quart de Poblet.
El Cid gradually came to have more influence in Valencia, then ruled by Yahya al-Qadir, of the Hawwara Berber Dhulnunid dynasty. In October 1092 an uprising occurred in Valencia, inspired by the city's chief judge Ibn Jahhaf and the Almoravids. El Cid began a siege of Valencia. A December 1093 attempt to break the siege failed. By the time the siege ended in May 1094, El Cid had carved out his own principality on the coast of the Mediterranean. Officially, El Cid ruled in the name of Alfonso; in practice, El Cid was fully independent. The city was both Christian and Muslim, and both Moors and Christians served in the army and as administrators. Jerome of Périgord was made bishop.
El Cid and his wife Jimena Díaz lived peacefully in Valencia until the Almoravids besieged the city. But he defeated them and died 5 years later, on July 10, 1099.
Afterward Valencia was captured by Mazdali on May 5, 1102. Jimena fled to Burgos, Castile, in 1101. She rode into the town with her retinue and the body of El Cid. Originally buried in Castile in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña [es; ca], his body now lies at the center of Burgos Cathedral.
After his demise, but still during the siege of Valencia, legend holds that Jimena ordered that the corpse of El Cid be fitted with his armor and set on his horse, Babieca, to bolster the morale of his troops. In several variations of the story, the dead Rodrigo and his knights win a thundering charge against Valencia's besiegers, resulting in a war-is-lost-but-battle-is-won catharsis for generations of Christian Spaniards to follow. It is believed that the legend originated shortly after Jimena entered Burgos, and that it is derived from the manner in which Jimena's procession rode into the city, i.e. alongside her deceased husband.
During his campaigns, El Cid often ordered that books by classic Roman and Greek authors on military themes be read aloud to him and his troops, for both entertainment and inspiration before battle. El Cid's army had a novel approach to planning strategy as well, holding what might be called "brainstorming" sessions before each battle to discuss tactics. They frequently used unexpected strategies, engaging in what modern generals would call psychological warfare—waiting for the enemy to be paralyzed with terror and then attacking them suddenly; distracting the enemy with a small group of soldiers, etc. (El Cid used this distraction in capturing the town of Castejón as depicted in Cantar de mio Cid (The Song of my Cid).) El Cid accepted or included suggestions from his troops. In The Song the man who served him as his closest adviser was his vassal and kinsman Álvar Fáñez "Minaya" (meaning "My brother", a compound word of Spanish possessive Mi (My) and Anaia, the basque word for brother), although the historical Álvar Fáñez remained in Castile with Alfonso VI.
Babieca, or Bavieca, was El Cid's warhorse. Several stories exist about El Cid and Babieca. One well-known legend about El Cid describes how he acquired the stallion. According to this story, Rodrigo's godfather, Pedro El Grande, was a monk at a Carthusian monastery. Pedro's coming-of-age gift to El Cid was his pick of a horse from an Andalusian herd. El Cid picked a horse that his godfather thought was a weak, poor choice, causing the monk to exclaim "Babieca!" (stupid!). Hence, it became the name of El Cid's horse. Another legend states that in a competition of battle to become King Sancho's "Campeador", or champion, a knight on horseback wished to challenge El Cid. The King wished a fair fight and gave El Cid his finest horse, Babieca, or Bavieca. This version says Babieca was raised in the royal stables of Seville and was a highly trained and loyal war horse, not a foolish stallion. The name in this instance could suggest that the horse came from the Babia region in León, Spain. In the poem Carmen Campidoctoris, Babieca appears as a gift from "a barbarian" to El Cid, so its name could also be derived from "Barbieca", or "horse of the barbarian".
Regardless, Babieca became a great warhorse, famous to the Christians, feared by El Cid's enemies, and loved by El Cid, who allegedly requested that Babieca be buried with him in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña. Babieca is mentioned in several tales and historical documents about El Cid, including The Lay of El Cid.
A weapon traditionally identified as El Cid's sword, Tizona, used to be displayed in the Army Museum (Museo del Ejército) in Toledo. In 1999, a small sample of the blade underwent metallurgical analysis which confirmed that the blade was made in Moorish Córdoba in the eleventh century and contained amounts of Damascus steel.
In 2007, the Autonomous Community of Castile and León bought the sword for €1.6 million, and it is currently on display at the Museum of Burgos.
El Cid also had a sword called Colada.
El Cid married Jimena Díaz, who was said to be part of an aristocratic family from Asturias, in the mid-1070s. The Historia Roderici calls her a daughter of a Count Diego Fernández de Oviedo. Tradition states that when El Cid first laid eyes on her, he was enamoured of her great beauty. El Cid and Jimena had two daughters, Cristina and María, and a son. The latter, Diego Rodríguez, was killed while fighting against the invading Muslim Almoravids from North Africa at the Battle of Consuegra in 1097. El Cid's daughters Cristina Rodríguez and María both married into noble families. Cristina married Ramiro, Lord of Monzón and grandson of García Sánchez III of Navarre. Her own son, El Cid's grandson, would be elevated to the throne of Navarre as King García Ramírez. The other daughter, María (also known as Sol), is said first to have married a prince of Aragon, presumably the son of Peter I, and she later married Ramon Berenguer III, count of Barcelona. Both the poem and the chronicle may state a previous marriage to the infantes de Carrión [es]; however, these marriages are not a historical fact and are an important element in the construction of the poem.
The figure of El Cid has been the source for many literary works, beginning with the Cantar de mio Cid, an epic poem from the 12th century which gives a partly-fictionalized account of his life, and was one of the early chivalric romances. This poem, along with similar later works such as the Mocedades de Rodrigo, contributed to portray El Cid as a chivalric hero of the Reconquista, making him a legendary figure in Spain. El Cid is one of the few examples of knight errantry formally recognized by the priest in Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605-1615). In the early 17th century, the Spanish writer Guillén de Castro wrote a play called Las Mocedades del Cid, on which French playwright Pierre Corneille based one of his most famous tragicomedies, Le Cid. He was also a popular source of inspiration for Spanish writers of the Romantic period, such as Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, who wrote La Jura de Santa Gadea, or José Zorrilla, who wrote a long poem called La Leyenda del Cid. In 2019, Arturo Pérez-Reverte published the novel entitled Sidi: Un relato de frontera.
Herman Melville references El Cid when introducing the character of Samoa in Chapter 21 of Mardi (1849): "He alighted about six paces from where we stood, and balancing his weapon, eyed us bravely as the Cid".
Georges Bizet worked on Don Rodrigue in 1873 that was set aside and never completed. Jules Massenet wrote an opera, Le Cid, in 1885, based on Corneille's play of the same name. Claude Debussy began work in 1890 on an opera, Rodrigue et Chimène, which he abandoned as unsuitable for his temperament; it was orchestrated for performance by Edison Denisov circa 1993.
El Cid is portrayed by American actor Charlton Heston in a 1961 epic film of the same name directed by Anthony Mann, where the character of Doña Ximena is portrayed by Italian actress Sophia Loren. In 2020, Amazon Prime Video premiered a Spanish TV series with Jaime Lorente starring as El Cid.
In 1979, Crack, one of the most prominent progressive rock bands from Spain, released their first and only album Si Todo Hiciera Crack including "Marchando una del Cid", a song based on the epic legend of El Cid.
In 1980, Ruy, the Little Cid was an animated series based on El Cid's childhood made by Nippon Animation.
El Cid was described to inspire Ferny about his Spanish heritage in "The Legend of Raloo", episode 16 of season 1 of Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks in 2004.
In the second Age of Empires video game installment, The Conquerors expansion pack, there is a campaign starring El Cid Campeador.
In both the first and second Medieval: Total War games, El Cid appears as a powerful independent general in the castle of Valencia.
In 2003, the Spanish animated film El Cid: The Legend was released.
The Ministry of Time, a Spanish science fiction television series, portrayed El Cid in season 2, episode 1.
El Cid is a playable character in the Mobile/PC Game Rise of Kingdoms.
El Cid is a playable character in Crusader Kings II and Crusader Kings III in start dates corresponding to his historical rule over Valencia. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1043 – 10 July 1099) was a Castilian knight and ruler in medieval Spain. Fighting with both Christian and Muslim armies during his lifetime, he earned the Arabic honorific as-Sayyid (\"the Lord\" or \"the Master\"), which would evolve into El Çid (Spanish: [el ˈθið], Old Spanish: [el ˈts̻id]), and the Spanish honorific El Campeador (\"the Champion\"). He was born in Vivar, a village near the city of Burgos. As the head of his loyal knights, he came to dominate the Levante of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 11th century. He reclaimed the Taifa of Valencia from Muslim control for a brief period during the Reconquista, ruling the principality as its lord [es] from 17 June 1094 until his death in 1099. His wife, Jimena Díaz, inherited the city and maintained it until 1102 when it was reconquered by the Moors.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Díaz de Vivar became well known for his service in the armies of both Christian and Muslim rulers. After his death, El Cid became Spain's celebrated national hero and the protagonist of the most significant medieval Spanish epic poem, El Cantar de mio Cid, which presents him as the ideal medieval knight: strong, valiant, loyal, just, and pious.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "There are various theories on his family history, which remains uncertain; however, he was the grandfather of García Ramírez de Pamplona, King of Navarre, the first son of his daughter Cristina Rodríguez. To this day, El Cid remains a popular Spanish folk hero and national icon, with his life and deeds remembered in popular culture.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Rodrigo Díaz was recognized with the honorary title of \"Campeador\" during his lifetime, as is evidenced by a document that he signed in 1098, which he signed in the Latinized expression, ego Rudericus Campidoctor. The title \"Campeador\" thus comes from the Latin Campidoctor, literally meaning \"Teacher of the Field\", but translatable as \"Master of the Battlefield\". Arabic sources from the late 11th century and early 12th century call him الكنبيطور (al-Kanbīṭūr), القنبيطور (al-Qanbīṭūr), also preceded by Rudrīq or Ludrīq, which are Arabized forms of his name and title.",
"title": "Etymology: Cid and Campeador"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The epithet of \"El Cid\" meant \"the Lord\", probably from the original Arabic (Arabic: السَّيِّد, romanized: as-Sayyid), and was a title given to other Christian leaders. It has been conjectured that Rodrigo Díaz received the honorific title and respectful treatment of contemporaries in Zaragoza because of his victories in the service of the King of the Taifa of Zaragoza between 1081 and 1086; however, he more likely received the epithet after his conquest of Valencia in 1094. This title appears for the first time, as Meo Çidi, in the Poema de Almería, composed between 1147 and 1149.",
"title": "Etymology: Cid and Campeador"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The combination of \"Cid Campeador\" is documented from 1195 in Linaje de Rodrigo Díaz (The Lineage of Rodrigo Díaz) in Navarro-Aragonese which form part of the Liber regum written as mio Cit el Campiador; and in El Cantar de mio Cid.",
"title": "Etymology: Cid and Campeador"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Born a member of the minor nobility, El Cid was brought up at the court of Ferdinand the Great and served Ferdinand's son, Sancho II of León and Castile. He rose to become the commander and royal standard-bearer (armiger regis) of Castile upon Sancho's ascension in 1065. El Cid went on to lead the Castilian military campaigns against Sancho's brothers, Alfonso VI of León and García II of Galicia, as well as in the Muslim kingdoms in al-Andalus. He became renowned for his military prowess in these campaigns, which helped expand the territory of the Crown of Castile at the expense of the Muslims and Sancho's brothers' kingdoms. When conspirators murdered Sancho in 1072, El Cid found himself in a difficult situation. Since Sancho was childless, the throne passed to his brother Alfonso, whom El Cid had helped remove from power. Although El Cid continued to serve the sovereign, he lost his ranking in the new court, which treated him suspiciously and kept him at arm's length. Finally, in 1081, he was exiled.",
"title": "Summary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "El Cid found work fighting for the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, whom he defended from its traditional enemy, Aragon. While in exile, he regained his reputation as a strategist and formidable military leader. He was repeatedly victorious in battle against the Muslim rulers of Lérida and their Christian allies, as well as against a large Christian army under King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon. In 1086, an expeditionary army of North African Almoravids inflicted a severe defeat to Castile, compelling Alfonso to overcome the resentment he harboured against El Cid. The terms for El Cid's return to Christian service must have been attractive enough since El Cid soon found himself fighting for his former lord. Over the next several years, however, El Cid set his sights on the kingdom-city of Valencia, operating more or less independently of Alfonso, while politically supporting the Banu Hud and other Muslim dynasties opposed to the Almoravids. He gradually increased his control over Valencia; the Islamic ruler, Yahya al-Qadir, became his tributary in 1092. When the Almoravids instigated an uprising that resulted in the death of Al-Cádir, El Cid responded by laying siege to the city. Valencia finally fell in 1094, and El Cid established an independent principality on the Mediterranean coast of Iberia. He ruled over a pluralistic society with the popular support of Christians and Muslims alike.",
"title": "Summary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "El Cid's final years were spent fighting the Almoravid Berbers. He inflicted upon them their first major defeat in 1094, on the plains of Caurte, outside Valencia, and continued opposing them until his death. Although El Cid remained undefeated in Valencia, Diego Rodríguez, his only son and heir, died fighting against the Almoravids in the service of Alfonso in 1097. After El Cid's death in 1099, his wife, Jimena Díaz, succeeded him as ruler of Valencia, but she was eventually forced to surrender the principality to the Almoravids in 1102.",
"title": "Summary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The name El Cid (Spanish: [el ˈθið]) is a modern Spanish denomination composed of the article el meaning \"the\" and Cid, which derives from the Old Castilian loan word Çid borrowed from the dialectal Arabic word سيد sîdi or sayyid, which means \"lord\" or \"master\". The Mozarabs or the Arabs that served in his ranks may have addressed him in this way, which the Christians may have transliterated and adopted. Historians, however, have not yet found contemporary records referring to Rodrigo as Cid. Arab sources use instead Rudriq, Ludriq al-Kanbiyatur or al-Qanbiyatur (Rodrigo el Campeador). The cognomen Campeador derives from Latin campi doctor, which means \"battlefield master\". He probably gained it during the campaigns of King Sancho II of Castile against his brothers, kings Alfonso VI of León and García II of Galicia. While his contemporaries left no historical sources that would have addressed him as Cid, they left plenty of Christian and Arab records, some even signed documents with his autograph, addressing him as Campeador, which prove that he used the Christian cognomen himself. The whole combination Cid Campeador is first documented c. 1195 in the Navarro-Aragonese Linage de Rodric Díaz [es] included in the Liber Regum under the formula mio Cid el Campeador.",
"title": "Title"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "El Cid was born Rodrigo Díaz circa 1043 in Vivar, also known as Castillona de Bivar, a small town about ten kilometers (or six miles) north of Burgos, the capital of Castile. His father, Diego Laínez, was a courtier, bureaucrat, and cavalryman who had fought in several battles. Despite the fact that El Cid's mother's family was aristocratic, in later years, the peasants would consider him one of their own. However, his relatives were not major court officials; documents show that El Cid's paternal grandfather, Laín, confirmed only five documents of Ferdinand I's; his maternal grandfather, Rodrigo Álvarez, certified only two of Sancho II's; and El Cid's father confirmed only one.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "As a young man in 1057, El Cid fought against the Moorish stronghold of Zaragoza, making its emir al-Muqtadir a vassal of Sancho. In the spring of 1063, El Cid fought in the Battle of Graus, where Ferdinand's half-brother, Ramiro I of Aragon, was laying siege to the Moorish town of Graus, which was fought on Zaragozan lands in the valley of the river Cinca. Al-Muqtadir, accompanied by Castilian troops including El Cid, fought against the Aragonese. The party slew Ramiro I, setting the Aragonese army on the run, and emerged victorious. One legend has said that during the conflict, El Cid killed an Aragonese knight in single combat, thereby receiving the honorific title \"Campeador\".",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "When Ferdinand died, Sancho continued to enlarge his territory, conquering both Christian strongholds and the Moorish cities of Zamora and Badajoz. When Sancho learned that Alfonso was planning on overthrowing him in order to gain his territory, Sancho sent Cid to bring Alfonso back so that Sancho could speak to him.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Sancho was assassinated in 1072, during a siege of his sister's town of Zamora. Since Sancho died unmarried and childless, all of his power passed to his brother Alfonso who, almost immediately, returned from exile in Toledo and took his seat as king of Castile and León. He was, however, deeply suspected of having been involved in Sancho's murder. According to the 11th century epic poem Cantar de mio Cid, the Castilian nobility led by El Cid and a dozen \"oath-helpers\" forced Alfonso to swear publicly on holy relics multiple times in front of Santa Gadea (Saint Agatha) Church in Burgos that he did not participate in the plot to kill his brother. This is not mentioned in the more reliable 12th century chronicle Historia Roderici, however. El Cid's position as armiger regis was taken away and given to his enemy, Count García Ordóñez.\"El Cid\". Britannica. 9 May 2023.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1079, El Cid was sent by Alfonso VI to Seville to the court of al-Mutamid to collect the parias owed by that taifa to León–Castile. While he was there Granada, assisted by other Castilian knights, attacked Seville, and El Cid and his forces repulsed the Christian and Grenadine attackers at the Battle of Cabra, in the (probably mistaken) belief that he was defending the king's tributary. During the aftermath of this battle the Muslim troops under El Cid's command would hail him as Sayyidi. Count García Ordóñez and the other Castilian leaders were taken captive and held for three days before being released.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In the Battle of Cabra (1079), El Cid rallied his troops and turned the battle into a rout of Emir Abdullah of Granada and his ally García Ordóñez. This unauthorized expedition into Granada, however, greatly angered Alfonso and May 8, 1080 was the last time El Cid confirmed a document in King Alfonso's court. The most likely reason was El Cid's incursion into Toledo, which happened to be under the control of Alfonso’s vassal, Yahya Al-Qadir. Alfonso's anger over El Cid's unsanctioned incursion into his vassal's territory would lead him to exile the knight. This is the generally accepted reason for the exile of El Cid, although several others are plausible and indeed may have been contributing factors to the exile: jealous nobles turning Alfonso against El Cid through court intrigue, and Alfonso's own personal animosity towards El Cid. The song of El Cid and subsequent tales state that Alfonso’s and his court’s animosity toward Rodrigo was the primary reason the expulsion of the knights from León, as well as a possible misappropriation of some of the tribute from Seville by El Cid.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "At first he went to Barcelona, where Ramon Berenguer II refused his offer of service.",
"title": "Life and career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The exile was not the end of El Cid, either physically or as an important figure. After being rejected by Ramon Berenguer II, El Cid journeyed to the Taifa of Zaragoza, where he received a warmer welcome. In 1081, El Cid went on to offer his services to the king of Zaragoza, Yusuf al-Mu'taman ibn Hud, and served both him and his successor, al-Musta'in II. He was given the title El Cid (The Master) and served as a leading figure in a diverse Moorish force consisting of Muwallads, Berbers, Arabs, and Malians within the respective Taifa.",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "According to Moorish accounts:",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Andalusi Knights found El Cid their foe ill, thirsty and exiled from the court of Alfonso, he was presented before the elderly Yusuf al-Mu'taman ibn Hud and accepted command of the forces of the Taifa of Zaragoza as their Master.",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In his History of Medieval Spain (Cornell University Press, 1975), Joseph F. O'Callaghan writes:",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "That kingdom was divided between al-Mutamin (1081–1085) who ruled Zaragoza proper, and his brother al-Mundhir, who ruled Lérida and Tortosa. El Cid entered al-Mutamin's service and successfully defended Zaragoza against the assaults of al-Mundhir, Sancho I of Aragón, and Ramon Berenguer II, whom he held captive briefly in 1082.",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1082, the army of the Taifa of Zaragoza under El Cid defeated the Taifa of Lleida at the Battle of Almenar. In 1084, he defeated the Aragonese at the Battle of Morella near Tortosa, but in autumn the Castilians started a loose siege of Toledo and later the next year the Christians captured Salamanca, a stronghold of the Taifa of Toledo.",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In 1086, the Almoravid invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, through and around Gibraltar, began. The Almoravids, a Berber dynasty from North Africa, led by Yusuf ibn Tashfin, were asked to help defend the divided Moors from Alfonso. The Almoravid army, joined by that of several Taifas, including Badajoz, Málaga, Granada, Tortosa and Seville, defeated a combined army of León, Aragón, and Castile at the Battle of Sagrajas.",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 1087, Raymond of Burgundy and his Christian allies attempted to weaken the Taifa of Zaragoza's northernmost stronghold by initiating the Siege of Tudela and Alfonso captured Aledo, Murcia, blocking the route between the Taifas in the eastern and western Iberian Peninsula.",
"title": "Moorish service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Terrified after his crushing defeat, Alfonso recalled El Cid, rewarding him lavishly with lands and lordships, such as the fortress of Gormaz. In the year 1087 Alfonso sent him to negotiate with the emboldened Taifa kingdoms.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "El Cid returned to Alfonso, but now he had his own plans. He only stayed a short while and then returned to Zaragoza. El Cid was content to let the Almoravid armies and the armies of Alfonso fight without his help, even when there was a chance that the Almoravids might defeat Alfonso and take over all of Alfonso's lands. El Cid chose not to fight because he was hoping that both armies would weaken themselves.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Around this time, El Cid, with a combined Christian and Moorish army, began maneuvering in order to create his own fief in the Moorish Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia. Several obstacles lay in his way. First was Berenguer Ramon II, who ruled nearby Barcelona. In May 1090, El Cid defeated and captured Berenguer in the Battle of Tébar (nowadays Pinar de Tévar, near Monroyo, Teruel). Berenguer was later released and his nephew Ramon Berenguer III married El Cid's youngest daughter Maria to ward against future conflicts.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Along the way to Valencia, El Cid also conquered other towns, many of which were near Valencia, such as El Puig and Quart de Poblet.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "El Cid gradually came to have more influence in Valencia, then ruled by Yahya al-Qadir, of the Hawwara Berber Dhulnunid dynasty. In October 1092 an uprising occurred in Valencia, inspired by the city's chief judge Ibn Jahhaf and the Almoravids. El Cid began a siege of Valencia. A December 1093 attempt to break the siege failed. By the time the siege ended in May 1094, El Cid had carved out his own principality on the coast of the Mediterranean. Officially, El Cid ruled in the name of Alfonso; in practice, El Cid was fully independent. The city was both Christian and Muslim, and both Moors and Christians served in the army and as administrators. Jerome of Périgord was made bishop.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "El Cid and his wife Jimena Díaz lived peacefully in Valencia until the Almoravids besieged the city. But he defeated them and died 5 years later, on July 10, 1099.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Afterward Valencia was captured by Mazdali on May 5, 1102. Jimena fled to Burgos, Castile, in 1101. She rode into the town with her retinue and the body of El Cid. Originally buried in Castile in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña [es; ca], his body now lies at the center of Burgos Cathedral.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "After his demise, but still during the siege of Valencia, legend holds that Jimena ordered that the corpse of El Cid be fitted with his armor and set on his horse, Babieca, to bolster the morale of his troops. In several variations of the story, the dead Rodrigo and his knights win a thundering charge against Valencia's besiegers, resulting in a war-is-lost-but-battle-is-won catharsis for generations of Christian Spaniards to follow. It is believed that the legend originated shortly after Jimena entered Burgos, and that it is derived from the manner in which Jimena's procession rode into the city, i.e. alongside her deceased husband.",
"title": "Recall from exile"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "During his campaigns, El Cid often ordered that books by classic Roman and Greek authors on military themes be read aloud to him and his troops, for both entertainment and inspiration before battle. El Cid's army had a novel approach to planning strategy as well, holding what might be called \"brainstorming\" sessions before each battle to discuss tactics. They frequently used unexpected strategies, engaging in what modern generals would call psychological warfare—waiting for the enemy to be paralyzed with terror and then attacking them suddenly; distracting the enemy with a small group of soldiers, etc. (El Cid used this distraction in capturing the town of Castejón as depicted in Cantar de mio Cid (The Song of my Cid).) El Cid accepted or included suggestions from his troops. In The Song the man who served him as his closest adviser was his vassal and kinsman Álvar Fáñez \"Minaya\" (meaning \"My brother\", a compound word of Spanish possessive Mi (My) and Anaia, the basque word for brother), although the historical Álvar Fáñez remained in Castile with Alfonso VI.",
"title": "Warrior and general"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Babieca, or Bavieca, was El Cid's warhorse. Several stories exist about El Cid and Babieca. One well-known legend about El Cid describes how he acquired the stallion. According to this story, Rodrigo's godfather, Pedro El Grande, was a monk at a Carthusian monastery. Pedro's coming-of-age gift to El Cid was his pick of a horse from an Andalusian herd. El Cid picked a horse that his godfather thought was a weak, poor choice, causing the monk to exclaim \"Babieca!\" (stupid!). Hence, it became the name of El Cid's horse. Another legend states that in a competition of battle to become King Sancho's \"Campeador\", or champion, a knight on horseback wished to challenge El Cid. The King wished a fair fight and gave El Cid his finest horse, Babieca, or Bavieca. This version says Babieca was raised in the royal stables of Seville and was a highly trained and loyal war horse, not a foolish stallion. The name in this instance could suggest that the horse came from the Babia region in León, Spain. In the poem Carmen Campidoctoris, Babieca appears as a gift from \"a barbarian\" to El Cid, so its name could also be derived from \"Barbieca\", or \"horse of the barbarian\".",
"title": "Warrior and general"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Regardless, Babieca became a great warhorse, famous to the Christians, feared by El Cid's enemies, and loved by El Cid, who allegedly requested that Babieca be buried with him in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña. Babieca is mentioned in several tales and historical documents about El Cid, including The Lay of El Cid.",
"title": "Warrior and general"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "A weapon traditionally identified as El Cid's sword, Tizona, used to be displayed in the Army Museum (Museo del Ejército) in Toledo. In 1999, a small sample of the blade underwent metallurgical analysis which confirmed that the blade was made in Moorish Córdoba in the eleventh century and contained amounts of Damascus steel.",
"title": "Warrior and general"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2007, the Autonomous Community of Castile and León bought the sword for €1.6 million, and it is currently on display at the Museum of Burgos.",
"title": "Warrior and general"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "El Cid also had a sword called Colada.",
"title": "Warrior and general"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "El Cid married Jimena Díaz, who was said to be part of an aristocratic family from Asturias, in the mid-1070s. The Historia Roderici calls her a daughter of a Count Diego Fernández de Oviedo. Tradition states that when El Cid first laid eyes on her, he was enamoured of her great beauty. El Cid and Jimena had two daughters, Cristina and María, and a son. The latter, Diego Rodríguez, was killed while fighting against the invading Muslim Almoravids from North Africa at the Battle of Consuegra in 1097. El Cid's daughters Cristina Rodríguez and María both married into noble families. Cristina married Ramiro, Lord of Monzón and grandson of García Sánchez III of Navarre. Her own son, El Cid's grandson, would be elevated to the throne of Navarre as King García Ramírez. The other daughter, María (also known as Sol), is said first to have married a prince of Aragon, presumably the son of Peter I, and she later married Ramon Berenguer III, count of Barcelona. Both the poem and the chronicle may state a previous marriage to the infantes de Carrión [es]; however, these marriages are not a historical fact and are an important element in the construction of the poem.",
"title": "Wife and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The figure of El Cid has been the source for many literary works, beginning with the Cantar de mio Cid, an epic poem from the 12th century which gives a partly-fictionalized account of his life, and was one of the early chivalric romances. This poem, along with similar later works such as the Mocedades de Rodrigo, contributed to portray El Cid as a chivalric hero of the Reconquista, making him a legendary figure in Spain. El Cid is one of the few examples of knight errantry formally recognized by the priest in Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605-1615). In the early 17th century, the Spanish writer Guillén de Castro wrote a play called Las Mocedades del Cid, on which French playwright Pierre Corneille based one of his most famous tragicomedies, Le Cid. He was also a popular source of inspiration for Spanish writers of the Romantic period, such as Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, who wrote La Jura de Santa Gadea, or José Zorrilla, who wrote a long poem called La Leyenda del Cid. In 2019, Arturo Pérez-Reverte published the novel entitled Sidi: Un relato de frontera.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Herman Melville references El Cid when introducing the character of Samoa in Chapter 21 of Mardi (1849): \"He alighted about six paces from where we stood, and balancing his weapon, eyed us bravely as the Cid\".",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Georges Bizet worked on Don Rodrigue in 1873 that was set aside and never completed. Jules Massenet wrote an opera, Le Cid, in 1885, based on Corneille's play of the same name. Claude Debussy began work in 1890 on an opera, Rodrigue et Chimène, which he abandoned as unsuitable for his temperament; it was orchestrated for performance by Edison Denisov circa 1993.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "El Cid is portrayed by American actor Charlton Heston in a 1961 epic film of the same name directed by Anthony Mann, where the character of Doña Ximena is portrayed by Italian actress Sophia Loren. In 2020, Amazon Prime Video premiered a Spanish TV series with Jaime Lorente starring as El Cid.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 1979, Crack, one of the most prominent progressive rock bands from Spain, released their first and only album Si Todo Hiciera Crack including \"Marchando una del Cid\", a song based on the epic legend of El Cid.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1980, Ruy, the Little Cid was an animated series based on El Cid's childhood made by Nippon Animation.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "El Cid was described to inspire Ferny about his Spanish heritage in \"The Legend of Raloo\", episode 16 of season 1 of Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks in 2004.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In the second Age of Empires video game installment, The Conquerors expansion pack, there is a campaign starring El Cid Campeador.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In both the first and second Medieval: Total War games, El Cid appears as a powerful independent general in the castle of Valencia.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "In 2003, the Spanish animated film El Cid: The Legend was released.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The Ministry of Time, a Spanish science fiction television series, portrayed El Cid in season 2, episode 1.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "El Cid is a playable character in the Mobile/PC Game Rise of Kingdoms.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "El Cid is a playable character in Crusader Kings II and Crusader Kings III in start dates corresponding to his historical rule over Valencia.",
"title": "In literature, music, video games, and film"
}
]
| Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar was a Castilian knight and ruler in medieval Spain. Fighting with both Christian and Muslim armies during his lifetime, he earned the Arabic honorific as-Sayyid, which would evolve into El Çid, and the Spanish honorific El Campeador. He was born in Vivar, a village near the city of Burgos. As the head of his loyal knights, he came to dominate the Levante of the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 11th century. He reclaimed the Taifa of Valencia from Muslim control for a brief period during the Reconquista, ruling the principality as its lord from 17 June 1094 until his death in 1099. His wife, Jimena Díaz, inherited the city and maintained it until 1102 when it was reconquered by the Moors. Díaz de Vivar became well known for his service in the armies of both Christian and Muslim rulers. After his death, El Cid became Spain's celebrated national hero and the protagonist of the most significant medieval Spanish epic poem, El Cantar de mio Cid, which presents him as the ideal medieval knight: strong, valiant, loyal, just, and pious. There are various theories on his family history, which remains uncertain; however, he was the grandfather of García Ramírez de Pamplona, King of Navarre, the first son of his daughter Cristina Rodríguez. To this day, El Cid remains a popular Spanish folk hero and national icon, with his life and deeds remembered in popular culture. | 2001-11-12T22:24:49Z | 2023-12-30T20:38:28Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cid |
10,078 | Enjambment | In poetry, enjambment (/ɛnˈdʒæmbmənt/ or /ɪnˈdʒæmmənt/; from the French enjamber) is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The origin of the word is credited to the French word enjamber, which means 'to straddle or encroach'.
In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered (called the rejet); the tension arises from the "mixed message" produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning. In spite of the apparent contradiction between rhyme, which heightens closure, and enjambment, which delays it, the technique is compatible with rhymed verse. Even in couplets, the closed or heroic couplet was a late development; older is the open couplet, where rhyme and enjambed lines co-exist.
Enjambment has a long history in poetry. Homer used the technique, and it is the norm for alliterative verse where rhyme is unknown. In the 32nd Psalm of the Hebrew Bible enjambment is unusually conspicuous. It was used extensively in England by Elizabethan poets for dramatic and narrative verses, before giving way to closed couplets. The example of John Milton in Paradise Lost laid the foundation for its subsequent use by the English Romantic poets; in its preface he identified it as one of the chief features of his verse: "sense variously drawn out from one verse into another".
The start of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, with only lines 4 and 7 end-stopped:
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.
These lines from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (c. 1611) are heavily enjambed (meaning enjambment is used):
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have That honourable grief lodged here which burns Worse than tears drown.
Meaning flows as the lines progress, and the reader's eye is forced to go on to the next sentence. It can also make the reader feel uncomfortable or the poem feel like "flow-of-thought" with a sensation of urgency or disorder. In contrast, the following lines from Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595) are completely end-stopped:
A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardon'd, and some punishèd.
Each line is formally correspondent with a unit of thought—in this case, a clause of a sentence. End-stopping is more frequent in early Shakespeare: as his style developed, the proportion of enjambment in his plays increased. Scholars such as Goswin König and A. C. Bradley have estimated approximate dates of undated works of Shakespeare by studying the frequency of enjambment.
Endymion by John Keats, lines 2–4:
Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us...
The song "One Night In Bangkok", from the musical Chess, written by Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus, includes examples such as :
The creme de la creme of the chess world in a Show with everything but Yul Brynner This grips me more than would a Muddy old river or reclining Buddha
Closely related to enjambment is the technique of "broken rhyme" or "split rhyme" which involves the splitting of an individual word, typically to allow a rhyme with one or more syllables of the split word. In English verse, broken rhyme is used almost exclusively in light verse, such as to form a word that rhymes with "orange", as in this example by Willard Espy, in his poem "The Unrhymable Word: Orange":
The four eng- ineers Wore orange brassieres.
The clapping game "Miss Susie" uses the break "... Hell / -o operator" to allude to the taboo word "Hell", then replaces it with the innocuous "Hello". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In poetry, enjambment (/ɛnˈdʒæmbmənt/ or /ɪnˈdʒæmmənt/; from the French enjamber) is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The origin of the word is credited to the French word enjamber, which means 'to straddle or encroach'.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"text": "In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered (called the rejet); the tension arises from the \"mixed message\" produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning. In spite of the apparent contradiction between rhyme, which heightens closure, and enjambment, which delays it, the technique is compatible with rhymed verse. Even in couplets, the closed or heroic couplet was a late development; older is the open couplet, where rhyme and enjambed lines co-exist.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Enjambment has a long history in poetry. Homer used the technique, and it is the norm for alliterative verse where rhyme is unknown. In the 32nd Psalm of the Hebrew Bible enjambment is unusually conspicuous. It was used extensively in England by Elizabethan poets for dramatic and narrative verses, before giving way to closed couplets. The example of John Milton in Paradise Lost laid the foundation for its subsequent use by the English Romantic poets; in its preface he identified it as one of the chief features of his verse: \"sense variously drawn out from one verse into another\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The start of The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, with only lines 4 and 7 end-stopped:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "These lines from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (c. 1611) are heavily enjambed (meaning enjambment is used):",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have That honourable grief lodged here which burns Worse than tears drown.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Meaning flows as the lines progress, and the reader's eye is forced to go on to the next sentence. It can also make the reader feel uncomfortable or the poem feel like \"flow-of-thought\" with a sensation of urgency or disorder. In contrast, the following lines from Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595) are completely end-stopped:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "A glooming peace this morning with it brings. The sun for sorrow will not show his head. Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things. Some shall be pardon'd, and some punishèd.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Each line is formally correspondent with a unit of thought—in this case, a clause of a sentence. End-stopping is more frequent in early Shakespeare: as his style developed, the proportion of enjambment in his plays increased. Scholars such as Goswin König and A. C. Bradley have estimated approximate dates of undated works of Shakespeare by studying the frequency of enjambment.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Endymion by John Keats, lines 2–4:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us...",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The song \"One Night In Bangkok\", from the musical Chess, written by Tim Rice and Björn Ulvaeus, includes examples such as :",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The creme de la creme of the chess world in a Show with everything but Yul Brynner This grips me more than would a Muddy old river or reclining Buddha",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Closely related to enjambment is the technique of \"broken rhyme\" or \"split rhyme\" which involves the splitting of an individual word, typically to allow a rhyme with one or more syllables of the split word. In English verse, broken rhyme is used almost exclusively in light verse, such as to form a word that rhymes with \"orange\", as in this example by Willard Espy, in his poem \"The Unrhymable Word: Orange\":",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The four eng- ineers Wore orange brassieres.",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The clapping game \"Miss Susie\" uses the break \"... Hell / -o operator\" to allude to the taboo word \"Hell\", then replaces it with the innocuous \"Hello\".",
"title": "Examples"
}
]
| In poetry, enjambment is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The origin of the word is credited to the French word enjamber, which means 'to straddle or encroach'. In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered; the tension arises from the "mixed message" produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning. In spite of the apparent contradiction between rhyme, which heightens closure, and enjambment, which delays it, the technique is compatible with rhymed verse. Even in couplets, the closed or heroic couplet was a late development; older is the open couplet, where rhyme and enjambed lines co-exist. Enjambment has a long history in poetry. Homer used the technique, and it is the norm for alliterative verse where rhyme is unknown. In the 32nd Psalm of the Hebrew Bible enjambment is unusually conspicuous. It was used extensively in England by Elizabethan poets for dramatic and narrative verses, before giving way to closed couplets. The example of John Milton in Paradise Lost laid the foundation for its subsequent use by the English Romantic poets; in its preface he identified it as one of the chief features of his verse: "sense variously drawn out from one verse into another". | 2023-04-02T17:17:05Z | [
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10,080 | European Convention on Nationality | The European Convention on Nationality (E.T.S. No. 166) was signed in Strasbourg on 6 November 1997. It is a comprehensive convention of the Council of Europe dealing with the law of nationality. The convention is open for signature by the member States of the Council of Europe and the non-member States which have participated in its elaboration and for accession by other non-member States. The Convention came into force on 1 March 2000 after ratification by 3 countries. As of 2021, the convention has been signed by 29 countries and ratified by 21 of those countries.
Article 4(d) provides that neither marriage nor dissolution of marriage shall automatically affect the nationality of either spouse, nor shall a change of nationality by one spouse during marriage automatically affect the nationality of their spouse. Common practice among states at the beginning of the 20th century was that a woman was to have the nationality of her husband; i.e., upon marrying a foreigner the wife would automatically acquire the nationality of her husband, and lose her previous nationality. Even after the nationality of a married woman was no longer dependent on the nationality of her husband, legal provisions were still retained which automatically naturalised married women, and sometimes married men as well. This led to a number of problems, such as loss of the spouses' original nationality, the spouse losing the right to consular assistance (since consular assistance cannot be provided to nationals under the jurisdiction of a foreign state of which they are also nationals), and becoming subject to military service obligations. Article 4d addresses this situation.
Article 5 provides that no discrimination shall exist in a state's internal nationality law on the grounds of "sex, religion, race, colour or national or ethnic origin". It also provides that a state shall not discriminate amongst its nationals on the basis of whether they hold their nationality by birth or acquired it subsequently.
Article 6 relates to the acquisition of nationality. It provides for nationality to be acquired at birth by descent from either parent to those born within the territory of the state. (States may exclude partially or fully children born abroad). It also provides for nationality by virtue of birth in the territory of state; however, states may limit this to only children who would be otherwise stateless. It requires the possibility of naturalisation, and provides that the period of residence required for eligibility cannot be more than ten years lawful and habitual residence. It also requires to "facilitate" the acquisition of nationality by certain persons, including spouses of nationals, children of its nationals born abroad, children one of whose parents has acquired the nationality, children adopted by a national, persons lawfully and habitually resident for a period before the age of eighteen, and stateless persons and refugees lawfully and habitually resident on its territory.
Article 7 regulates the involuntary loss of nationality. It provides that states may deprive their nationals of their nationality in only the cases of voluntary acquisition of another nationality, fraud or failure to provide relevant information when acquiring nationality, voluntary military service in a foreign military force, or adoption as a child by foreign nationals. It also provides for the possibility of loss of nationality for nationals habitually residing abroad. Finally, it provides loss of nationality for "conduct seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the State Party".
Article 8 provides nationals with the right to renounce their nationality, providing they do not thereby become stateless. States may however restrict this right with respect to nationals residing abroad.
As of 14 March 2014, the following countries have signed or ratified the convention: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The European Convention on Nationality (E.T.S. No. 166) was signed in Strasbourg on 6 November 1997. It is a comprehensive convention of the Council of Europe dealing with the law of nationality. The convention is open for signature by the member States of the Council of Europe and the non-member States which have participated in its elaboration and for accession by other non-member States. The Convention came into force on 1 March 2000 after ratification by 3 countries. As of 2021, the convention has been signed by 29 countries and ratified by 21 of those countries.",
"title": ""
},
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Article 4(d) provides that neither marriage nor dissolution of marriage shall automatically affect the nationality of either spouse, nor shall a change of nationality by one spouse during marriage automatically affect the nationality of their spouse. Common practice among states at the beginning of the 20th century was that a woman was to have the nationality of her husband; i.e., upon marrying a foreigner the wife would automatically acquire the nationality of her husband, and lose her previous nationality. Even after the nationality of a married woman was no longer dependent on the nationality of her husband, legal provisions were still retained which automatically naturalised married women, and sometimes married men as well. This led to a number of problems, such as loss of the spouses' original nationality, the spouse losing the right to consular assistance (since consular assistance cannot be provided to nationals under the jurisdiction of a foreign state of which they are also nationals), and becoming subject to military service obligations. Article 4d addresses this situation.",
"title": "Provisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Article 5 provides that no discrimination shall exist in a state's internal nationality law on the grounds of \"sex, religion, race, colour or national or ethnic origin\". It also provides that a state shall not discriminate amongst its nationals on the basis of whether they hold their nationality by birth or acquired it subsequently.",
"title": "Provisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Article 6 relates to the acquisition of nationality. It provides for nationality to be acquired at birth by descent from either parent to those born within the territory of the state. (States may exclude partially or fully children born abroad). It also provides for nationality by virtue of birth in the territory of state; however, states may limit this to only children who would be otherwise stateless. It requires the possibility of naturalisation, and provides that the period of residence required for eligibility cannot be more than ten years lawful and habitual residence. It also requires to \"facilitate\" the acquisition of nationality by certain persons, including spouses of nationals, children of its nationals born abroad, children one of whose parents has acquired the nationality, children adopted by a national, persons lawfully and habitually resident for a period before the age of eighteen, and stateless persons and refugees lawfully and habitually resident on its territory.",
"title": "Provisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Article 7 regulates the involuntary loss of nationality. It provides that states may deprive their nationals of their nationality in only the cases of voluntary acquisition of another nationality, fraud or failure to provide relevant information when acquiring nationality, voluntary military service in a foreign military force, or adoption as a child by foreign nationals. It also provides for the possibility of loss of nationality for nationals habitually residing abroad. Finally, it provides loss of nationality for \"conduct seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the State Party\".",
"title": "Provisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Article 8 provides nationals with the right to renounce their nationality, providing they do not thereby become stateless. States may however restrict this right with respect to nationals residing abroad.",
"title": "Provisions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "As of 14 March 2014, the following countries have signed or ratified the convention:",
"title": "Status"
}
]
| The European Convention on Nationality was signed in Strasbourg on 6 November 1997. It is a comprehensive convention of the Council of Europe dealing with the law of nationality. The convention is open for signature by the member States of the Council of Europe and the non-member States which have participated in its elaboration and for accession by other non-member States. The Convention came into force on 1 March 2000 after ratification by 3 countries. As of 2021, the convention has been signed by 29 countries and ratified by 21 of those countries. | 2023-02-01T06:31:01Z | [
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10,081 | English orthography | English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Like the orthography of most world languages, English orthography has a broad degree of standardisation. This standardisation began to develop when movable type spread to England in the late 15th century. However, unlike with most languages, there are multiple ways to spell every phoneme, and most letters also represent multiple pronunciations depending on their position in a word and the context.
This is partly due to the large number of words that have been borrowed from a large number of other languages throughout the history of English, without successful attempts at complete spelling reforms, and partly due to accidents of history, such as some of the earliest mass-produced English publications being typeset by highly trained, multilingual printing compositors, who occasionally used a spelling pattern more typical for another language. For example, the word ghost was spelled gost in Middle English, until the Flemish spelling pattern was unintentionally substituted, and happened to be accepted. Most of the spelling conventions in Modern English were derived from the phonemic spelling of a variety of Middle English, and generally do not reflect the sound changes that have occurred since the late 15th century (such as the Great Vowel Shift). As a result of this, many words are spelled the way that they were pronounced more than 600 years ago, instead of being spelled like they are pronounced in the 21st century.
Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most recognised variations being British and American spelling, and its overall uniformity helps facilitate international communication. On the other hand, it also adds to the discrepancy between the way English is written and spoken in any given location.
Letters in English orthography positioned at one location within a specific word usually represent a particular phoneme. For example, at /ˈæt/ consists of 2 letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨t⟩, which represent /æ/ and /t/, respectively.
Sequences of letters may perform this role as well as single letters. Thus, in thrash /θræʃ/, the digraph ⟨th⟩ (two letters) represents /θ/. In hatch /hætʃ/, the trigraph ⟨tch⟩ represents /tʃ/.
Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple successive sounds. The most common example is ⟨x⟩, which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in tax /tæks/).
The same letter (or sequence of letters) may be pronounced differently when occurring in different positions within a word. For instance, ⟨gh⟩ represents /f/ at the end of some words (tough /tʌf/) but not in others (plough /plaʊ/). At the beginning of syllables, ⟨gh⟩ is pronounced /ɡ/, as in ghost /ɡoʊst/. Conversely, ⟨gh⟩ is never pronounced /f/ in syllable onsets other than in inflected forms, and is almost never pronounced /ɡ/ in syllable codas (the proper name Pittsburgh is an exception).
Some words contain silent letters, which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Examples include the ⟨l⟩ in talk, half, calf, etc., the ⟨w⟩ in two and sword, ⟨gh⟩ as mentioned above in numerous words such as though, daughter, night, brought, and the commonly encountered silent ⟨e⟩ (discussed further below).
Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, ⟨y⟩ represents the sound /ɪ/ in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter ⟨i⟩. Thus, myth /ˈmɪθ/ is of Greek origin, while pith /ˈpɪθ/ is a Germanic word. However, a large number of Germanic words have ⟨y⟩ in word-final position.
Some other examples are ⟨ph⟩ pronounced /f/ (which is most commonly ⟨f⟩), and ⟨ch⟩ pronounced /k/ (which is most commonly ⟨c⟩ or ⟨k⟩). The use of these spellings for these sounds often marks words that have been borrowed from Greek.
Some researchers, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollings (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would be many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ⟨ph⟩ for /f/ (like telephone), could occur in an informal text.
Spelling may also be useful to distinguish between homophones (words with the same pronunciation but different meanings), although in most cases the reason for the difference is historical and was not introduced for the purpose of making a distinction.
For example, heir and air are pronounced identically in most dialects, but, in writing, they are distinguished from each other by their different spellings.
Another example is the pair of homophones pain and pane, where both are pronounced /peɪn/ but have two different spellings of the vowel /eɪ/. Often, this is because of the historical pronunciation of each word where, over time, two separate sounds became the same but the different spellings remained: pain used to be pronounced as /pain/, with a diphthong, and pane as /peːn/, but the diphthong /ai/ merged with the long vowel /eː/ in pane, making pain and pane homophones (pane–pain merger). Later /eː/ became a diphthong /eɪ/.
In written language, this may help to resolve potential ambiguities that would arise otherwise (cf. He's breaking the car vs. He's braking the car).
Nevertheless, many homophones remain that are unresolved by spelling (for example, the word bay has at least five fundamentally different meanings).
Some letters in English provide information about the pronunciation of other letters in the word. Rollings (2004) uses the term "markers" for such letters. Letters may mark different types of information.
For instance, ⟨e⟩ in once /ˈwʌns/ indicates that the preceding ⟨c⟩ is pronounced /s/, rather than the more common value of ⟨c⟩ in word-final position as the sound /k/, such as in attic /ˈætɪk/.
⟨e⟩ also often marks an altered pronunciation of a preceding vowel. In the pair mat and mate, the ⟨a⟩ of mat has the value /æ/, whereas the ⟨a⟩ of mate is marked by the ⟨e⟩ as having the value /eɪ/. In this context, the ⟨e⟩ is not pronounced, and is referred to as a "silent e".
A single letter may even fill multiple pronunciation-marking roles simultaneously. For example, in the word ace, ⟨e⟩ marks not only the change of ⟨a⟩ from /æ/ to /eɪ/, but also of ⟨c⟩ from /k/ to /s/. In the word vague, ⟨e⟩ marks the long ⟨a⟩ sound, but ⟨u⟩ keeps the ⟨g⟩ hard rather than soft.
Doubled consonants usually indicate that the preceding vowel is pronounced short. For example, the doubled ⟨t⟩ in batted indicates that the ⟨a⟩ is pronounced /æ/, while the single ⟨t⟩ of bated gives /eɪ/. Doubled consonants only indicate any lengthening or gemination of the consonant sound itself when they come from different morphemes, as with the ⟨nn⟩ in unnamed (un+named).
Any given letters may have dual functions. For example, ⟨u⟩ in statue has a sound-representing function (representing the sound /u/) and a pronunciation-marking function (marking the ⟨t⟩ as having the value /tʃ/ opposed to the value /t/).
Like many other alphabetic orthographies, English spelling does not represent non-contrastive phonetic sounds (that is, minor differences in pronunciation which are not used to distinguish between different words).
Although the letter ⟨t⟩ is pronounced by most speakers with aspiration [tʰ] at the beginning of words, this is never indicated in the spelling, and, indeed, this phonetic detail is probably not noticeable to the average native speaker not trained in phonetics.
However, unlike some orthographies, English orthography often represents a very abstract underlying representation (or morphophonemic form) of English words.
[T]he postulated underlying forms are systematically related to the conventional orthography ... and are, as is well known, related to the underlying forms of a much earlier historical stage of the language. There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English, and, consequently, we would expect ... that lexical representation would differ very little from dialect to dialect in Modern English ... [and] that conventional orthography is probably fairly close to optimal for all modern English dialects, as well as for the attested dialects of the past several hundred years.
In these cases, a given morpheme (i.e., a component of a word) has a fixed spelling even though it is pronounced differently in different words. An example is the past tense suffix -⟨ed⟩, which may be pronounced variously as /t/, /d/, or /ᵻd/ (for example, pay /ˈpeɪ/, payed /ˈpeɪd/, hate /ˈheɪt/, hated /ˈheɪtɪd/). As it happens, these different pronunciations of -⟨ed⟩ can be predicted by a few phonological rules, but that is not the reason why its spelling is fixed.
Another example involves the vowel differences (with accompanying stress pattern changes) in several related words. For instance, photographer is derived from photograph by adding the derivational suffix -⟨er⟩. When this suffix is added, the vowel pronunciations change largely owing to the moveable stress:
Other examples of this type are the -⟨ity⟩ suffix (as in agile vs. agility, acid vs. acidity, divine vs. divinity, sane vs. sanity). See also: Trisyllabic laxing.
Another example includes words like mean /ˈmiːn/ and meant /ˈmɛnt/, where ⟨ea⟩ is pronounced differently in the two related words. Thus, again, the orthography uses only a single spelling that corresponds to the single morphemic form rather than to the surface phonological form.
English orthography does not always provide an underlying representation; sometimes it provides an intermediate representation between the underlying form and the surface pronunciation. This is the case with the spelling of the regular plural morpheme, which is written as either -⟨s⟩ (as in tat, tats and hat, hats) or -⟨es⟩ (as in glass, glasses). Here, the spelling -⟨s⟩ is pronounced either /s/ or /z/ (depending on the environment, e.g., tats /ˈtæts/ and tails /ˈteɪlz/) while -⟨es⟩ is usually pronounced /ᵻz/ (e.g. classes /ˈklæsᵻz/). Thus, there are two different spellings that correspond to the single underlying representation |z| of the plural suffix and the three surface forms. The spelling indicates the insertion of /ᵻ/ before the /z/ in the spelling -⟨es⟩, but does not indicate the devoiced /s/ distinctly from the unaffected /z/ in the spelling -⟨s⟩.
The abstract representation of words as indicated by the orthography can be considered advantageous since it makes etymological relationships more apparent to English readers. This makes writing English more complex, but arguably makes reading English more efficient. However, very abstract underlying representations, such as that of Chomsky & Halle (1968) or of underspecification theories, are sometimes considered too abstract to accurately reflect the communicative competence of native speakers. Followers of these arguments believe the less abstract surface forms are more "psychologically real" and thus more useful in terms of pedagogy.
English has some words that can be written with accents. These words are mostly loanwords, usually from French. As they become increasingly naturalised, there is an increasing tendency to omit the accent marks, even in formal writing. For example, rôle and hôtel originally had accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accents are almost never used. The words were originally considered foreign—and some people considered that English alternatives were preferable—but today their foreign origin is largely forgotten. Words most likely to retain the accent are those atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, café and pâté both have a pronounced final ⟨e⟩, which would otherwise be silent under the normal English pronunciation rules. However, pâté, the acute accent is helpful to distinguish it from pate.
Further examples of words sometimes retaining diacritics when used in English are: ångström (partly because the scientific symbol for this unit of measurement is "Å"), appliqué, attaché, blasé, bric-à-brac, Brötchen, cliché, crème, crêpe, façade, fiancé(e), flambé, jalapeño, naïve, naïveté, né(e), papier-mâché, passé, piñata, protégé, résumé, risqué, and voilà. Italics, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, adiós, crème brûlée, pièce de résistance, raison d'être, vis-à-vis, and belles-lettres.
It was formerly common in American English to use a diaeresis to indicate a hiatus, e.g. coöperate, daïs, and reëlect. The New Yorker and Technology Review magazines still use it for this purpose, even though it is increasingly rare in modern English. Nowadays, the diaeresis is normally left out (cooperate), or a hyphen is used (co-operate) if the hiatus is between two morphemes in a compound word. It is, however, still common in monomorphemic loanwords such as naïve and Noël.
Written accents are also used occasionally in poetry and scripts for dramatic performances to indicate that a certain normally unstressed syllable in a word should be stressed for dramatic effect, or to keep with the metre of the poetry. This use is frequently seen in archaic and pseudoarchaic writings with the -ed suffix, to indicate that the ⟨e⟩ should be fully pronounced, as with cursèd.
The acute and grave accents are occasionally used in poetry and lyrics: the acute to indicate stress overtly where it might be ambiguous (rébel vs. rebél) or nonstandard for metrical reasons (caléndar); the grave to indicate that an ordinarily silent or elided syllable is pronounced (warnèd, parlìament).
In certain older texts (typically British), the use of the ligatures ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ is common in words such as archæology, diarrhœa, and encyclopædia, all of Latin or Greek origin. Nowadays, the ligatures have been generally replaced by the digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ (encyclopaedia, diarrhoea) in British English or just ⟨e⟩ (encyclopedia, diarrhea) in American English, though both spell some words with only ⟨e⟩ (economy, ecology) and others with ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ (paean, amoeba, oedipal, Caesar). In some cases, usage may vary; for instance, both encyclopedia and encyclopaedia are current in the UK.
Partly because English has never had any official regulating authority for spelling, such as the Spanish Real Academia Española, the French Académie française, and the German Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung, English spelling, compared to many other languages, is quite irregular and complex. Although French, among other languages, presents a similar degree of difficulty when encoding (writing), English is more difficult when decoding (reading), as there are clearly many more possible pronunciations of a group of letters. For example, in French, /u/ (as in "true", but short), can be spelled ⟨ou, ous, out, oux⟩ (ou, nous, tout, choux), but the pronunciation of each of those sequences is always the same. In English, /uː/ can be spelled in up to 24 different ways, including ⟨oo, u, ui, ue, o, oe, ou, ough, ew⟩ (spook, truth, suit, blues, to, shoe, group, through, few) (see Sound-to-spelling correspondences below), but all of these have other pronunciations as well (e.g., as in foot, us, build, bluest, so, toe, grout, plough, sew) (See the Spelling-to-sound correspondences below). Thus, in unfamiliar words and proper nouns, the pronunciation of some sequences, ⟨ough⟩ being the prime example, is unpredictable to even educated native English speakers.
Attempts to regularise or reform the spelling of English have usually failed. However, Noah Webster popularised more phonetic spellings in the United States, such as flavor for British flavour, fiber for fibre, defense for defence, analyze for analyse, catalog for catalogue, and so forth. These spellings already existed as alternatives, but Webster's dictionaries helped standardise them in the US. (See American and British English spelling differences for details.)
Besides the quirks the English spelling system has inherited from its past, there are other irregularities in spelling that make it tricky to learn. English contains, depending on dialect, 24–27 consonant phonemes and 13–20 vowels. However, there are only 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, so there is not a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Many sounds are spelled using different letters or multiple letters, and for those words whose pronunciation is predictable from the spelling, the sounds denoted by the letters depend on the surrounding letters. For example, ⟨th⟩ represents two different sounds (the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives) (see Pronunciation of English th), and the voiceless alveolar sibilant can be represented by ⟨s⟩ or ⟨c⟩.
It is, however, not (solely) the shortage of letters which makes English spelling irregular. Its irregularities are caused mainly by the use of many different spellings for some of its sounds, such as /uː/, /iː/ and /oʊ/ (too, true, shoe, flew, through; sleeve, leave, even, seize, siege; stole, coal, bowl, roll, old, mould), and the use of identical sequences for spelling different sounds (over, oven, move).
Furthermore, English no longer makes any attempt to anglicise the spellings of loanwords, but preserves the foreign spellings, even when they do not follow English spelling conventions like the Polish ⟨cz⟩ in Czech (rather than *Check) or the Norwegian ⟨fj⟩ in fjord (although fiord was formerly the most common spelling). In early Middle English, until roughly 1400, most imports from French were respelled according to English rules (e.g. bataille–battle, bouton–button, but not double, or trouble). Instead of loans being respelled to conform to English spelling standards, sometimes the pronunciation changes as a result of pressure from the spelling, e.g. ski, adopted from Norwegian in the mid-18th century. It used to be pronounced /ʃiː/, similar to the Norwegian pronunciation, but the increasing popularity of the sport after the mid-20th century helped the /skiː/ pronunciation replace it.
There was also a period when the spelling of a small number of words was altered to make them conform to their perceived etymological origins. For example, ⟨b⟩ was added to debt (originally dette) to link it to the Latin debitum, and ⟨s⟩ in island to link it to Latin insula instead of its true origin, the Old English word īġland. ⟨p⟩ in ptarmigan has no etymological justification whatsoever, only seeking to show Greek origin despite being a Gaelic word.
The spelling of English continues to evolve. Many loanwords come from languages where the pronunciation of vowels corresponds to the way they were pronounced in Old English, which is similar to the Italian or Spanish pronunciation of the vowels, and is the value the vowel symbols ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩ have in the International Phonetic Alphabet. As a result, there is a somewhat regular system of pronouncing "foreign" words in English, and some borrowed words have had their spelling changed to conform to this system. For example, Hindu used to be spelled Hindoo, and the name Maria used to be pronounced like the name Mariah, but was changed to conform to this system. This only further complicates the spelling, however. On the one hand, words that retained anglicised spellings may be misread in a hyperforeign way. On the other hand, words that are respelled in a 'foreign' way may be misread as if they are English words, e.g. Muslim was formerly spelled Mooslim because of its original pronunciation.
Commercial advertisers have also had an effect on English spelling. They introduced new or simplified spellings like lite instead of light, thru instead of through, and rucsac instead of rucksack. The spellings of personal names have also been a source of spelling innovations: diminutive versions of women's names that sound the same as men's names have been spelled differently: Nikki and Nicky, Toni and Tony, Jo and Joe. The differentiation in between names that are spelled differently but have the same phonetic sound may come from modernisation or different countries of origin. For example, Isabelle and Isabel sound the same but are spelled differently; these versions are from France and Spain respectively.
As an example of the irregular nature of English spelling, ⟨ou⟩ can be pronounced at least nine different ways: /aʊ/ in out, /oʊ/ in soul, /uː/ in soup, /ʌ/ in touch, /ʊ/ in could, /ɔː/ in four, /ɜː/ in journal, /ɒ/ in cough, and /ə/ in famous (See Spelling-to-sound correspondences). In the other direction, /iː/ can be spelled in at least 18~21 different ways: be (cede), ski (machine), bologna (GA), algae, quay, beach, bee, deceit, people, key, keyed, field (hygiene), amoeba, chamois (GA), dengue (GA), beguine, guyot, and ynambu (See Sound-to-spelling correspondences). (These examples assume a more-or-less standard non-regional British English accent. Other accents will vary.)
Sometimes everyday speakers of English change a counterintuitive pronunciation simply because it is counterintuitive. Changes like this are not usually seen as "standard", but can become standard if used enough. An example is the word miniscule, which still competes with its original spelling of minuscule, though this might also be because of analogy with the word mini.
Inconsistencies and irregularities in English pronunciation and spelling have gradually increased in number throughout the history of the English language. There are a number of contributing factors. First, gradual changes in pronunciation, such as the Great Vowel Shift, account for a tremendous number of irregularities. Second, relatively recent loan words generally carry their original spellings, which are often not phonetic in English. The Romanization of languages (e.g., Chinese) has further complicated this problem, for example when pronouncing Chinese proper names (of people or places).
The regular spelling system of Old English was swept away by the Norman Conquest, and English itself was supplanted in some spheres by Norman French for three centuries, eventually emerging with its spelling much influenced by French. English had also borrowed large numbers of words from French, and kept their French spellings. The spelling of Middle English is very irregular and inconsistent, with the same word being spelled in different ways, sometimes even in the same sentence. However, these were generally much better guides to the then-pronunciation than modern English spelling is.
For example, /ʌ/, normally written ⟨u⟩, is spelled with an ⟨o⟩ in one, some, love, etc., due to Norman spelling conventions which prohibited writing ⟨u⟩ before ⟨m, n, v⟩ due to the graphical confusion that would result. (⟨n, u, v⟩ were written identically with two minims in Norman handwriting; ⟨w⟩ was written as two ⟨u⟩ letters; ⟨m⟩ was written with three minims, hence ⟨mm⟩ looked like ⟨vun, nvu, uvu⟩, etc.). Similarly, spelling conventions also prohibited final ⟨v⟩. Hence the identical spellings of the three different vowel sounds in love, move, and cove are due to ambiguity in the Middle English spelling system, not sound change.
In 1417, Henry V began using English, which had no standardised spelling, for official correspondence instead of Latin or French which had standardised spelling, e.g. Latin had one spelling for right (rectus), Old French as used in English law had six and Middle English had 77. This motivated writers to standardise English spelling, an effort which lasted about 500 years.
There was also a series of linguistic sound changes towards the end of this period, including the Great Vowel Shift, which resulted in the ⟨a⟩ in ate, for example, changing from a pure vowel to a diphthong. These changes for the most part did not detract from the rule-governed nature of the spelling system; but, in some cases, they introduced confusing inconsistencies, like the well-known example of the many pronunciations of ⟨ough⟩ (tough, through, though, cough, plough, etc.). Most of these changes happened before the arrival of printing in England. However, the arrival of the modern printing press in 1476 froze the current system, rather than providing the impetus for a realignment of spelling with pronunciation. Furthermore, it introduced further inconsistencies, partly because of the use of typesetters trained abroad, particularly in the Low Countries. For example, the ⟨h⟩ in ghost was influenced by Flemish. The addition and deletion of a silent e at the ends of words was also sometimes used to make the right-hand margin line up more neatly.
By the time dictionaries were introduced in the mid-17th century, the spelling system of English had started to stabilise. By the 19th century, most words had set spellings, though it took some time before they diffused throughout the English-speaking world. In The Mill on the Floss (1860), English novelist George Eliot satirised the attitude of the English rural gentry of the 1820s towards orthography:
Mr. Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs. Glegg's,–why, she belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private judgment.
The modern English spelling system, with its national variants, spread together with the expansion of public education later in the 19th century.
The most notorious multigraph in the English language is the tetragraph ⟨ough⟩, which can be pronounced in at least ten different ways, six of which are illustrated in the construct, Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through, which is quoted by Robert A. Heinlein in The Door into Summer to illustrate the difficulties facing automated speech transcription and reading. Ough itself is a word, an exclamation of disgust similar to ugh, though rarely known or used. The following are typical pronunciations of this string of letters:
The following pronunciations are found in uncommon single words:
The place name Loughborough uses two different pronunciations of ⟨ough⟩: the first ⟨ough⟩ has the sound as in cuff and the second rhymes with thorough.
Notes:
In a generative approach to English spelling, Rollings (2004) identifies twenty main orthographic vowels of stressed syllables that are grouped into four main categories: "Lax", "Tense", "Heavy", "Tense-R".
For instance, ⟨a⟩ can represent the lax vowel /æ/, tense /eɪ/, heavy /ɑː/, or tense-r /ɛə/. Heavy and tense-r vowels are the respective lax and tense counterparts followed by ⟨r⟩.
Tense vowels are distinguished from lax vowels with a "silent" ⟨e⟩ that is added at the end of words. Thus, ⟨a⟩ in hat is lax /æ/, but when ⟨e⟩ is added in the word hate ⟨a⟩ is tense /eɪ/. Heavy and tense-r vowels follow a similar pattern, e.g. ⟨ar⟩ in car is heavy /ɑːr/, ⟨ar⟩ followed by silent ⟨e⟩ in care is /ɛər/. ⟨u⟩ represents two different vowel patterns, one being /ʌ/, /juː/, /ɜː/, /jʊə/, the other /ʊ/, /uː/, /ʊə/. There is no distinction between heavy and tense-r ⟨o⟩, and ⟨u⟩ in the /ʊ/, /uː/, /ʊə/ pattern does not have a heavy vowel.
Besides silent ⟨e⟩, another strategy for indicating tense and tense-r vowels is the addition of another orthographic vowel forming a digraph. In this case, the first vowel is usually the main vowel while the second vowel is the "marking" vowel. For example, man has a lax ⟨a⟩ (/æ/), but the addition of ⟨i⟩ (as the digraph ⟨ai⟩) in main marks the ⟨a⟩ as tense (/eɪ/). These two strategies produce words that are spelled differently but pronounced identically, which helps differentiate words that would otherwise be homonyms, as in mane (silent ⟨e⟩ strategy), main (digraph strategy) and Maine (both strategies).
Besides the 20 basic vowel spellings, Rollings (2004) has a reduced vowel category (representing the sounds /ə, ɪ/) and a miscellaneous category (representing the sounds /ɔɪ, aʊ, aɪ/ and /j/+V, /w/+V, V+V).
To reduce dialectal difficulties, the sound values given here correspond to the conventions at Help:IPA/English. This table includes ⟨h, w, y⟩ when they represent vowel sounds. If no information is given, it is assumed that the vowel is in a stressed syllable.
Deriving the pronunciation of an English word from its spelling requires not only a careful knowledge of the rules given below (many of which are not explicitly known even by native speakers: speakers merely learn the spelling of a word along with its pronunciation) and their many exceptions, but also:
The following table shows for each sound the various spelling patterns used to denote it, starting with the prototypical pattern(s) followed by others in alphabetical order. Some of these patterns are very rare or unique (such as ⟨gh⟩ for /p/, ⟨ph⟩ for /v/, ⟨i⟩ for /ɑː/). An ellipsis (⟨…⟩) stands for an intervening consonant.
Arranged in the order of the IPA consonant tables.
Sorted more or less from close to open sounds in the vowel diagram. Nasal vowels used by some speakers in words of French origin such as enceinte (/ɒ̃ˈsæ̃t/), are not included. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Like the orthography of most world languages, English orthography has a broad degree of standardisation. This standardisation began to develop when movable type spread to England in the late 15th century. However, unlike with most languages, there are multiple ways to spell every phoneme, and most letters also represent multiple pronunciations depending on their position in a word and the context.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "This is partly due to the large number of words that have been borrowed from a large number of other languages throughout the history of English, without successful attempts at complete spelling reforms, and partly due to accidents of history, such as some of the earliest mass-produced English publications being typeset by highly trained, multilingual printing compositors, who occasionally used a spelling pattern more typical for another language. For example, the word ghost was spelled gost in Middle English, until the Flemish spelling pattern was unintentionally substituted, and happened to be accepted. Most of the spelling conventions in Modern English were derived from the phonemic spelling of a variety of Middle English, and generally do not reflect the sound changes that have occurred since the late 15th century (such as the Great Vowel Shift). As a result of this, many words are spelled the way that they were pronounced more than 600 years ago, instead of being spelled like they are pronounced in the 21st century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most recognised variations being British and American spelling, and its overall uniformity helps facilitate international communication. On the other hand, it also adds to the discrepancy between the way English is written and spoken in any given location.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Letters in English orthography positioned at one location within a specific word usually represent a particular phoneme. For example, at /ˈæt/ consists of 2 letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨t⟩, which represent /æ/ and /t/, respectively.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Sequences of letters may perform this role as well as single letters. Thus, in thrash /θræʃ/, the digraph ⟨th⟩ (two letters) represents /θ/. In hatch /hætʃ/, the trigraph ⟨tch⟩ represents /tʃ/.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple successive sounds. The most common example is ⟨x⟩, which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in tax /tæks/).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The same letter (or sequence of letters) may be pronounced differently when occurring in different positions within a word. For instance, ⟨gh⟩ represents /f/ at the end of some words (tough /tʌf/) but not in others (plough /plaʊ/). At the beginning of syllables, ⟨gh⟩ is pronounced /ɡ/, as in ghost /ɡoʊst/. Conversely, ⟨gh⟩ is never pronounced /f/ in syllable onsets other than in inflected forms, and is almost never pronounced /ɡ/ in syllable codas (the proper name Pittsburgh is an exception).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Some words contain silent letters, which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Examples include the ⟨l⟩ in talk, half, calf, etc., the ⟨w⟩ in two and sword, ⟨gh⟩ as mentioned above in numerous words such as though, daughter, night, brought, and the commonly encountered silent ⟨e⟩ (discussed further below).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, ⟨y⟩ represents the sound /ɪ/ in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter ⟨i⟩. Thus, myth /ˈmɪθ/ is of Greek origin, while pith /ˈpɪθ/ is a Germanic word. However, a large number of Germanic words have ⟨y⟩ in word-final position.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Some other examples are ⟨ph⟩ pronounced /f/ (which is most commonly ⟨f⟩), and ⟨ch⟩ pronounced /k/ (which is most commonly ⟨c⟩ or ⟨k⟩). The use of these spellings for these sounds often marks words that have been borrowed from Greek.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Some researchers, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollings (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would be many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ⟨ph⟩ for /f/ (like telephone), could occur in an informal text.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Spelling may also be useful to distinguish between homophones (words with the same pronunciation but different meanings), although in most cases the reason for the difference is historical and was not introduced for the purpose of making a distinction.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "For example, heir and air are pronounced identically in most dialects, but, in writing, they are distinguished from each other by their different spellings.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Another example is the pair of homophones pain and pane, where both are pronounced /peɪn/ but have two different spellings of the vowel /eɪ/. Often, this is because of the historical pronunciation of each word where, over time, two separate sounds became the same but the different spellings remained: pain used to be pronounced as /pain/, with a diphthong, and pane as /peːn/, but the diphthong /ai/ merged with the long vowel /eː/ in pane, making pain and pane homophones (pane–pain merger). Later /eː/ became a diphthong /eɪ/.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In written language, this may help to resolve potential ambiguities that would arise otherwise (cf. He's breaking the car vs. He's braking the car).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Nevertheless, many homophones remain that are unresolved by spelling (for example, the word bay has at least five fundamentally different meanings).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Some letters in English provide information about the pronunciation of other letters in the word. Rollings (2004) uses the term \"markers\" for such letters. Letters may mark different types of information.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "For instance, ⟨e⟩ in once /ˈwʌns/ indicates that the preceding ⟨c⟩ is pronounced /s/, rather than the more common value of ⟨c⟩ in word-final position as the sound /k/, such as in attic /ˈætɪk/.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "⟨e⟩ also often marks an altered pronunciation of a preceding vowel. In the pair mat and mate, the ⟨a⟩ of mat has the value /æ/, whereas the ⟨a⟩ of mate is marked by the ⟨e⟩ as having the value /eɪ/. In this context, the ⟨e⟩ is not pronounced, and is referred to as a \"silent e\".",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "A single letter may even fill multiple pronunciation-marking roles simultaneously. For example, in the word ace, ⟨e⟩ marks not only the change of ⟨a⟩ from /æ/ to /eɪ/, but also of ⟨c⟩ from /k/ to /s/. In the word vague, ⟨e⟩ marks the long ⟨a⟩ sound, but ⟨u⟩ keeps the ⟨g⟩ hard rather than soft.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Doubled consonants usually indicate that the preceding vowel is pronounced short. For example, the doubled ⟨t⟩ in batted indicates that the ⟨a⟩ is pronounced /æ/, while the single ⟨t⟩ of bated gives /eɪ/. Doubled consonants only indicate any lengthening or gemination of the consonant sound itself when they come from different morphemes, as with the ⟨nn⟩ in unnamed (un+named).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Any given letters may have dual functions. For example, ⟨u⟩ in statue has a sound-representing function (representing the sound /u/) and a pronunciation-marking function (marking the ⟨t⟩ as having the value /tʃ/ opposed to the value /t/).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Like many other alphabetic orthographies, English spelling does not represent non-contrastive phonetic sounds (that is, minor differences in pronunciation which are not used to distinguish between different words).",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Although the letter ⟨t⟩ is pronounced by most speakers with aspiration [tʰ] at the beginning of words, this is never indicated in the spelling, and, indeed, this phonetic detail is probably not noticeable to the average native speaker not trained in phonetics.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "However, unlike some orthographies, English orthography often represents a very abstract underlying representation (or morphophonemic form) of English words.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "[T]he postulated underlying forms are systematically related to the conventional orthography ... and are, as is well known, related to the underlying forms of a much earlier historical stage of the language. There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English, and, consequently, we would expect ... that lexical representation would differ very little from dialect to dialect in Modern English ... [and] that conventional orthography is probably fairly close to optimal for all modern English dialects, as well as for the attested dialects of the past several hundred years.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In these cases, a given morpheme (i.e., a component of a word) has a fixed spelling even though it is pronounced differently in different words. An example is the past tense suffix -⟨ed⟩, which may be pronounced variously as /t/, /d/, or /ᵻd/ (for example, pay /ˈpeɪ/, payed /ˈpeɪd/, hate /ˈheɪt/, hated /ˈheɪtɪd/). As it happens, these different pronunciations of -⟨ed⟩ can be predicted by a few phonological rules, but that is not the reason why its spelling is fixed.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Another example involves the vowel differences (with accompanying stress pattern changes) in several related words. For instance, photographer is derived from photograph by adding the derivational suffix -⟨er⟩. When this suffix is added, the vowel pronunciations change largely owing to the moveable stress:",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Other examples of this type are the -⟨ity⟩ suffix (as in agile vs. agility, acid vs. acidity, divine vs. divinity, sane vs. sanity). See also: Trisyllabic laxing.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Another example includes words like mean /ˈmiːn/ and meant /ˈmɛnt/, where ⟨ea⟩ is pronounced differently in the two related words. Thus, again, the orthography uses only a single spelling that corresponds to the single morphemic form rather than to the surface phonological form.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "English orthography does not always provide an underlying representation; sometimes it provides an intermediate representation between the underlying form and the surface pronunciation. This is the case with the spelling of the regular plural morpheme, which is written as either -⟨s⟩ (as in tat, tats and hat, hats) or -⟨es⟩ (as in glass, glasses). Here, the spelling -⟨s⟩ is pronounced either /s/ or /z/ (depending on the environment, e.g., tats /ˈtæts/ and tails /ˈteɪlz/) while -⟨es⟩ is usually pronounced /ᵻz/ (e.g. classes /ˈklæsᵻz/). Thus, there are two different spellings that correspond to the single underlying representation |z| of the plural suffix and the three surface forms. The spelling indicates the insertion of /ᵻ/ before the /z/ in the spelling -⟨es⟩, but does not indicate the devoiced /s/ distinctly from the unaffected /z/ in the spelling -⟨s⟩.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The abstract representation of words as indicated by the orthography can be considered advantageous since it makes etymological relationships more apparent to English readers. This makes writing English more complex, but arguably makes reading English more efficient. However, very abstract underlying representations, such as that of Chomsky & Halle (1968) or of underspecification theories, are sometimes considered too abstract to accurately reflect the communicative competence of native speakers. Followers of these arguments believe the less abstract surface forms are more \"psychologically real\" and thus more useful in terms of pedagogy.",
"title": "Function of the letters"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "English has some words that can be written with accents. These words are mostly loanwords, usually from French. As they become increasingly naturalised, there is an increasing tendency to omit the accent marks, even in formal writing. For example, rôle and hôtel originally had accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accents are almost never used. The words were originally considered foreign—and some people considered that English alternatives were preferable—but today their foreign origin is largely forgotten. Words most likely to retain the accent are those atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, café and pâté both have a pronounced final ⟨e⟩, which would otherwise be silent under the normal English pronunciation rules. However, pâté, the acute accent is helpful to distinguish it from pate.",
"title": "Diacritics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Further examples of words sometimes retaining diacritics when used in English are: ångström (partly because the scientific symbol for this unit of measurement is \"Å\"), appliqué, attaché, blasé, bric-à-brac, Brötchen, cliché, crème, crêpe, façade, fiancé(e), flambé, jalapeño, naïve, naïveté, né(e), papier-mâché, passé, piñata, protégé, résumé, risqué, and voilà. Italics, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, adiós, crème brûlée, pièce de résistance, raison d'être, vis-à-vis, and belles-lettres.",
"title": "Diacritics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "It was formerly common in American English to use a diaeresis to indicate a hiatus, e.g. coöperate, daïs, and reëlect. The New Yorker and Technology Review magazines still use it for this purpose, even though it is increasingly rare in modern English. Nowadays, the diaeresis is normally left out (cooperate), or a hyphen is used (co-operate) if the hiatus is between two morphemes in a compound word. It is, however, still common in monomorphemic loanwords such as naïve and Noël.",
"title": "Diacritics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Written accents are also used occasionally in poetry and scripts for dramatic performances to indicate that a certain normally unstressed syllable in a word should be stressed for dramatic effect, or to keep with the metre of the poetry. This use is frequently seen in archaic and pseudoarchaic writings with the -ed suffix, to indicate that the ⟨e⟩ should be fully pronounced, as with cursèd.",
"title": "Diacritics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The acute and grave accents are occasionally used in poetry and lyrics: the acute to indicate stress overtly where it might be ambiguous (rébel vs. rebél) or nonstandard for metrical reasons (caléndar); the grave to indicate that an ordinarily silent or elided syllable is pronounced (warnèd, parlìament).",
"title": "Diacritics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In certain older texts (typically British), the use of the ligatures ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ is common in words such as archæology, diarrhœa, and encyclopædia, all of Latin or Greek origin. Nowadays, the ligatures have been generally replaced by the digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ (encyclopaedia, diarrhoea) in British English or just ⟨e⟩ (encyclopedia, diarrhea) in American English, though both spell some words with only ⟨e⟩ (economy, ecology) and others with ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ (paean, amoeba, oedipal, Caesar). In some cases, usage may vary; for instance, both encyclopedia and encyclopaedia are current in the UK.",
"title": "Ligatures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Partly because English has never had any official regulating authority for spelling, such as the Spanish Real Academia Española, the French Académie française, and the German Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung, English spelling, compared to many other languages, is quite irregular and complex. Although French, among other languages, presents a similar degree of difficulty when encoding (writing), English is more difficult when decoding (reading), as there are clearly many more possible pronunciations of a group of letters. For example, in French, /u/ (as in \"true\", but short), can be spelled ⟨ou, ous, out, oux⟩ (ou, nous, tout, choux), but the pronunciation of each of those sequences is always the same. In English, /uː/ can be spelled in up to 24 different ways, including ⟨oo, u, ui, ue, o, oe, ou, ough, ew⟩ (spook, truth, suit, blues, to, shoe, group, through, few) (see Sound-to-spelling correspondences below), but all of these have other pronunciations as well (e.g., as in foot, us, build, bluest, so, toe, grout, plough, sew) (See the Spelling-to-sound correspondences below). Thus, in unfamiliar words and proper nouns, the pronunciation of some sequences, ⟨ough⟩ being the prime example, is unpredictable to even educated native English speakers.",
"title": "Phonic irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Attempts to regularise or reform the spelling of English have usually failed. However, Noah Webster popularised more phonetic spellings in the United States, such as flavor for British flavour, fiber for fibre, defense for defence, analyze for analyse, catalog for catalogue, and so forth. These spellings already existed as alternatives, but Webster's dictionaries helped standardise them in the US. (See American and British English spelling differences for details.)",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Besides the quirks the English spelling system has inherited from its past, there are other irregularities in spelling that make it tricky to learn. English contains, depending on dialect, 24–27 consonant phonemes and 13–20 vowels. However, there are only 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, so there is not a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Many sounds are spelled using different letters or multiple letters, and for those words whose pronunciation is predictable from the spelling, the sounds denoted by the letters depend on the surrounding letters. For example, ⟨th⟩ represents two different sounds (the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives) (see Pronunciation of English th), and the voiceless alveolar sibilant can be represented by ⟨s⟩ or ⟨c⟩.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "It is, however, not (solely) the shortage of letters which makes English spelling irregular. Its irregularities are caused mainly by the use of many different spellings for some of its sounds, such as /uː/, /iː/ and /oʊ/ (too, true, shoe, flew, through; sleeve, leave, even, seize, siege; stole, coal, bowl, roll, old, mould), and the use of identical sequences for spelling different sounds (over, oven, move).",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Furthermore, English no longer makes any attempt to anglicise the spellings of loanwords, but preserves the foreign spellings, even when they do not follow English spelling conventions like the Polish ⟨cz⟩ in Czech (rather than *Check) or the Norwegian ⟨fj⟩ in fjord (although fiord was formerly the most common spelling). In early Middle English, until roughly 1400, most imports from French were respelled according to English rules (e.g. bataille–battle, bouton–button, but not double, or trouble). Instead of loans being respelled to conform to English spelling standards, sometimes the pronunciation changes as a result of pressure from the spelling, e.g. ski, adopted from Norwegian in the mid-18th century. It used to be pronounced /ʃiː/, similar to the Norwegian pronunciation, but the increasing popularity of the sport after the mid-20th century helped the /skiː/ pronunciation replace it.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "There was also a period when the spelling of a small number of words was altered to make them conform to their perceived etymological origins. For example, ⟨b⟩ was added to debt (originally dette) to link it to the Latin debitum, and ⟨s⟩ in island to link it to Latin insula instead of its true origin, the Old English word īġland. ⟨p⟩ in ptarmigan has no etymological justification whatsoever, only seeking to show Greek origin despite being a Gaelic word.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The spelling of English continues to evolve. Many loanwords come from languages where the pronunciation of vowels corresponds to the way they were pronounced in Old English, which is similar to the Italian or Spanish pronunciation of the vowels, and is the value the vowel symbols ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩ have in the International Phonetic Alphabet. As a result, there is a somewhat regular system of pronouncing \"foreign\" words in English, and some borrowed words have had their spelling changed to conform to this system. For example, Hindu used to be spelled Hindoo, and the name Maria used to be pronounced like the name Mariah, but was changed to conform to this system. This only further complicates the spelling, however. On the one hand, words that retained anglicised spellings may be misread in a hyperforeign way. On the other hand, words that are respelled in a 'foreign' way may be misread as if they are English words, e.g. Muslim was formerly spelled Mooslim because of its original pronunciation.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Commercial advertisers have also had an effect on English spelling. They introduced new or simplified spellings like lite instead of light, thru instead of through, and rucsac instead of rucksack. The spellings of personal names have also been a source of spelling innovations: diminutive versions of women's names that sound the same as men's names have been spelled differently: Nikki and Nicky, Toni and Tony, Jo and Joe. The differentiation in between names that are spelled differently but have the same phonetic sound may come from modernisation or different countries of origin. For example, Isabelle and Isabel sound the same but are spelled differently; these versions are from France and Spain respectively.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "As an example of the irregular nature of English spelling, ⟨ou⟩ can be pronounced at least nine different ways: /aʊ/ in out, /oʊ/ in soul, /uː/ in soup, /ʌ/ in touch, /ʊ/ in could, /ɔː/ in four, /ɜː/ in journal, /ɒ/ in cough, and /ə/ in famous (See Spelling-to-sound correspondences). In the other direction, /iː/ can be spelled in at least 18~21 different ways: be (cede), ski (machine), bologna (GA), algae, quay, beach, bee, deceit, people, key, keyed, field (hygiene), amoeba, chamois (GA), dengue (GA), beguine, guyot, and ynambu (See Sound-to-spelling correspondences). (These examples assume a more-or-less standard non-regional British English accent. Other accents will vary.)",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Sometimes everyday speakers of English change a counterintuitive pronunciation simply because it is counterintuitive. Changes like this are not usually seen as \"standard\", but can become standard if used enough. An example is the word miniscule, which still competes with its original spelling of minuscule, though this might also be because of analogy with the word mini.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Inconsistencies and irregularities in English pronunciation and spelling have gradually increased in number throughout the history of the English language. There are a number of contributing factors. First, gradual changes in pronunciation, such as the Great Vowel Shift, account for a tremendous number of irregularities. Second, relatively recent loan words generally carry their original spellings, which are often not phonetic in English. The Romanization of languages (e.g., Chinese) has further complicated this problem, for example when pronouncing Chinese proper names (of people or places).",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The regular spelling system of Old English was swept away by the Norman Conquest, and English itself was supplanted in some spheres by Norman French for three centuries, eventually emerging with its spelling much influenced by French. English had also borrowed large numbers of words from French, and kept their French spellings. The spelling of Middle English is very irregular and inconsistent, with the same word being spelled in different ways, sometimes even in the same sentence. However, these were generally much better guides to the then-pronunciation than modern English spelling is.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "For example, /ʌ/, normally written ⟨u⟩, is spelled with an ⟨o⟩ in one, some, love, etc., due to Norman spelling conventions which prohibited writing ⟨u⟩ before ⟨m, n, v⟩ due to the graphical confusion that would result. (⟨n, u, v⟩ were written identically with two minims in Norman handwriting; ⟨w⟩ was written as two ⟨u⟩ letters; ⟨m⟩ was written with three minims, hence ⟨mm⟩ looked like ⟨vun, nvu, uvu⟩, etc.). Similarly, spelling conventions also prohibited final ⟨v⟩. Hence the identical spellings of the three different vowel sounds in love, move, and cove are due to ambiguity in the Middle English spelling system, not sound change.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1417, Henry V began using English, which had no standardised spelling, for official correspondence instead of Latin or French which had standardised spelling, e.g. Latin had one spelling for right (rectus), Old French as used in English law had six and Middle English had 77. This motivated writers to standardise English spelling, an effort which lasted about 500 years.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "There was also a series of linguistic sound changes towards the end of this period, including the Great Vowel Shift, which resulted in the ⟨a⟩ in ate, for example, changing from a pure vowel to a diphthong. These changes for the most part did not detract from the rule-governed nature of the spelling system; but, in some cases, they introduced confusing inconsistencies, like the well-known example of the many pronunciations of ⟨ough⟩ (tough, through, though, cough, plough, etc.). Most of these changes happened before the arrival of printing in England. However, the arrival of the modern printing press in 1476 froze the current system, rather than providing the impetus for a realignment of spelling with pronunciation. Furthermore, it introduced further inconsistencies, partly because of the use of typesetters trained abroad, particularly in the Low Countries. For example, the ⟨h⟩ in ghost was influenced by Flemish. The addition and deletion of a silent e at the ends of words was also sometimes used to make the right-hand margin line up more neatly.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "By the time dictionaries were introduced in the mid-17th century, the spelling system of English had started to stabilise. By the 19th century, most words had set spellings, though it took some time before they diffused throughout the English-speaking world. In The Mill on the Floss (1860), English novelist George Eliot satirised the attitude of the English rural gentry of the 1820s towards orthography:",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Mr. Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs. Glegg's,–why, she belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private judgment.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The modern English spelling system, with its national variants, spread together with the expansion of public education later in the 19th century.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "The most notorious multigraph in the English language is the tetragraph ⟨ough⟩, which can be pronounced in at least ten different ways, six of which are illustrated in the construct, Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through, which is quoted by Robert A. Heinlein in The Door into Summer to illustrate the difficulties facing automated speech transcription and reading. Ough itself is a word, an exclamation of disgust similar to ugh, though rarely known or used. The following are typical pronunciations of this string of letters:",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The following pronunciations are found in uncommon single words:",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The place name Loughborough uses two different pronunciations of ⟨ough⟩: the first ⟨ough⟩ has the sound as in cuff and the second rhymes with thorough.",
"title": "Spelling irregularities"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Notes:",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In a generative approach to English spelling, Rollings (2004) identifies twenty main orthographic vowels of stressed syllables that are grouped into four main categories: \"Lax\", \"Tense\", \"Heavy\", \"Tense-R\".",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "For instance, ⟨a⟩ can represent the lax vowel /æ/, tense /eɪ/, heavy /ɑː/, or tense-r /ɛə/. Heavy and tense-r vowels are the respective lax and tense counterparts followed by ⟨r⟩.",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Tense vowels are distinguished from lax vowels with a \"silent\" ⟨e⟩ that is added at the end of words. Thus, ⟨a⟩ in hat is lax /æ/, but when ⟨e⟩ is added in the word hate ⟨a⟩ is tense /eɪ/. Heavy and tense-r vowels follow a similar pattern, e.g. ⟨ar⟩ in car is heavy /ɑːr/, ⟨ar⟩ followed by silent ⟨e⟩ in care is /ɛər/. ⟨u⟩ represents two different vowel patterns, one being /ʌ/, /juː/, /ɜː/, /jʊə/, the other /ʊ/, /uː/, /ʊə/. There is no distinction between heavy and tense-r ⟨o⟩, and ⟨u⟩ in the /ʊ/, /uː/, /ʊə/ pattern does not have a heavy vowel.",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Besides silent ⟨e⟩, another strategy for indicating tense and tense-r vowels is the addition of another orthographic vowel forming a digraph. In this case, the first vowel is usually the main vowel while the second vowel is the \"marking\" vowel. For example, man has a lax ⟨a⟩ (/æ/), but the addition of ⟨i⟩ (as the digraph ⟨ai⟩) in main marks the ⟨a⟩ as tense (/eɪ/). These two strategies produce words that are spelled differently but pronounced identically, which helps differentiate words that would otherwise be homonyms, as in mane (silent ⟨e⟩ strategy), main (digraph strategy) and Maine (both strategies).",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Besides the 20 basic vowel spellings, Rollings (2004) has a reduced vowel category (representing the sounds /ə, ɪ/) and a miscellaneous category (representing the sounds /ɔɪ, aʊ, aɪ/ and /j/+V, /w/+V, V+V).",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "To reduce dialectal difficulties, the sound values given here correspond to the conventions at Help:IPA/English. This table includes ⟨h, w, y⟩ when they represent vowel sounds. If no information is given, it is assumed that the vowel is in a stressed syllable.",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Deriving the pronunciation of an English word from its spelling requires not only a careful knowledge of the rules given below (many of which are not explicitly known even by native speakers: speakers merely learn the spelling of a word along with its pronunciation) and their many exceptions, but also:",
"title": "Spelling-to-sound correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The following table shows for each sound the various spelling patterns used to denote it, starting with the prototypical pattern(s) followed by others in alphabetical order. Some of these patterns are very rare or unique (such as ⟨gh⟩ for /p/, ⟨ph⟩ for /v/, ⟨i⟩ for /ɑː/). An ellipsis (⟨…⟩) stands for an intervening consonant.",
"title": "Sound-to-spelling correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Arranged in the order of the IPA consonant tables.",
"title": "Sound-to-spelling correspondences"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Sorted more or less from close to open sounds in the vowel diagram. Nasal vowels used by some speakers in words of French origin such as enceinte (/ɒ̃ˈsæ̃t/), are not included.",
"title": "Sound-to-spelling correspondences"
}
]
| English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Like the orthography of most world languages, English orthography has a broad degree of standardisation. This standardisation began to develop when movable type spread to England in the late 15th century. However, unlike with most languages, there are multiple ways to spell every phoneme, and most letters also represent multiple pronunciations depending on their position in a word and the context. This is partly due to the large number of words that have been borrowed from a large number of other languages throughout the history of English, without successful attempts at complete spelling reforms, and partly due to accidents of history, such as some of the earliest mass-produced English publications being typeset by highly trained, multilingual printing compositors, who occasionally used a spelling pattern more typical for another language. For example, the word ghost was spelled gost in Middle English, until the Flemish spelling pattern was unintentionally substituted, and happened to be accepted. Most of the spelling conventions in Modern English were derived from the phonemic spelling of a variety of Middle English, and generally do not reflect the sound changes that have occurred since the late 15th century. As a result of this, many words are spelled the way that they were pronounced more than 600 years ago, instead of being spelled like they are pronounced in the 21st century. Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most recognised variations being British and American spelling, and its overall uniformity helps facilitate international communication. On the other hand, it also adds to the discrepancy between the way English is written and spoken in any given location. | 2001-11-14T18:26:38Z | 2023-12-22T16:06:31Z | [
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10,083 | Æthelred the Unready | Æthelred II (Old English: Æþelræd, pronounced [ˈæðelræːd]; Old Norse: Aðalráðr; c. 966 – 23 April 1016), known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death in 1016. His epithet comes from the Old English word unræd meaning "poorly advised"; it is a pun on his name, which means "well advised".
Æthelred was the son of King Edgar the Peaceful and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, King Edward the Martyr.
The chief characteristic of Æthelred's reign was conflict with the Danes. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s, becoming markedly more serious in the early 990s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, Æthelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish king. In 1002, Æthelred ordered what became known as the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danish settlers. In 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded England, as a result of which Æthelred fled to Normandy in 1013 and was replaced by Sweyn. After Sweyn died in 1014, Æthelred returned to the throne, but he died just two years later. Æthelred's 37-year combined reign was the longest of any Anglo-Saxon English king, and was only surpassed in the 13th century, by Henry III. Æthelred was briefly succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside, but he died after a few months and was replaced by Sweyn's son Cnut.
Æthelred's first name, composed of the elements æðele, "noble", and ræd, "counsel, advice", is typical of the compound names of those who belonged to the royal House of Wessex, and it characteristically alliterates with the names of his ancestors, like Æthelwulf ("noble-wolf"), Ælfred ("elf-counsel"), Eadweard ("rich-protection"), and Eadgar ("rich-spear").
Æthelred's notorious nickname, Old English Unræd, is commonly translated into present-day English as "The Unready" (less often, though less inaccurately, as "The Redeless"). The Anglo-Saxon noun unræd means "evil counsel", "bad plan", or "folly". It was most often used in reference to decisions and deeds, but once in reference to the ill-advised disobedience of Adam and Eve. The element ræd in unræd is the same element in Æthelred's name that means "counsel" (compare the cognate in the German word Rat and Dutch raad). Thus Æþelræd Unræd is an oxymoron: "Noble counsel, No counsel". The nickname has also been translated as "ill-advised", "ill-prepared", thus "Æthelred the ill-advised".
Because the nickname was first recorded in the 1180s, more than 150 years after Æthelred's death, it is doubtful that it carries any implications as to the reputation of the king in the eyes of his contemporaries or near contemporaries.
Sir Frank Stenton remarked that "much that has brought condemnation of historians on King Æthelred may well be due in the last resort to the circumstances under which he became king." Æthelred's father, King Edgar, had died suddenly in July 975, leaving two young sons behind. The elder, Edward (later Edward the Martyr), was probably illegitimate, and was "still a youth on the verge of manhood" in 975. The younger son was Æthelred, whose mother, Ælfthryth, Edgar had married in 964. Ælfthryth was the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and widow of Æthelwald, Ealdorman of East Anglia. At the time of his father's death, Æthelred could have been no more than 10 years old. As the elder of Edgar's sons, Edward – reportedly a young man given to frequent violent outbursts – probably would have naturally succeeded to the throne of England despite his young age, had he not "offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behaviour." In any case, a number of English nobles took to opposing Edward's succession and to defending Æthelred's claim to the throne; Æthelred was, after all, the son of Edgar's last, living wife, and no rumour of illegitimacy is known to have plagued Æthelred's birth, as it might have his elder brother's.
Both boys, Æthelred certainly, were too young to have played any significant part in the political manoeuvring which followed Edgar's death. It was the brothers' supporters, and not the brothers themselves, who were responsible for the turmoil which accompanied the choice of a successor to the throne. Æthelred's cause was led by his mother and included Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia and Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, while Edward's claim was supported by Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Oswald, the Archbishop of York among other noblemen, notably Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex. In the end, Edward's supporters proved the more powerful and persuasive, and he was crowned king at Kingston upon Thames before the year was out.
Edward reigned for only three years before he was murdered by members of his brother's household. Though little is known about Edward's short reign, it is known that it was marked by political turmoil. Edgar had made extensive grants of land to monasteries which pursued the new monastic ideals of ecclesiastical reform, but these disrupted aristocratic families' traditional patronage. The end of his firm rule saw a reversal of this policy, with aristocrats recovering their lost properties or seizing new ones. This was opposed by Dunstan, but according to Cyril Hart, "The presence of supporters of church reform on both sides indicates that the conflict between them depended as much on issues of land ownership and local power as on ecclesiastical legitimacy. Adherents of both Edward and Æthelred can be seen appropriating, or recovering, monastic lands." Nevertheless, favour for Edward must have been strong among the monastic communities. When Edward was killed at Æthelred's estate at Corfe Castle in Dorset in March 978, the job of recording the event, as well as reactions to it, fell to monastic writers. Stenton offers a summary of the earliest account of Edward's murder, which comes from a work praising the life of St Oswald:
On the surface his [Edward's] relations with Æthelred his half-brother and Ælfthryth his stepmother were friendly, and he was visiting them informally when he was killed. [Æthelred's] retainers came out to meet him with ostentatious signs of respect, and then, before he had dismounted, surrounded him, seized his hands, and stabbed him ... So far as can be seen the murder was planned and carried out by Æthelred's household men in order that their young master might become king. There is nothing to support the allegation, which first appears in writing more than a century later, that Queen Ælfthryth had plotted her stepson's death. No one was punished for a part in the crime, and Æthelred, who was crowned a month after the murder, began to reign in an atmosphere of suspicion which destroyed the prestige of the crown. It was never fully restored in his lifetime.
Nevertheless, at first, the outlook of the new king's officers and counsellors seems in no way to have been bleak. According to one chronicler, the coronation of Æthelred took place with much rejoicing by the councillors of the English people. Simon Keynes notes that "Byrhtferth of Ramsey states similarly that when Æthelred was consecrated king, by Archbishop Dunstan and Archbishop Oswald, 'there was great joy at his consecration', and describes the king in this connection as 'a young man in respect of years, elegant in his manners, with an attractive face and handsome appearance'."
Æthelred was between nine and twelve years old when he became king and affairs were initially managed by leading councillors such as Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, Queen Ælfthryth and Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury. Æthelwold was especially influential and when he died, on 1 August 984, Æthelred abandoned his early councillors and launched on policies which involved encroachment on church privileges, to his later regret. In a charter of 993 he stated that Æthelwold's death had deprived the country of one "whose industry and pastoral care administered not only to my interest but also to that of all inhabitants of the country."
Ælfthryth enjoyed renewed status in the 990s, when she brought up his heirs and her brother Ordulf became one of Æthelred's leading advisers. She died between 1000 and 1002.
Despite conflicts with the Danes throughout his reign, Æthelred's reign of England saw expansion in England's population, trade and wealth.
England had experienced a period of peace after the reconquest of the Danelaw in the mid-10th century by King Edgar, Æthelred's father. However, beginning in 980, when Æthelred could not have been more than 14 years old, small companies of Danish adventurers carried out a series of coastline raids against England. Hampshire, Thanet and Cheshire were attacked in 980, Devon and Cornwall in 981, and Dorset in 982. A period of six years then passed before, in 988, another coastal attack is recorded as having taken place to the south-west, though here a famous battle was fought between the invaders and the thegns of Devon. Stenton notes that, though this series of isolated raids had no lasting effect on England itself, "their chief historical importance is that they brought England for the first time into diplomatic contact with Normandy."
Danish attacks started becoming more serious in the early 990s, with highly devastating assaults in 1006–1007 and 1009–1012. Tribute payments by Æthelred did not successfully temper the Danish attacks. Æthelred's forces were primarily composed of infantry, with substantial numbers of foreign mercenaries. He did not have substantial numbers of trained cavalry forces.
During this period, the Normans offered shelter to Danes returning from raids on England. This led to tension between the English and Norman courts, and word of their enmity eventually reached Pope John XV. The pope was disposed to dissolve their hostility towards each other, and took steps to engineer a peace between England and Normandy, which was ratified in Rouen in 991.
In August 991, a sizeable Danish fleet began a sustained campaign in the south-east of England. It arrived off Folkestone, in Kent, and made its way around the south-east coast and up the River Blackwater, coming eventually to its estuary and occupying Northey Island. About 2 kilometres (1 mile) west of Northey lies the coastal town of Maldon, where Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, was stationed with a company of thegns. The battle that followed between English and Danes is immortalised by the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, which describes the doomed but heroic attempt of Byrhtnoth to defend the coast of Essex against overwhelming odds. This was the first of a series of crushing defeats felt by the English: beaten first by Danish raiders, and later by organised Danish armies. Stenton summarises the events of the poem:
For access to the mainland they (the Danes) depended on a causeway, flooded at high tide, which led from Northey to the flats along the southern margin of the estuary. Before they (the Danes) had left their camp on the island[,] Byrhtnoth, with his retainers and a force of local militia, had taken possession of the landward end of the causeway. Refusing a demand for tribute, shouted across the water while the tide was high, Byrhtnoth drew up his men along the bank, and waited for the ebb. As the water fell the raiders began to stream out along the causeway. But three of Byrhtnoth's retainers held it against them, and at last they asked to be allowed to cross unhindered and fight on equal terms on the mainland. With what even those who admired him most called 'over-courage', Byrhtnoth agreed to this; the pirates rushed through the falling tide, and battle was joined. Its issue was decided by Byrhtnoth's fall. Many even of his own men immediately took to flight and the English ranks were broken. What gives enduring interest to the battle is the superb courage with which a group of Byrhtnoth's thegns, knowing that the fight was lost, deliberately gave themselves to death in order that they might avenge their lord."
In the aftermath of Maldon, it was decided that the English should grant the tribute to the Danes that they desired, and so a gafol of £10,000 was paid them for their peace. Yet it was presumably the Danish fleet that had beaten Byrhtnoth at Maldon that continued to ravage the English coast from 991 to 993. In 994, the Danish fleet, which had swollen in ranks since 991, turned up the Thames estuary and headed toward London. The battle fought there was inconclusive.
It was about this time that Æthelred met with the leaders of the Danish fleet and arranged an uneasy accord. A treaty was signed that provided for seemingly civilised arrangements between the then-settled Danish companies and the English government, such as regulation of settlement disputes and trade. But the treaty also stipulated that the ravaging and slaughter of the previous year would be forgotten, and ended abruptly by stating that £22,000 of gold and silver had been paid to the raiders as the price of peace. In 994, Olaf Tryggvason, a Norwegian prince and already a baptised Christian, was confirmed as Christian in a ceremony at Andover; King Æthelred stood as his sponsor. After receiving gifts, Olaf promised "that he would never come back to England in hostility." Olaf then left England for Norway and never returned, though "other component parts of the Viking force appear to have decided to stay in England, for it is apparent from the treaty that some had chosen to enter into King Æthelred's service as mercenaries, based presumably on the Isle of Wight."
In 997, Danish raids began again. According to Keynes, "there is no suggestion that this was a new fleet or army, and presumably the mercenary force created in 994 from the residue of the raiding army of 991 had turned on those whom it had been hired to protect." It harried Cornwall, Devon, western Somerset and south Wales in 997, Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex in 998. In 999, it raided Kent, and, in 1000, it left England for Normandy, perhaps because the English had refused in this latest wave of attacks to acquiesce to the Danish demands for gafol or tribute, which would come to be known as Danegeld, 'Dane-payment'. This sudden relief from attack Æthelred used to gather his thoughts, resources, and armies: the fleet's departure in 1000 "allowed Æthelred to carry out a devastation of Strathclyde, the motive for which is part of the lost history of the north."
In 1001, a Danish fleet – perhaps the same fleet from 1000 – returned and ravaged west Sussex. During its movements, the fleet regularly returned to its base in the Isle of Wight. There was later an attempted attack in the south of Devon, though the English mounted a successful defence at Exeter. Nevertheless, Æthelred must have felt at a loss, and, in the Spring of 1002, the English bought a truce for £24,000. Æthelred's frequent payments of immense Danegelds are often held up as exemplary of the incompetency of his government and his own short-sightedness. However, Keynes points out that such payments had been practice for at least a century, and had been adopted by Alfred the Great, Charles the Bald and many others. Indeed, in some cases it "may have seemed the best available way of protecting the people against loss of life, shelter, livestock and crops. Though undeniably burdensome, it constituted a measure for which the king could rely on widespread support."
Æthelred ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England to take place on 13 November 1002, St Brice's Day. Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, was said to have been among the victims. It is likely that a wish to avenge her was a principal motive for Sweyn's invasion of western England the following year. By 1004 Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich. In this year, a nobleman of East Anglia, Ulfcytel Snillingr met Sweyn in force, and made an impression on the until-then rampant Danish expedition. Though Ulfcytel was eventually defeated, outside Thetford, he caused the Danes heavy losses and was nearly able to destroy their ships. The Danish army left England for Denmark in 1005, perhaps because of the losses they sustained in East Anglia, perhaps from the very severe famine which afflicted the continent and the British Isles in that year.
An expedition the following year was bought off in early 1007 by tribute money of £36,000, and for the next two years England was free from attack. In 1008, the government created a new fleet of warships, organised on a national scale, but this was weakened when one of its commanders took to piracy, and the king and his council decided not to risk it in a general action. In Stenton's view: "The history of England in the next generation was really determined between 1009 and 1012...the ignominious collapse of the English defence caused a loss of morale which was irreparable." The Danish army of 1009, led by Thorkell the Tall and his brother Hemming, was the most formidable force to invade England since Æthelred became king. It harried England until it was bought off by £48,000 in April 1012.
Sweyn then launched an invasion in 1013 intending to crown himself king of England. By the end of 1013 English resistance had collapsed and Sweyn had conquered the country, forcing Æthelred into exile in Normandy. But the situation changed suddenly when Sweyn died on 3 February 1014. The crews of the Danish ships in the Trent that had supported Sweyn immediately swore their allegiance to Sweyn's son Cnut the Great, but leading English noblemen sent a deputation to Æthelred to negotiate his restoration to the throne. He was required to declare his loyalty to them, to bring in reforms regarding everything that they disliked and to forgive all that had been said and done against him in his previous reign. The terms of this agreement are of great constitutional interest in early English history as they are the first recorded pact between a King and his subjects; they are also widely regarded as showing that many English noblemen had submitted to Sweyn simply because of their distrust of Æthelred. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
they [the counsellors] said that no lord was dearer to them than their natural (gecynde) lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before. Then the king sent his son Edward hither with his messengers and bade them greet all his people and said that he would be a gracious (hold) lord to them, and reform all the things which they hated; and all the things which had been said and done against him should be forgiven on condition that they all unanimously turned to him (to him gecyrdon) without treachery. And complete friendship was then established with oath and pledge (mid worde and mid wædde) on both sides, and they pronounced every Danish king an exile from England forever.
Æthelred then launched an expedition against Cnut and his allies. Only the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey (modern North Lincolnshire) supported Cnut. Æthelred first set out to recapture London, apparently with the help of the Norwegian Olaf Haraldsson. According to the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, Olaf led a successful attack on London Bridge with a fleet of ships. He then went on to help Æthelred retake London and other parts of the country. Cnut and his army decided to withdraw from England in April 1014, leaving his Lindsey allies to suffer Æthelred's revenge. In about 1016 it is thought that Olaf left to concentrate on raiding western Europe. In the same year, Cnut returned to find a complex and volatile situation unfolding in England. Æthelred's son, Edmund Ironside, had revolted against his father and established himself in the North, which was angry at Cnut and Æthelred for the ravaging of Lindsey and was prepared to support Edmund in any uprising against both of them.
Over the next few months Cnut conquered most of England, while Edmund rejoined Æthelred to defend London when Æthelred died on 23 April 1016. The subsequent war between Edmund and Cnut ended in a decisive victory for Cnut at the Battle of Assandun on 18 October 1016. Edmund's reputation as a warrior was such that Cnut nevertheless agreed to divide England, Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut the whole of the country beyond the Thames. However, Edmund died on 30 November, and Cnut became king of the whole country.
Æthelred was buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral, London. The tomb and his monument in the quire at Old St Paul's Cathedral were destroyed along with the cathedral in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A modern monument in the crypt lists his among the important graves lost.
Æthelred's government produced extensive legislation, which he "ruthlessly enforced". Records of at least six legal codes survive from his reign, covering a range of topics. Notably, one of the members of his council (known as the Witan) was Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, a well-known homilist. The three latest codes from Æthelred's reign seemed to have been drafted by Wulfstan. These codes are extensively concerned with ecclesiastical affairs. They also exhibit the characteristics of Wulfstan's highly rhetorical style. Wulfstan went on to draft codes for King Cnut, and recycled there many of the laws which were used in Æthelred's codes.
Despite the failure of his government in the face of the Danish threat, Æthelred's reign was not without some important institutional achievements. The quality of the coinage, a good indicator of the prevailing economic conditions, significantly improved during his reign due to his numerous coinage reform laws.
Later perspectives of Æthelred have been less than flattering. Numerous legends and anecdotes have sprung up to explain his shortcomings, often elaborating abusively on his character and failures. One such anecdote is given by William of Malmesbury (lived c. 1080 – c. 1143), who reports that Æthelred had defecated in the baptismal font as a child, which led St Dunstan to prophesy that the English monarchy would be overthrown during his reign. This story is, however, a fabrication, and a similar story is told of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Copronymus (the epithet means 'dung-named'), another medieval monarch who was unpopular among certain of his subjects.
Efforts to rehabilitate Æthelred's reputation have gained momentum since about 1980. Chief among the rehabilitators has been Simon Keynes, who has often argued that our poor impression of Æthelred is almost entirely based upon after-the-fact accounts of, and later accretions to, the narrative of events during Æthelred's long and complex reign. Chief among the culprits is in fact one of the most important sources for the history of the period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which, as it reports events with a retrospect of 15 years, cannot help but interpret events with the eventual English defeat a foregone conclusion.
Yet, as virtually no strictly contemporary narrative account of the events of Æthelred's reign exists, historians are forced to rely on what evidence there is. Keynes and others thus draw attention to some of the inevitable snares of investigating the history of a man whom later popular opinion has utterly damned. Recent cautious assessments of Æthelred's reign have more often uncovered reasons to doubt, rather than uphold, Æthelred's later infamy. Though the failures of his government will always put Æthelred's reign in the shadow of the reigns of kings Edgar, Æthelstan, and Alfred, historians' current impression of Æthelred's personal character is certainly not as unflattering as it once was: "Æthelred's misfortune as a ruler was owed not so much to any supposed defects of his imagined character, as to a combination of circumstances which anyone would have found difficult to control."
Æthelred has been credited with the formation of a local investigative body made up of twelve thegns who were charged with publishing the names of any notorious or wicked men in their respective districts. Because the members of these bodies were under solemn oath to act in accordance with the law and their own good consciences, they have been seen by some legal historians as the prototype for the English grand jury. Æthelred makes provision for such a body in the Wantage Code (III Æthelred), promulgations enacted at Wantage in 997, which states:
þæt man habbe gemot on ælcum wæpentace; & gan ut þa yldestan XII þegnas & se gerefa mid, & swerian on þam haligdome, þe heom man on hand sylle, þæt hig nellan nænne sacleasan man forsecgean ne nænne sacne forhelan. & niman þonne þa tihtbysian men, þe mid þam gerefan habbað, & heora ælc sylle VI healfmarc wedd, healf landrican & healf wæpentake.
that there shall be an assembly in every wapentake, and in that assembly shall go forth the twelve eldest thegns and the reeve along with them, and let them swear on holy relics, which shall be placed in their hands, that they will never knowingly accuse an innocent man nor conceal a guilty man. And thereafter let them seize those notorious [lit. "charge-laden"] men, who have business with the reeve, and let each of them give a security of 6 half-marks, half of which shall go to the lord of that district, and half to the wapentake.
But the wording here suggests that Æthelred was perhaps revamping or re-confirming a custom which had already existed. He may actually have been expanding an established English custom for use among the Danish citizens in the North (the Danelaw). Previously, King Edgar had legislated along similar lines in his Whitbordesstan code:
ic wille, þæt ælc mon sy under borge ge binnan burgum ge buton burgum. & gewitnes sy geset to ælcere byrig & to ælcum hundrode. To ælcere byrig XXXVI syn gecorone to gewitnesse; to smalum burgum & to ælcum hundrode XII, buton ge ma willan. & ælc mon mid heora gewitnysse bigcge & sylle ælc þara ceapa, þe he bigcge oððe sylle aþer oððe burge oððe on wæpengetace. & heora ælc, þonne hine man ærest to gewitnysse gecysð, sylle þæne að, þæt he næfre, ne for feo ne for lufe ne for ege, ne ætsace nanes þara þinga, þe he to gewitnysse wæs, & nan oðer þingc on gewitnysse ne cyðe buton þæt an, þæt he geseah oððe gehyrde. & swa geæþdera manna syn on ælcum ceape twegen oððe þry to gewitnysse.
It is my wish that each person be in surety, both within settled areas and without. And 'witnessing' shall be established in each city and each hundred. To each city let there be 36 chosen for witnessing; to small towns and to each hundred let there be 12, unless they desire more. And everybody shall purchase and sell their goods in the presence a witness, whether he is buying or selling something, whether in a city or a wapentake. And each of them, when they first choose to become a witness, shall give an oath that he will never, neither for wealth nor love nor fear, deny any of those things which he will be a witness to, and will not, in his capacity as a witness, make known any thing except that which he saw and heard. And let there be either two or three of these sworn witnesses at every sale of goods.
The 'legend' of an Anglo-Saxon origin to the jury was first challenged seriously by Heinrich Brunner in 1872, who claimed that evidence of the jury was only seen for the first time during the reign of Henry II, some 200 years after the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, and that the practice had originated with the Franks, who in turn had influenced the Normans, who thence introduced it to England. Since Brunner's thesis, the origin of the English jury has been much disputed. Throughout the 20th century, legal historians disagreed about whether the practice was English in origin, or was introduced, directly or indirectly, from either Scandinavia or Francia. Recently, the legal historians Patrick Wormald and Michael Macnair have reasserted arguments in favour of finding in practices current during the Anglo-Saxon period traces of the Angevin practice of conducting inquests using bodies of sworn, private witnesses. Wormald has gone as far as to present evidence suggesting that the English practice outlined in Æthelred's Wantage Code is at least as old as, if not older than, 975, and ultimately traces it back to a Carolingian model (something Brunner had done). However, no scholarly consensus has yet been reached.
The twelfth-century English chronicler, John of Worcester, describes Æthelred as "elegant in his manners, handsome in visage, glorious in appearance". No contemporary descriptions of Æthelred's appearance survive. The thirteenth-century Icelandic text, Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu, preserves a positive assessment of Æthelred's character, in which he is described by a visiting Icelander as "a good prince", a "generous prince", and a "war-swift king".
Æthelred married first Ælfgifu, daughter of Thored, earl of Northumbria, in about 985. Their known children are:
In 1002 Æthelred married Emma of Normandy, sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their children were:
All of Æthelred's sons were named after English kings. | [
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"text": "Æthelred II (Old English: Æþelræd, pronounced [ˈæðelræːd]; Old Norse: Aðalráðr; c. 966 – 23 April 1016), known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death in 1016. His epithet comes from the Old English word unræd meaning \"poorly advised\"; it is a pun on his name, which means \"well advised\".",
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"text": "Æthelred was the son of King Edgar the Peaceful and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, King Edward the Martyr.",
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{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The chief characteristic of Æthelred's reign was conflict with the Danes. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s, becoming markedly more serious in the early 990s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, Æthelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish king. In 1002, Æthelred ordered what became known as the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danish settlers. In 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded England, as a result of which Æthelred fled to Normandy in 1013 and was replaced by Sweyn. After Sweyn died in 1014, Æthelred returned to the throne, but he died just two years later. Æthelred's 37-year combined reign was the longest of any Anglo-Saxon English king, and was only surpassed in the 13th century, by Henry III. Æthelred was briefly succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside, but he died after a few months and was replaced by Sweyn's son Cnut.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Æthelred's first name, composed of the elements æðele, \"noble\", and ræd, \"counsel, advice\", is typical of the compound names of those who belonged to the royal House of Wessex, and it characteristically alliterates with the names of his ancestors, like Æthelwulf (\"noble-wolf\"), Ælfred (\"elf-counsel\"), Eadweard (\"rich-protection\"), and Eadgar (\"rich-spear\").",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Æthelred's notorious nickname, Old English Unræd, is commonly translated into present-day English as \"The Unready\" (less often, though less inaccurately, as \"The Redeless\"). The Anglo-Saxon noun unræd means \"evil counsel\", \"bad plan\", or \"folly\". It was most often used in reference to decisions and deeds, but once in reference to the ill-advised disobedience of Adam and Eve. The element ræd in unræd is the same element in Æthelred's name that means \"counsel\" (compare the cognate in the German word Rat and Dutch raad). Thus Æþelræd Unræd is an oxymoron: \"Noble counsel, No counsel\". The nickname has also been translated as \"ill-advised\", \"ill-prepared\", thus \"Æthelred the ill-advised\".",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Because the nickname was first recorded in the 1180s, more than 150 years after Æthelred's death, it is doubtful that it carries any implications as to the reputation of the king in the eyes of his contemporaries or near contemporaries.",
"title": "Name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Sir Frank Stenton remarked that \"much that has brought condemnation of historians on King Æthelred may well be due in the last resort to the circumstances under which he became king.\" Æthelred's father, King Edgar, had died suddenly in July 975, leaving two young sons behind. The elder, Edward (later Edward the Martyr), was probably illegitimate, and was \"still a youth on the verge of manhood\" in 975. The younger son was Æthelred, whose mother, Ælfthryth, Edgar had married in 964. Ælfthryth was the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, and widow of Æthelwald, Ealdorman of East Anglia. At the time of his father's death, Æthelred could have been no more than 10 years old. As the elder of Edgar's sons, Edward – reportedly a young man given to frequent violent outbursts – probably would have naturally succeeded to the throne of England despite his young age, had he not \"offended many important persons by his intolerable violence of speech and behaviour.\" In any case, a number of English nobles took to opposing Edward's succession and to defending Æthelred's claim to the throne; Æthelred was, after all, the son of Edgar's last, living wife, and no rumour of illegitimacy is known to have plagued Æthelred's birth, as it might have his elder brother's.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Both boys, Æthelred certainly, were too young to have played any significant part in the political manoeuvring which followed Edgar's death. It was the brothers' supporters, and not the brothers themselves, who were responsible for the turmoil which accompanied the choice of a successor to the throne. Æthelred's cause was led by his mother and included Ælfhere, Ealdorman of Mercia and Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, while Edward's claim was supported by Dunstan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Oswald, the Archbishop of York among other noblemen, notably Æthelwine, Ealdorman of East Anglia, and Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex. In the end, Edward's supporters proved the more powerful and persuasive, and he was crowned king at Kingston upon Thames before the year was out.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Edward reigned for only three years before he was murdered by members of his brother's household. Though little is known about Edward's short reign, it is known that it was marked by political turmoil. Edgar had made extensive grants of land to monasteries which pursued the new monastic ideals of ecclesiastical reform, but these disrupted aristocratic families' traditional patronage. The end of his firm rule saw a reversal of this policy, with aristocrats recovering their lost properties or seizing new ones. This was opposed by Dunstan, but according to Cyril Hart, \"The presence of supporters of church reform on both sides indicates that the conflict between them depended as much on issues of land ownership and local power as on ecclesiastical legitimacy. Adherents of both Edward and Æthelred can be seen appropriating, or recovering, monastic lands.\" Nevertheless, favour for Edward must have been strong among the monastic communities. When Edward was killed at Æthelred's estate at Corfe Castle in Dorset in March 978, the job of recording the event, as well as reactions to it, fell to monastic writers. Stenton offers a summary of the earliest account of Edward's murder, which comes from a work praising the life of St Oswald:",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On the surface his [Edward's] relations with Æthelred his half-brother and Ælfthryth his stepmother were friendly, and he was visiting them informally when he was killed. [Æthelred's] retainers came out to meet him with ostentatious signs of respect, and then, before he had dismounted, surrounded him, seized his hands, and stabbed him ... So far as can be seen the murder was planned and carried out by Æthelred's household men in order that their young master might become king. There is nothing to support the allegation, which first appears in writing more than a century later, that Queen Ælfthryth had plotted her stepson's death. No one was punished for a part in the crime, and Æthelred, who was crowned a month after the murder, began to reign in an atmosphere of suspicion which destroyed the prestige of the crown. It was never fully restored in his lifetime.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Nevertheless, at first, the outlook of the new king's officers and counsellors seems in no way to have been bleak. According to one chronicler, the coronation of Æthelred took place with much rejoicing by the councillors of the English people. Simon Keynes notes that \"Byrhtferth of Ramsey states similarly that when Æthelred was consecrated king, by Archbishop Dunstan and Archbishop Oswald, 'there was great joy at his consecration', and describes the king in this connection as 'a young man in respect of years, elegant in his manners, with an attractive face and handsome appearance'.\"",
"title": "Kingship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Æthelred was between nine and twelve years old when he became king and affairs were initially managed by leading councillors such as Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, Queen Ælfthryth and Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury. Æthelwold was especially influential and when he died, on 1 August 984, Æthelred abandoned his early councillors and launched on policies which involved encroachment on church privileges, to his later regret. In a charter of 993 he stated that Æthelwold's death had deprived the country of one \"whose industry and pastoral care administered not only to my interest but also to that of all inhabitants of the country.\"",
"title": "Kingship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Ælfthryth enjoyed renewed status in the 990s, when she brought up his heirs and her brother Ordulf became one of Æthelred's leading advisers. She died between 1000 and 1002.",
"title": "Kingship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Despite conflicts with the Danes throughout his reign, Æthelred's reign of England saw expansion in England's population, trade and wealth.",
"title": "Kingship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "England had experienced a period of peace after the reconquest of the Danelaw in the mid-10th century by King Edgar, Æthelred's father. However, beginning in 980, when Æthelred could not have been more than 14 years old, small companies of Danish adventurers carried out a series of coastline raids against England. Hampshire, Thanet and Cheshire were attacked in 980, Devon and Cornwall in 981, and Dorset in 982. A period of six years then passed before, in 988, another coastal attack is recorded as having taken place to the south-west, though here a famous battle was fought between the invaders and the thegns of Devon. Stenton notes that, though this series of isolated raids had no lasting effect on England itself, \"their chief historical importance is that they brought England for the first time into diplomatic contact with Normandy.\"",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Danish attacks started becoming more serious in the early 990s, with highly devastating assaults in 1006–1007 and 1009–1012. Tribute payments by Æthelred did not successfully temper the Danish attacks. Æthelred's forces were primarily composed of infantry, with substantial numbers of foreign mercenaries. He did not have substantial numbers of trained cavalry forces.",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "During this period, the Normans offered shelter to Danes returning from raids on England. This led to tension between the English and Norman courts, and word of their enmity eventually reached Pope John XV. The pope was disposed to dissolve their hostility towards each other, and took steps to engineer a peace between England and Normandy, which was ratified in Rouen in 991.",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In August 991, a sizeable Danish fleet began a sustained campaign in the south-east of England. It arrived off Folkestone, in Kent, and made its way around the south-east coast and up the River Blackwater, coming eventually to its estuary and occupying Northey Island. About 2 kilometres (1 mile) west of Northey lies the coastal town of Maldon, where Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, was stationed with a company of thegns. The battle that followed between English and Danes is immortalised by the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, which describes the doomed but heroic attempt of Byrhtnoth to defend the coast of Essex against overwhelming odds. This was the first of a series of crushing defeats felt by the English: beaten first by Danish raiders, and later by organised Danish armies. Stenton summarises the events of the poem:",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "For access to the mainland they (the Danes) depended on a causeway, flooded at high tide, which led from Northey to the flats along the southern margin of the estuary. Before they (the Danes) had left their camp on the island[,] Byrhtnoth, with his retainers and a force of local militia, had taken possession of the landward end of the causeway. Refusing a demand for tribute, shouted across the water while the tide was high, Byrhtnoth drew up his men along the bank, and waited for the ebb. As the water fell the raiders began to stream out along the causeway. But three of Byrhtnoth's retainers held it against them, and at last they asked to be allowed to cross unhindered and fight on equal terms on the mainland. With what even those who admired him most called 'over-courage', Byrhtnoth agreed to this; the pirates rushed through the falling tide, and battle was joined. Its issue was decided by Byrhtnoth's fall. Many even of his own men immediately took to flight and the English ranks were broken. What gives enduring interest to the battle is the superb courage with which a group of Byrhtnoth's thegns, knowing that the fight was lost, deliberately gave themselves to death in order that they might avenge their lord.\"",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the aftermath of Maldon, it was decided that the English should grant the tribute to the Danes that they desired, and so a gafol of £10,000 was paid them for their peace. Yet it was presumably the Danish fleet that had beaten Byrhtnoth at Maldon that continued to ravage the English coast from 991 to 993. In 994, the Danish fleet, which had swollen in ranks since 991, turned up the Thames estuary and headed toward London. The battle fought there was inconclusive.",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "It was about this time that Æthelred met with the leaders of the Danish fleet and arranged an uneasy accord. A treaty was signed that provided for seemingly civilised arrangements between the then-settled Danish companies and the English government, such as regulation of settlement disputes and trade. But the treaty also stipulated that the ravaging and slaughter of the previous year would be forgotten, and ended abruptly by stating that £22,000 of gold and silver had been paid to the raiders as the price of peace. In 994, Olaf Tryggvason, a Norwegian prince and already a baptised Christian, was confirmed as Christian in a ceremony at Andover; King Æthelred stood as his sponsor. After receiving gifts, Olaf promised \"that he would never come back to England in hostility.\" Olaf then left England for Norway and never returned, though \"other component parts of the Viking force appear to have decided to stay in England, for it is apparent from the treaty that some had chosen to enter into King Æthelred's service as mercenaries, based presumably on the Isle of Wight.\"",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 997, Danish raids began again. According to Keynes, \"there is no suggestion that this was a new fleet or army, and presumably the mercenary force created in 994 from the residue of the raiding army of 991 had turned on those whom it had been hired to protect.\" It harried Cornwall, Devon, western Somerset and south Wales in 997, Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex in 998. In 999, it raided Kent, and, in 1000, it left England for Normandy, perhaps because the English had refused in this latest wave of attacks to acquiesce to the Danish demands for gafol or tribute, which would come to be known as Danegeld, 'Dane-payment'. This sudden relief from attack Æthelred used to gather his thoughts, resources, and armies: the fleet's departure in 1000 \"allowed Æthelred to carry out a devastation of Strathclyde, the motive for which is part of the lost history of the north.\"",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1001, a Danish fleet – perhaps the same fleet from 1000 – returned and ravaged west Sussex. During its movements, the fleet regularly returned to its base in the Isle of Wight. There was later an attempted attack in the south of Devon, though the English mounted a successful defence at Exeter. Nevertheless, Æthelred must have felt at a loss, and, in the Spring of 1002, the English bought a truce for £24,000. Æthelred's frequent payments of immense Danegelds are often held up as exemplary of the incompetency of his government and his own short-sightedness. However, Keynes points out that such payments had been practice for at least a century, and had been adopted by Alfred the Great, Charles the Bald and many others. Indeed, in some cases it \"may have seemed the best available way of protecting the people against loss of life, shelter, livestock and crops. Though undeniably burdensome, it constituted a measure for which the king could rely on widespread support.\"",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Æthelred ordered the massacre of all Danish men in England to take place on 13 November 1002, St Brice's Day. Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, was said to have been among the victims. It is likely that a wish to avenge her was a principal motive for Sweyn's invasion of western England the following year. By 1004 Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich. In this year, a nobleman of East Anglia, Ulfcytel Snillingr met Sweyn in force, and made an impression on the until-then rampant Danish expedition. Though Ulfcytel was eventually defeated, outside Thetford, he caused the Danes heavy losses and was nearly able to destroy their ships. The Danish army left England for Denmark in 1005, perhaps because of the losses they sustained in East Anglia, perhaps from the very severe famine which afflicted the continent and the British Isles in that year.",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "An expedition the following year was bought off in early 1007 by tribute money of £36,000, and for the next two years England was free from attack. In 1008, the government created a new fleet of warships, organised on a national scale, but this was weakened when one of its commanders took to piracy, and the king and his council decided not to risk it in a general action. In Stenton's view: \"The history of England in the next generation was really determined between 1009 and 1012...the ignominious collapse of the English defence caused a loss of morale which was irreparable.\" The Danish army of 1009, led by Thorkell the Tall and his brother Hemming, was the most formidable force to invade England since Æthelred became king. It harried England until it was bought off by £48,000 in April 1012.",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Sweyn then launched an invasion in 1013 intending to crown himself king of England. By the end of 1013 English resistance had collapsed and Sweyn had conquered the country, forcing Æthelred into exile in Normandy. But the situation changed suddenly when Sweyn died on 3 February 1014. The crews of the Danish ships in the Trent that had supported Sweyn immediately swore their allegiance to Sweyn's son Cnut the Great, but leading English noblemen sent a deputation to Æthelred to negotiate his restoration to the throne. He was required to declare his loyalty to them, to bring in reforms regarding everything that they disliked and to forgive all that had been said and done against him in his previous reign. The terms of this agreement are of great constitutional interest in early English history as they are the first recorded pact between a King and his subjects; they are also widely regarded as showing that many English noblemen had submitted to Sweyn simply because of their distrust of Æthelred. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "they [the counsellors] said that no lord was dearer to them than their natural (gecynde) lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before. Then the king sent his son Edward hither with his messengers and bade them greet all his people and said that he would be a gracious (hold) lord to them, and reform all the things which they hated; and all the things which had been said and done against him should be forgiven on condition that they all unanimously turned to him (to him gecyrdon) without treachery. And complete friendship was then established with oath and pledge (mid worde and mid wædde) on both sides, and they pronounced every Danish king an exile from England forever.",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Æthelred then launched an expedition against Cnut and his allies. Only the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey (modern North Lincolnshire) supported Cnut. Æthelred first set out to recapture London, apparently with the help of the Norwegian Olaf Haraldsson. According to the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson, Olaf led a successful attack on London Bridge with a fleet of ships. He then went on to help Æthelred retake London and other parts of the country. Cnut and his army decided to withdraw from England in April 1014, leaving his Lindsey allies to suffer Æthelred's revenge. In about 1016 it is thought that Olaf left to concentrate on raiding western Europe. In the same year, Cnut returned to find a complex and volatile situation unfolding in England. Æthelred's son, Edmund Ironside, had revolted against his father and established himself in the North, which was angry at Cnut and Æthelred for the ravaging of Lindsey and was prepared to support Edmund in any uprising against both of them.",
"title": "Conflict with the Danes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Over the next few months Cnut conquered most of England, while Edmund rejoined Æthelred to defend London when Æthelred died on 23 April 1016. The subsequent war between Edmund and Cnut ended in a decisive victory for Cnut at the Battle of Assandun on 18 October 1016. Edmund's reputation as a warrior was such that Cnut nevertheless agreed to divide England, Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut the whole of the country beyond the Thames. However, Edmund died on 30 November, and Cnut became king of the whole country.",
"title": "Death and burial"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Æthelred was buried in Old St Paul's Cathedral, London. The tomb and his monument in the quire at Old St Paul's Cathedral were destroyed along with the cathedral in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A modern monument in the crypt lists his among the important graves lost.",
"title": "Death and burial"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Æthelred's government produced extensive legislation, which he \"ruthlessly enforced\". Records of at least six legal codes survive from his reign, covering a range of topics. Notably, one of the members of his council (known as the Witan) was Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York, a well-known homilist. The three latest codes from Æthelred's reign seemed to have been drafted by Wulfstan. These codes are extensively concerned with ecclesiastical affairs. They also exhibit the characteristics of Wulfstan's highly rhetorical style. Wulfstan went on to draft codes for King Cnut, and recycled there many of the laws which were used in Æthelred's codes.",
"title": "Legislation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Despite the failure of his government in the face of the Danish threat, Æthelred's reign was not without some important institutional achievements. The quality of the coinage, a good indicator of the prevailing economic conditions, significantly improved during his reign due to his numerous coinage reform laws.",
"title": "Legislation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Later perspectives of Æthelred have been less than flattering. Numerous legends and anecdotes have sprung up to explain his shortcomings, often elaborating abusively on his character and failures. One such anecdote is given by William of Malmesbury (lived c. 1080 – c. 1143), who reports that Æthelred had defecated in the baptismal font as a child, which led St Dunstan to prophesy that the English monarchy would be overthrown during his reign. This story is, however, a fabrication, and a similar story is told of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Copronymus (the epithet means 'dung-named'), another medieval monarch who was unpopular among certain of his subjects.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Efforts to rehabilitate Æthelred's reputation have gained momentum since about 1980. Chief among the rehabilitators has been Simon Keynes, who has often argued that our poor impression of Æthelred is almost entirely based upon after-the-fact accounts of, and later accretions to, the narrative of events during Æthelred's long and complex reign. Chief among the culprits is in fact one of the most important sources for the history of the period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which, as it reports events with a retrospect of 15 years, cannot help but interpret events with the eventual English defeat a foregone conclusion.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Yet, as virtually no strictly contemporary narrative account of the events of Æthelred's reign exists, historians are forced to rely on what evidence there is. Keynes and others thus draw attention to some of the inevitable snares of investigating the history of a man whom later popular opinion has utterly damned. Recent cautious assessments of Æthelred's reign have more often uncovered reasons to doubt, rather than uphold, Æthelred's later infamy. Though the failures of his government will always put Æthelred's reign in the shadow of the reigns of kings Edgar, Æthelstan, and Alfred, historians' current impression of Æthelred's personal character is certainly not as unflattering as it once was: \"Æthelred's misfortune as a ruler was owed not so much to any supposed defects of his imagined character, as to a combination of circumstances which anyone would have found difficult to control.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Æthelred has been credited with the formation of a local investigative body made up of twelve thegns who were charged with publishing the names of any notorious or wicked men in their respective districts. Because the members of these bodies were under solemn oath to act in accordance with the law and their own good consciences, they have been seen by some legal historians as the prototype for the English grand jury. Æthelred makes provision for such a body in the Wantage Code (III Æthelred), promulgations enacted at Wantage in 997, which states:",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "þæt man habbe gemot on ælcum wæpentace; & gan ut þa yldestan XII þegnas & se gerefa mid, & swerian on þam haligdome, þe heom man on hand sylle, þæt hig nellan nænne sacleasan man forsecgean ne nænne sacne forhelan. & niman þonne þa tihtbysian men, þe mid þam gerefan habbað, & heora ælc sylle VI healfmarc wedd, healf landrican & healf wæpentake.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "that there shall be an assembly in every wapentake, and in that assembly shall go forth the twelve eldest thegns and the reeve along with them, and let them swear on holy relics, which shall be placed in their hands, that they will never knowingly accuse an innocent man nor conceal a guilty man. And thereafter let them seize those notorious [lit. \"charge-laden\"] men, who have business with the reeve, and let each of them give a security of 6 half-marks, half of which shall go to the lord of that district, and half to the wapentake.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "But the wording here suggests that Æthelred was perhaps revamping or re-confirming a custom which had already existed. He may actually have been expanding an established English custom for use among the Danish citizens in the North (the Danelaw). Previously, King Edgar had legislated along similar lines in his Whitbordesstan code:",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "ic wille, þæt ælc mon sy under borge ge binnan burgum ge buton burgum. & gewitnes sy geset to ælcere byrig & to ælcum hundrode. To ælcere byrig XXXVI syn gecorone to gewitnesse; to smalum burgum & to ælcum hundrode XII, buton ge ma willan. & ælc mon mid heora gewitnysse bigcge & sylle ælc þara ceapa, þe he bigcge oððe sylle aþer oððe burge oððe on wæpengetace. & heora ælc, þonne hine man ærest to gewitnysse gecysð, sylle þæne að, þæt he næfre, ne for feo ne for lufe ne for ege, ne ætsace nanes þara þinga, þe he to gewitnysse wæs, & nan oðer þingc on gewitnysse ne cyðe buton þæt an, þæt he geseah oððe gehyrde. & swa geæþdera manna syn on ælcum ceape twegen oððe þry to gewitnysse.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "It is my wish that each person be in surety, both within settled areas and without. And 'witnessing' shall be established in each city and each hundred. To each city let there be 36 chosen for witnessing; to small towns and to each hundred let there be 12, unless they desire more. And everybody shall purchase and sell their goods in the presence a witness, whether he is buying or selling something, whether in a city or a wapentake. And each of them, when they first choose to become a witness, shall give an oath that he will never, neither for wealth nor love nor fear, deny any of those things which he will be a witness to, and will not, in his capacity as a witness, make known any thing except that which he saw and heard. And let there be either two or three of these sworn witnesses at every sale of goods.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The 'legend' of an Anglo-Saxon origin to the jury was first challenged seriously by Heinrich Brunner in 1872, who claimed that evidence of the jury was only seen for the first time during the reign of Henry II, some 200 years after the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, and that the practice had originated with the Franks, who in turn had influenced the Normans, who thence introduced it to England. Since Brunner's thesis, the origin of the English jury has been much disputed. Throughout the 20th century, legal historians disagreed about whether the practice was English in origin, or was introduced, directly or indirectly, from either Scandinavia or Francia. Recently, the legal historians Patrick Wormald and Michael Macnair have reasserted arguments in favour of finding in practices current during the Anglo-Saxon period traces of the Angevin practice of conducting inquests using bodies of sworn, private witnesses. Wormald has gone as far as to present evidence suggesting that the English practice outlined in Æthelred's Wantage Code is at least as old as, if not older than, 975, and ultimately traces it back to a Carolingian model (something Brunner had done). However, no scholarly consensus has yet been reached.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The twelfth-century English chronicler, John of Worcester, describes Æthelred as \"elegant in his manners, handsome in visage, glorious in appearance\". No contemporary descriptions of Æthelred's appearance survive. The thirteenth-century Icelandic text, Gunnlaugs saga Ormstungu, preserves a positive assessment of Æthelred's character, in which he is described by a visiting Icelander as \"a good prince\", a \"generous prince\", and a \"war-swift king\".",
"title": "Appearance and character"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Æthelred married first Ælfgifu, daughter of Thored, earl of Northumbria, in about 985. Their known children are:",
"title": "Marriages and issue"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 1002 Æthelred married Emma of Normandy, sister of Richard II, Duke of Normandy. Their children were:",
"title": "Marriages and issue"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "All of Æthelred's sons were named after English kings.",
"title": "Marriages and issue"
}
]
| Æthelred II, known as Æthelred the Unready, was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death in 1016. His epithet comes from the Old English word unræd meaning "poorly advised"; it is a pun on his name, which means "well advised". Æthelred was the son of King Edgar the Peaceful and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, King Edward the Martyr. The chief characteristic of Æthelred's reign was conflict with the Danes. After several decades of relative peace, Danish raids on English territory began again in earnest in the 980s, becoming markedly more serious in the early 990s. Following the Battle of Maldon in 991, Æthelred paid tribute, or Danegeld, to the Danish king. In 1002, Æthelred ordered what became known as the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danish settlers. In 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded England, as a result of which Æthelred fled to Normandy in 1013 and was replaced by Sweyn. After Sweyn died in 1014, Æthelred returned to the throne, but he died just two years later. Æthelred's 37-year combined reign was the longest of any Anglo-Saxon English king, and was only surpassed in the 13th century, by Henry III. Æthelred was briefly succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside, but he died after a few months and was replaced by Sweyn's son Cnut. | 2001-11-15T21:09:28Z | 2023-12-27T18:40:06Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelred_the_Unready |
10,085 | Edward Elgar | Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (/ˈɛlɡɑːr/ ; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.
Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory.
In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere.
Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius.
Edward Elgar was born in the small village of Lower Broadheath, near Worcester, England, on 2 June 1857. His father, William Henry Elgar (1821–1906), was raised in Dover and had been apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a piano tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music and musical instruments. In 1848 he married Ann Greening (1822–1902), daughter of a farm worker.
Edward was the fourth of their seven children. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edward's birth, and he was baptised and brought up as a Roman Catholic, to the disapproval of his father. William Elgar was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist of St George's Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, from 1846 to 1885. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin.
All the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. By the age of eight, Elgar was taking piano and violin lessons, and his father, who tuned the pianos at many grand houses in Worcestershire, would sometimes take him along, giving him the chance to display his skill to important local figures.
Elgar's mother was interested in the arts and encouraged his musical development. He inherited from her a discerning taste for literature and a passionate love of the countryside. His friend and biographer W. H. "Billy" Reed wrote that Elgar's early surroundings had an influence that "permeated all his work and gave to his whole life that subtle but none the less true and sturdy English quality". He began composing at an early age; for a play written and acted by the Elgar children when he was about ten, he wrote music that forty years later he rearranged with only minor changes and orchestrated as the suites titled The Wand of Youth.
Until he was fifteen, Elgar received a general education at Littleton (now Lyttleton) House school, near Worcester. His only formal musical training beyond piano and violin lessons from local teachers consisted of more advanced violin studies with Adolf Pollitzer, during brief visits to London in 1877–78. Elgar said, "my first music was learnt in the Cathedral ... from books borrowed from the music library, when I was eight, nine or ten." He worked through manuals of instruction on organ playing and read every book he could find on the theory of music. He later said that he had been most helped by Hubert Parry's articles in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Elgar began to learn German, in the hope of going to the Leipzig Conservatory for further musical studies, but his father could not afford to send him. Years later, a profile in The Musical Times considered that his failure to get to Leipzig was fortunate for Elgar's musical development: "Thus the budding composer escaped the dogmatism of the schools." However, it was a disappointment to Elgar that on leaving school in 1872 he went not to Leipzig but to the office of a local solicitor as a clerk. He did not find an office career congenial, and for fulfilment he turned not only to music but to literature, becoming a voracious reader. Around this time, he made his first public appearances as a violinist and organist.
After a few months, Elgar left the solicitor to embark on a musical career, giving piano and violin lessons and working occasionally in his father's shop. He was an active member of the Worcester Glee club, along with his father, and he accompanied singers, played the violin, composed and arranged works, and conducted for the first time. Pollitzer believed that, as a violinist, Elgar had the potential to be one of the leading soloists in the country, but Elgar himself, having heard leading virtuosi at London concerts, felt his own violin playing lacked a full enough tone, and he abandoned his ambitions to be a soloist. At twenty-two he took up the post of conductor of the attendants' band at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum in Powick, three miles (five km) from Worcester. The band consisted of: piccolo, flute, clarinet, two cornets, euphonium, three or four first and a similar number of second violins, occasional viola, cello, double bass and piano. Elgar coached the players and wrote and arranged their music, including quadrilles and polkas, for the unusual combination of instruments. The Musical Times wrote, "This practical experience proved to be of the greatest value to the young musician. ... He acquired a practical knowledge of the capabilities of these different instruments. ... He thereby got to know intimately the tone colour, the ins and outs of these and many other instruments." He held the post for five years, from 1879, travelling to Powick once a week. Another post he held in his early days was professor of the violin at the Worcester College for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen.
Although rather solitary and introspective by nature, Elgar thrived in Worcester's musical circles. He played in the violins at the Worcester and Birmingham Festivals, and one great experience was to play Dvořák's Symphony No. 6 and Stabat Mater under the composer's baton. Elgar regularly played the bassoon in a wind quintet, alongside his brother Frank, an oboist (and conductor who ran his own wind band). Elgar arranged numerous pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and others for the quintet, honing his arranging and compositional skills.
In his first trips abroad, Elgar visited Paris in 1880 and Leipzig in 1882. He heard Saint-Saëns play the organ at the Madeleine and attended concerts by first-rate orchestras. In 1882 he wrote, "I got pretty well dosed with Schumann (my ideal!), Brahms, Rubinstein & Wagner, so had no cause to complain." In Leipzig he visited a friend, Helen Weaver, who was a student at the Conservatoire. They became engaged in the summer of 1883, but for unknown reasons the engagement was broken off the next year. Elgar was greatly distressed, and some of his later cryptic dedications of romantic music may have alluded to Helen and his feelings for her. Throughout his life, Elgar was often inspired by close women friends; Helen Weaver was succeeded by Mary Lygon, Dora Penny, Julia Worthington, Alice Stuart Wortley and finally Vera Hockman, who enlivened his old age.
In 1882, seeking more professional orchestral experience, Elgar was employed as a violinist in Birmingham in William Stockley's Orchestra, for whom he played every concert for the next seven years and where he later said he "learned all the music I know". On 13 December 1883 he took part with Stockley in a performance at Birmingham Town Hall of one of his first works for full orchestra, the Sérénade mauresque – the first time one of his compositions had been performed by a professional orchestra. Stockley had invited him to conduct the piece but later recalled "he declined, and, further, insisted upon playing in his place in the orchestra. The consequence was that he had to appear, fiddle in hand, to acknowledge the genuine and hearty applause of the audience." Elgar often went to London in an attempt to get his works published, but this period in his life found him frequently despondent and low on money. He wrote to a friend in April 1884, "My prospects are about as hopeless as ever ... I am not wanting in energy I think, so sometimes I conclude that 'tis want of ability. ... I have no money – not a cent."
When Elgar was 29, he took on a new pupil, Caroline Alice Roberts, known as Alice, daughter of the late Major-General Sir Henry Roberts, and published author of verse and prose fiction. Eight years older than Elgar, Alice became his wife three years later. Elgar's biographer Michael Kennedy writes, "Alice's family was horrified by her intention to marry an unknown musician who worked in a shop and was a Roman Catholic. She was disinherited." They were married on 8 May 1889, at Brompton Oratory. From then until her death, she acted as his business manager and social secretary, dealt with his mood swings, and was a perceptive musical critic. She did her best to gain him the attention of influential society, though with limited success. In time, he would learn to accept the honours given him, realising that they mattered more to her and her social class and recognising what she had given up to further his career. In her diary, she wrote, "The care of a genius is enough of a life work for any woman." As an engagement present, Elgar dedicated his short violin-and-piano piece Salut d'Amour to her. With Alice's encouragement, the Elgars moved to London to be closer to the centre of British musical life, and Elgar started devoting his time to composition. Their only child, Carice Irene, was born at their home in West Kensington on 14 August 1890. Her name, revealed in Elgar's dedication of Salut d'Amour, was a contraction of her mother's names Caroline and Alice.
Elgar took full advantage of the opportunity to hear unfamiliar music. In the days before miniature scores and recordings were available, it was not easy for young composers to get to know new music. Elgar took every chance to do so at the Crystal Palace Concerts. He and Alice attended day after day, hearing music by a wide range of composers. Among these were masters of orchestration from whom he learned much, such as Berlioz and Richard Wagner. His own compositions made little impact on London's musical scene. August Manns conducted Elgar's orchestral version of Salut d'amour and the Suite in D at the Crystal Palace, and two publishers accepted some of Elgar's violin pieces, organ voluntaries, and part songs. Some tantalising opportunities seemed to be within reach but vanished unexpectedly. For example, an offer from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to run through some of his works was withdrawn at the last second when Sir Arthur Sullivan arrived unannounced to rehearse some of his own music. Sullivan was horrified when Elgar later told him what had happened. Elgar's only important commission while in London came from his home city: the Worcester Festival Committee invited him to compose a short orchestral work for the 1890 Three Choirs Festival. The result is described by Diana McVeagh in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, as "his first major work, the assured and uninhibited Froissart." Elgar conducted the first performance in Worcester in September 1890. For lack of other work, he was obliged to leave London in 1891 and return with his wife and child to Worcestershire, where he could earn a living conducting local musical ensembles and teaching. They settled in Alice's former home town, Great Malvern.
During the 1890s, Elgar gradually built up a reputation as a composer, chiefly of works for the great choral festivals of the English Midlands. The Black Knight (1892) and King Olaf (1896), both inspired by Longfellow, The Light of Life (1896) and Caractacus (1898) were all modestly successful, and he obtained a long-standing publisher in Novello and Co. Other works of this decade included the Serenade for Strings (1892) and Three Bavarian Dances (1897). Elgar was of enough consequence locally to recommend the young composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to the Three Choirs Festival for a concert piece, which helped establish the younger man's career. Elgar was catching the attention of prominent critics, but their reviews were polite rather than enthusiastic. Although he was in demand as a festival composer, he was only just getting by financially and felt unappreciated. In 1898, he said he was "very sick at heart over music" and hoped to find a way to succeed with a larger work. His friend August Jaeger tried to lift his spirits: "A day's attack of the blues ... will not drive away your desire, your necessity, which is to exercise those creative faculties which a kind providence has given you. Your time of universal recognition will come."
In 1899, that prediction suddenly came true. At the age of forty-two, Elgar produced the Enigma Variations, which were premiered in London under the baton of the eminent German conductor Hans Richter. In Elgar's own words, "I have sketched a set of Variations on an original theme. The Variations have amused me because I've labelled them with the nicknames of my particular friends ... that is to say I've written the variations each one to represent the mood of the 'party' (the person) ... and have written what I think they would have written – if they were asses enough to compose". He dedicated the work "To my friends pictured within". Probably the best known variation is "Nimrod", depicting Jaeger. Purely musical considerations led Elgar to omit variations depicting Arthur Sullivan and Hubert Parry, whose styles he tried but failed to incorporate in the variations. The large-scale work was received with general acclaim for its originality, charm and craftsmanship, and it established Elgar as the pre-eminent British composer of his generation.
The work is formally titled Variations on an Original Theme; the word "Enigma" appears over the first six bars of music, which led to the familiar version of the title. The enigma is that, although there are fourteen variations on the "original theme", there is another overarching theme, never identified by Elgar, which he said "runs through and over the whole set" but is never heard. Later commentators have observed that although Elgar is today regarded as a characteristically English composer, his orchestral music and this work in particular share much with the Central European tradition typified at the time by the work of Richard Strauss. The Enigma Variations were well received in Germany and Italy, and remain to the present day a worldwide concert staple.
Elgar's biographer Basil Maine commented, "When Sir Arthur Sullivan died in 1900 it became apparent to many that Elgar, although a composer of another build, was his true successor as first musician of the land." Elgar's next major work was eagerly awaited. For the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival of 1900, he set Cardinal John Henry Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius for soloists, chorus and orchestra. Richter conducted the premiere, which was marred by a poorly prepared chorus, which sang badly. Critics recognised the mastery of the piece despite the defects in performance. It was performed in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1901 and again in 1902, conducted by Julius Buths, who also conducted the European premiere of the Enigma Variations in 1901. The German press was enthusiastic. The Cologne Gazette said, "In both parts we meet with beauties of imperishable value. ... Elgar stands on the shoulders of Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt, from whose influences he has freed himself until he has become an important individuality. He is one of the leaders of musical art of modern times." The Düsseldorfer Volksblatt wrote, "A memorable and epoch-making first performance! Since the days of Liszt nothing has been produced in the way of oratorio ... which reaches the greatness and importance of this sacred cantata." Richard Strauss, then widely viewed as the leading composer of his day, was so impressed that in Elgar's presence he proposed a toast to the success of "the first English progressive musician, Meister Elgar." Performances in Vienna, Paris and New York followed, and The Dream of Gerontius soon became equally admired in Britain. According to Kennedy, "It is unquestionably the greatest British work in the oratorio form ... [it] opened a new chapter in the English choral tradition and liberated it from its Handelian preoccupation." Elgar, as a Roman Catholic, was much moved by Newman's poem about the death and redemption of a sinner, but some influential members of the Anglican establishment disagreed. His colleague, Charles Villiers Stanford complained that the work "stinks of incense". The Dean of Gloucester banned Gerontius from his cathedral in 1901, and at Worcester the following year, the Dean insisted on expurgations before allowing a performance.
Elgar is probably best known for the first of the five Pomp and Circumstance Marches, which were composed between 1901 and 1930. It is familiar to millions of television viewers all over the world every year who watch the Last Night of the Proms, where it is traditionally performed. When the theme of the slower middle section (technically called the "trio") of the first march came into his head, he told his friend Dora Penny, "I've got a tune that will knock 'em – will knock 'em flat". When the first march was played in 1901 at a London Promenade Concert, it was conducted by Henry Wood, who later wrote that the audience "rose and yelled ... the one and only time in the history of the Promenade concerts that an orchestral item was accorded a double encore." To mark the coronation of Edward VII, Elgar was commissioned to set A. C. Benson's Coronation Ode for a gala concert at the Royal Opera House on 30 June 1902. The approval of the king was confirmed, and Elgar began work. The contralto Clara Butt had persuaded him that the trio of the first Pomp and Circumstance march could have words fitted to it, and Elgar invited Benson to do so. Elgar incorporated the new vocal version into the Ode. The publishers of the score recognised the potential of the vocal piece, "Land of Hope and Glory", and asked Benson and Elgar to make a further revision for publication as a separate song. It was immensely popular and is now considered an unofficial British national anthem. In the United States, the trio, known simply as "Pomp and Circumstance" or "The Graduation March", has been adopted since 1905 for virtually all high school and university graduations.
In March 1904 a three-day festival of Elgar's works was presented at Covent Garden, an honour never before given to any English composer. The Times commented, "Four or five years ago if any one had predicted that the Opera-house would be full from floor to ceiling for the performance of an oratorio by an English composer he would probably have been supposed to be out of his mind." The king and queen attended the first concert, at which Richter conducted The Dream of Gerontius, and returned the next evening for the second, the London premiere of The Apostles (first heard the previous year at the Birmingham Festival). The final concert of the festival, conducted by Elgar, was primarily orchestral, apart for an excerpt from Caractacus and the complete Sea Pictures (sung by Clara Butt). The orchestral items were Froissart, the Enigma Variations, Cockaigne, the first two (at that time the only two) Pomp and Circumstance marches, and the premiere of a new orchestral work, In the South, inspired by a holiday in Italy.
Elgar was knighted at Buckingham Palace on 5 July 1904. The following month, he and his family moved to Plâs Gwyn, a large house on the outskirts of Hereford, overlooking the River Wye, where they lived until 1911. Between 1902 and 1914, Elgar was, in Kennedy's words, at the zenith of popularity. He made four visits to the US, including one conducting tour, and earned considerable fees from the performance of his music. Between 1905 and 1908, he held the post of Peyton Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham. He had accepted the post reluctantly, feeling that a composer should not head a school of music. He was not at ease in the role, and his lectures caused controversy, with his attacks on the critics and on English music in general: "Vulgarity in the course of time may be refined. Vulgarity often goes with inventiveness ... but the commonplace mind can never be anything but commonplace. An Englishman will take you into a large room, beautifully proportioned, and will point out to you that it is white – all over white – and somebody will say, 'What exquisite taste'. You know in your own mind, in your own soul, that it is not taste at all, that it is the want of taste, that is mere evasion. English music is white, and evades everything." He regretted the controversy and was glad to hand on the post to his friend Granville Bantock in 1908. His new life as a celebrity was a mixed blessing to the highly strung Elgar, as it interrupted his privacy, and he often was in ill-health. He complained to Jaeger in 1903, "My life is one continual giving up of little things which I love." Both W. S. Gilbert and Thomas Hardy sought to collaborate with Elgar in this decade. Elgar refused, but would have collaborated with Bernard Shaw had Shaw been willing.
Elgar paid three visits to the USA between 1905 and 1911. His first was to conduct his music and to accept a doctorate from Yale University. His principal composition in 1905 was the Introduction and Allegro for Strings, dedicated to Samuel Sanford. It was well received but did not catch the public imagination as The Dream of Gerontius had done and continued to do. Among keen Elgarians, however, The Kingdom was sometimes preferred to the earlier work: Elgar's friend Frank Schuster told the young Adrian Boult: "compared with The Kingdom, Gerontius is the work of a raw amateur."
As Elgar approached his fiftieth birthday, he began work on his first symphony, a project that had been in his mind in various forms for nearly ten years. His First Symphony (1908) was a national and international triumph. Within weeks of the premiere it was performed in New York under Walter Damrosch, Vienna under Ferdinand Löwe, St Petersburg under Alexander Siloti, and Leipzig under Arthur Nikisch. There were performances in Rome, Chicago, Boston, Toronto and fifteen British towns and cities. In just over a year, it received a hundred performances in Britain, America and continental Europe.
The Violin Concerto (1910) was commissioned by Fritz Kreisler, one of the leading international violinists of the time. Elgar wrote it during the summer of 1910, with occasional help from W. H. Reed, the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), who helped the composer with advice on technical points. Elgar and Reed formed a firm friendship, which lasted for the rest of Elgar's life. Reed's biography, Elgar As I Knew Him (1936), records many details of Elgar's methods of composition. The work was presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society, with Kreisler and the LSO, conducted by the composer. Reed recalled, "the Concerto proved to be a complete triumph, the concert a brilliant and unforgettable occasion." So great was the impact of the concerto that Kreisler's rival Eugène Ysaÿe spent much time with Elgar going through the work. There was great disappointment when contractual difficulties prevented Ysaÿe from playing it in London.
The Violin Concerto was Elgar's last popular triumph. The following year he presented his Second Symphony in London, but was disappointed at its reception. Unlike the First Symphony, it ends not in a blaze of orchestral splendour but quietly and contemplatively. Reed, who played at the premiere, later wrote that Elgar was recalled to the platform several times to acknowledge the applause, "but missed that unmistakable note perceived when an audience, even an English audience, is thoroughly roused or worked up, as it was after the Violin Concerto or the First Symphony." Elgar asked Reed, "What is the matter with them, Billy? They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs." The work was, by normal standards, a success, with twenty-seven performances within three years of its premiere, but it did not achieve the international furore of the First Symphony.
In June 1911, as part of the celebrations surrounding the coronation of King George V, Elgar was appointed to the Order of Merit, an honour limited to twenty-four holders at any time. The following year, the Elgars moved back to London, to a large house in Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, designed by Norman Shaw. There Elgar composed his last two large-scale works of the pre-war era, the choral ode, The Music Makers (for the Birmingham Festival, 1912) and the symphonic study Falstaff (for the Leeds Festival, 1913). Both were received politely but without enthusiasm. Even the dedicatee of Falstaff, the conductor Landon Ronald, confessed privately that he could not "make head or tail of the piece," while the musical scholar Percy Scholes wrote of Falstaff that it was a "great work" but, "so far as public appreciation goes, a comparative failure."
When World War I broke out, Elgar was horrified at the prospect of the carnage, but his patriotic feelings were nonetheless aroused. He composed "A Song for Soldiers", which he later withdrew. He signed up as a special constable in the local police and later joined the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve of the army. He composed patriotic works, Carillon, a recitation for speaker and orchestra in honour of Belgium, and Polonia, an orchestral piece in honour of Poland. "Land of Hope and Glory", already popular, became still more so, and Elgar wished in vain to have new, less nationalistic, words sung to the tune.
Elgar's other compositions during the war included incidental music for a children's play, The Starlight Express (1915); a ballet, The Sanguine Fan (1917); and The Spirit of England (1915–17, to poems by Laurence Binyon), three choral settings very different in character from the romantic patriotism of his earlier years. His last large-scale composition of the war years was The Fringes of the Fleet, settings of verses by Rudyard Kipling, performed with great popular success around the country, until Kipling for unexplained reasons objected to their performance in theatres. Elgar conducted a recording of the work for the Gramophone Company.
Towards the end of the war, Elgar was in poor health. His wife thought it best for him to move to the countryside, and she rented "Brinkwells", a house near Fittleworth in Sussex, from the painter Rex Vicat Cole. There Elgar recovered his strength and, in 1918 and 1919, he produced four large-scale works. The first three of these were chamber pieces: the Violin Sonata in E minor, the Piano Quintet in A minor, and the String Quartet in E minor. On hearing the work in progress, Alice Elgar wrote in her diary, "E. writing wonderful new music". All three works were well received. The Times wrote, "Elgar's sonata contains much that we have heard before in other forms, but as we do not at all want him to change and be somebody else, that is as it should be." The quartet and quintet were premiered at the Wigmore Hall on 21 May 1919. The Manchester Guardian wrote, "This quartet, with its tremendous climaxes, curious refinements of dance-rhythms, and its perfect symmetry, and the quintet, more lyrical and passionate, are as perfect examples of chamber music as the great oratorios were of their type."
By contrast, the remaining work, the Cello Concerto in E minor, had a disastrous premiere, at the opening concert of the LSO's 1919–20 season in October 1919. Apart from the Elgar work, which the composer conducted, the rest of the programme was conducted by Albert Coates, who overran his rehearsal time at the expense of Elgar's. Lady Elgar wrote, "that brutal selfish ill-mannered bounder ... that brute Coates went on rehearsing." The critic of The Observer, Ernest Newman, wrote, "There have been rumours about during the week of inadequate rehearsal. Whatever the explanation, the sad fact remains that never, in all probability, has so great an orchestra made so lamentable an exhibition of itself. ... The work itself is lovely stuff, very simple – that pregnant simplicity that has come upon Elgar's music in the last couple of years – but with a profound wisdom and beauty underlying its simplicity." Elgar attached no blame to his soloist, Felix Salmond, who played the work for him again later. In contrast with the First Symphony and its hundred performances in just over a year, the Cello Concerto did not have a second performance in London for more than a year.
Although in the 1920s Elgar's music was no longer in fashion, his admirers continued to present his works when possible. Reed singles out a performance of the Second Symphony in March 1920 conducted by "a young man almost unknown to the public", Adrian Boult, for bringing "the grandeur and nobility of the work" to a wider public. Also in 1920, Landon Ronald presented an all-Elgar concert at the Queen's Hall. Alice Elgar wrote with enthusiasm about the reception of the symphony, but this was one of the last times she heard Elgar's music played in public. After a short illness, she died of lung cancer on 7 April 1920, at the age of seventy-two.
Elgar was devastated by the loss of his wife. With no public demand for new works, and deprived of Alice's constant support and inspiration, he allowed himself to be deflected from composition. His daughter later wrote that Elgar inherited from his father a reluctance to "settle down to work on hand but could cheerfully spend hours over some perfectly unnecessary and entirely unremunerative undertaking", a trait that became stronger after Alice's death. For much of the rest of his life, Elgar indulged himself in his several hobbies. Throughout his life he was a keen amateur chemist, sometimes using a laboratory in his back garden. He even patented the "Elgar Sulphuretted Hydrogen Apparatus" in 1908. He enjoyed football, supporting Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C., for whom he composed an anthem, "He Banged the Leather for Goal", and in his later years he frequently attended horseraces. His protégés, the conductor Malcolm Sargent and violinist Yehudi Menuhin, both recalled rehearsals with Elgar at which he swiftly satisfied himself that all was well and then went off to the races. In his younger days, Elgar had been an enthusiastic cyclist, buying Royal Sunbeam bicycles for himself and his wife in 1903 (he named his "Mr. Phoebus"). As an elderly widower, he enjoyed being driven about the countryside by his chauffeur. In November and December 1923, he took a voyage to Brazil, journeying up the Amazon to Manaus, where he was impressed by its opera house, the Teatro Amazonas. Almost nothing is recorded about Elgar's activities or the events that he encountered during the trip, which gave the novelist James Hamilton-Paterson considerable latitude when writing Gerontius, a fictional account of the journey.
After Alice's death, Elgar sold the Hampstead house, and after living for a short time in a flat in St James's in the heart of London, he moved back to Worcestershire, to the village of Kempsey, where he lived from 1923 to 1927. He did not wholly abandon composition in these years. He made large-scale symphonic arrangements of works by Bach and Handel and wrote his Empire March and eight songs Pageant of Empire for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. Shortly after these were published, he was appointed Master of the King's Musick on 13 May 1924, following the death of Sir Walter Parratt.
From 1926 onwards, Elgar made a series of recordings of his own works. Described by the music writer Robert Philip as "the first composer to take the gramophone seriously", he had already recorded much of his music by the early acoustic-recording process for His Master's Voice (HMV) from 1914 onwards, but the introduction of electrical microphones in 1925 transformed the gramophone from a novelty into a realistic medium for reproducing orchestral and choral music. Elgar was the first composer to take full advantage of this technological advance. Fred Gaisberg of HMV, who produced Elgar's recordings, set up a series of sessions to capture on disc the composer's interpretations of his major orchestral works, including the Enigma Variations, Falstaff, the first and second symphonies, and the cello and violin concertos. For most of these, the orchestra was the LSO, but the Variations were played by the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra. Later in the series of recordings, Elgar also conducted two newly founded orchestras, Boult's BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Thomas Beecham's London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Elgar's recordings were released on 78-rpm discs by both HMV and RCA Victor. After World War II, the 1932 recording of the Violin Concerto with the teenage Menuhin as soloist remained available on 78 and later on LP, but the other recordings were out of the catalogues for some years. When they were reissued by EMI on LP in the 1970s, they caused surprise to many by their fast tempi, in contrast to the slower speeds adopted by many conductors in the years since Elgar's death. The recordings were reissued on CD in the 1990s.
In November 1931, Elgar was filmed by Pathé for a newsreel depicting a recording session of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 at the opening of EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. It is believed to be the only surviving sound film of Elgar, who makes a brief remark before conducting the LSO, asking the musicians to "play this tune as though you've never heard it before." A memorial plaque to Elgar at Abbey Road was unveiled on 24 June 1993.
A late piece of Elgar's, the Nursery Suite, was an early example of a studio premiere: its first performance was in the Abbey Road studios. For this work, dedicated to the wife and daughters of the Duke of York, Elgar once again drew on his youthful sketch-books.
In his final years, Elgar experienced a musical revival. The BBC organised a festival of his works to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1932. He flew to Paris in 1933 to conduct the Violin Concerto for Menuhin. While in France, he visited his fellow composer Frederick Delius at his house at Grez-sur-Loing. He was sought out by younger musicians such as Adrian Boult, Malcolm Sargent and John Barbirolli, who championed his music when it was out of fashion. He began work on an opera, The Spanish Lady, and accepted a commission from the BBC to compose a Third Symphony. His final illness prevented their completion. He fretted about the unfinished works. He asked Reed to ensure that nobody would "tinker" with the sketches and attempt a completion of the symphony, but at other times he said, "If I can't complete the Third Symphony, somebody will complete it – or write a better one." After Elgar's death, Percy M. Young, in co-operation with the BBC and Elgar's daughter Carice, produced a version of The Spanish Lady, which was issued on CD. The Third Symphony sketches were elaborated by the composer Anthony Payne into a complete score in 1997.
Inoperable colorectal cancer was discovered during an operation on 8 October 1933. He told his consulting doctor, Arthur Thomson, that he had no faith in an afterlife: "I believe there is nothing but complete oblivion." Elgar died on 23 February 1934 at the age of seventy-six and was buried next to his wife at St Wulstan's Roman Catholic Church in Little Malvern.
Elgar was contemptuous of folk music and had little interest in or respect for the early English composers, calling William Byrd and his contemporaries "museum pieces". Of later English composers, he regarded Purcell as the greatest, and he said that he had learned much of his own technique from studying Hubert Parry's writings. The continental composers who most influenced Elgar were Handel, Dvořák and, to some degree, Brahms. In Elgar's chromaticism, the influence of Wagner is apparent, but Elgar's individual style of orchestration owes much to the clarity of nineteenth-century French composers, Berlioz, Massenet, Saint-Saëns and, particularly, Delibes, whose music Elgar played and conducted at Worcester and greatly admired.
Elgar began composing when still a child, and all his life he drew on his early sketchbooks for themes and inspiration. The habit of assembling his compositions, even large-scale ones, from scraps of themes jotted down randomly remained throughout his life. His early adult works included violin and piano pieces, music for the wind quintet in which he and his brother played between 1878 and 1881, and music of many types for the Powick Asylum band. Diana McVeagh in Grove's Dictionary finds many embryonic Elgarian touches in these pieces, but few of them are regularly played, except Salut d'Amour and (as arranged decades later into The Wand of Youth Suites) some of the childhood sketches. Elgar's sole work of note during his first spell in London in 1889–91, the overture Froissart, was a romantic-bravura piece, influenced by Mendelssohn and Wagner, but also showing further Elgarian characteristics. Orchestral works composed during the subsequent years in Worcestershire include the Serenade for Strings and Three Bavarian Dances. In this period and later, Elgar wrote songs and part songs. W. H. Reed expressed reservations about these pieces, but praised the part song The Snow, for female voices, and Sea Pictures, a cycle of five songs for contralto and orchestra which remains in the repertory.
Elgar's principal large-scale early works were for chorus and orchestra for the Three Choirs and other festivals. These were The Black Knight, King Olaf, The Light of Life, The Banner of St George and Caractacus. He also wrote a Te Deum and Benedictus for the Hereford Festival. Of these, McVeagh comments favourably on his lavish orchestration and innovative use of leitmotifs, but less favourably on the qualities of his chosen texts and the patchiness of his inspiration. McVeagh makes the point that, because these works of the 1890s were for many years little known (and performances remain rare), the mastery of his first great success, the Enigma Variations, appeared to be a sudden transformation from mediocrity to genius, but in fact his orchestral skills had been building up throughout the decade.
Elgar's best-known works were composed within the twenty-one years between 1899 and 1920. Most of them are orchestral. Reed wrote, "Elgar's genius rose to its greatest height in his orchestral works" and quoted the composer as saying that, even in his oratorios, the orchestral part is the most important. The Enigma Variations made Elgar's name nationally. The variation form was ideal for him at this stage of his career, when his comprehensive mastery of orchestration was still in contrast to his tendency to write his melodies in short, sometimes rigid, phrases. His next orchestral works, Cockaigne, a concert-overture (1900–1901), the first two Pomp and Circumstance marches (1901), and the gentle Dream Children (1902), are all short: the longest of them, Cockaigne, lasting less than fifteen minutes. In the South (1903–1904), although designated by Elgar as a concert-overture, is, according to Kennedy, really a tone poem and the longest continuous piece of purely orchestral writing Elgar had essayed. He wrote it after setting aside an early attempt to compose a symphony. The work reveals his continuing progress in writing sustained themes and orchestral lines, although some critics, including Kennedy, find that in the middle part "Elgar's inspiration burns at less than its brightest." In 1905 Elgar completed the Introduction and Allegro for Strings. This work is based, unlike much of Elgar's earlier writing, not on a profusion of themes but on only three. Kennedy called it a "masterly composition, equalled among English works for strings only by Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia."
During the next four years Elgar composed three major concert pieces, which, though shorter than comparable works by some of his European contemporaries, are among the most substantial such works by an English composer. These were his First Symphony, Violin Concerto, and Second Symphony, which all play for between forty-five minutes and an hour. McVeagh says of the symphonies that they "rank high not only in Elgar's output but in English musical history. Both are long and powerful, without published programmes, only hints and quotations to indicate some inward drama from which they derive their vitality and eloquence. Both are based on classical form but differ from it to the extent that ... they were considered prolix and slackly constructed by some critics. Certainly the invention in them is copious; each symphony would need several dozen music examples to chart its progress."
Elgar's Violin Concerto and Cello Concerto, in the view of Kennedy, "rank not only among his finest works, but among the greatest of their kind". They are, however, very different from each other. The Violin Concerto, composed in 1909 as Elgar reached the height of his popularity, and written for the instrument dearest to his heart, is lyrical throughout and rhapsodical and brilliant by turns. The Cello Concerto, composed a decade later, immediately after World War I, seems, in Kennedy's words, "to belong to another age, another world ... the simplest of all Elgar's major works ... also the least grandiloquent." Between the two concertos came Elgar's symphonic study Falstaff, which has divided opinion even among Elgar's strongest admirers. Donald Tovey viewed it as "one of the immeasurably great things in music", with power "identical with Shakespeare's", while Kennedy criticises the work for "too frequent reliance on sequences" and an over-idealised depiction of the female characters. Reed thought that the principal themes show less distinction than some of Elgar's earlier works. Elgar himself thought Falstaff the highest point of his purely orchestral work.
The major works for voices and orchestra of the twenty-one years of Elgar's middle period are three large-scale works for soloists, chorus and orchestra: The Dream of Gerontius (1900), and the oratorios The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906); and two shorter odes, the Coronation Ode (1902) and The Music Makers (1912). The first of the odes, as a pièce d'occasion, has rarely been revived after its initial success, with the culminating "Land of Hope and Glory". The second is, for Elgar, unusual in that it contains several quotations from his earlier works, as Richard Strauss quoted himself in Ein Heldenleben. The choral works were all successful, although the first, Gerontius, was and remains the best-loved and most performed. On the manuscript Elgar wrote, quoting John Ruskin, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another. My life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw, and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." All three of the large-scale works follow the traditional model with sections for soloists, chorus and both together. Elgar's distinctive orchestration, as well as his melodic inspiration, lifts them to a higher level than most of their British predecessors.
Elgar's other works of his middle period include incidental music for Grania and Diarmid, a play by George Moore and W. B. Yeats (1901), and for The Starlight Express, a play based on a story by Algernon Blackwood (1916). Of the former, Yeats called Elgar's music "wonderful in its heroic melancholy". Elgar also wrote a number of songs during his peak period, of which Reed observes, "it cannot be said that he enriched the vocal repertory to the same extent as he did that of the orchestra."
After the Cello Concerto, Elgar completed no more large-scale works. He made arrangements of works by Bach, Handel and Chopin, in distinctively Elgarian orchestration, and once again turned his youthful notebooks to use for the Nursery Suite (1931). His other compositions of this period have not held a place in the regular repertory. For most of the rest of the twentieth century, it was generally agreed that Elgar's creative impulse ceased after his wife's death. Anthony Payne's elaboration of the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony into a complete score led to a reconsideration of this supposition. Elgar left the opening of the symphony complete in full score, and those pages, along with others, show Elgar's orchestration changed markedly from the richness of his pre-war work. The Gramophone described the opening of the new work as something "thrilling ... unforgettably gaunt". Its first public performance was given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Davis in London on 15 February 1998. Payne also subsequently produced a performing version of the sketches for a sixth Pomp and Circumstance March, premiered at the Proms in August 2006. Elgar's sketches for a piano concerto dating from 1913 were elaborated by the composer Robert Walker and first performed in August 1997 by the pianist David Owen Norris. The realisation has since been extensively revised.
Views of Elgar's stature have varied in the decades since his music came to prominence at the beginning of the twentieth century. Richard Strauss, as noted, hailed Elgar as a progressive composer; even the hostile reviewer in The Observer, unimpressed by the thematic material of the First Symphony in 1908, called the orchestration "magnificently modern". Hans Richter rated Elgar as "the greatest modern composer" in any country, and Richter's colleague Arthur Nikisch considered the First Symphony "a masterpiece of the first order" to be "justly ranked with the great symphonic models – Beethoven and Brahms." By contrast, the critic W. J. Turner, in the mid-twentieth century, wrote of Elgar's "Salvation Army symphonies," and Herbert von Karajan called the Enigma Variations "second-hand Brahms". Elgar's immense popularity was not long-lived. After the success of his First Symphony and Violin Concerto, his Second Symphony and Cello Concerto were politely received but without the earlier wild enthusiasm. His music was identified in the public mind with the Edwardian era, and after the First World War he no longer seemed a progressive or modern composer. In the early 1920s, even the First Symphony had only one London performance in more than three years. Wood and younger conductors such as Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli championed Elgar's music, but in the recording catalogues and the concert programmes of the middle of the century his works were not well represented.
In 1924, the music scholar Edward J. Dent wrote an article for a German music journal in which he identified four features of Elgar's style that gave offence to a section of English opinion (namely, Dent indicated, the academic and snobbish section): "too emotional", "not quite free from vulgarity", "pompous", and "too deliberately noble in expression". This article was reprinted in 1930 and caused controversy. In the later years of the century there was, in Britain at least, a revival of interest in Elgar's music. The features that had offended austere taste in the inter-war years were seen from a different perspective. In 1955, the reference book The Record Guide wrote of the Edwardian background during the height of Elgar's career:
Boastful self-confidence, emotional vulgarity, material extravagance, a ruthless philistinism expressed in tasteless architecture and every kind of expensive yet hideous accessory: such features of a late phase of Imperial England are faithfully reflected in Elgar's larger works and are apt to prove indigestible today. But if it is difficult to overlook the bombastic, the sentimental, and the trivial elements in his music, the effort to do so should nevertheless be made, for the sake of the many inspired pages, the power and eloquence and lofty pathos, of Elgar's best work. ... Anyone who doubts the fact of Elgar's genius should take the first opportunity of hearing The Dream of Gerontius, which remains his masterpiece, as it is his largest and perhaps most deeply felt work; the symphonic study, Falstaff; the Introduction and Allegro for Strings; the Enigma Variations; and the Violoncello Concerto.
By the 1960s, a less severe view was being taken of the Edwardian era. In 1966 the critic Frank Howes wrote that Elgar reflected the last blaze of opulence, expansiveness and full-blooded life, before World War I swept so much away. In Howes's view, there was a touch of vulgarity in both the era and Elgar's music, but "a composer is entitled to be judged by posterity for his best work. ... Elgar is historically important for giving to English music a sense of the orchestra, for expressing what it felt like to be alive in the Edwardian age, for conferring on the world at least four unqualified masterpieces, and for thereby restoring England to the comity of musical nations."
In 1967 the critic and analyst David Cox considered the question of the supposed Englishness of Elgar's music. Cox noted that Elgar disliked folk-songs and never used them in his works, opting for an idiom that was essentially German, leavened by a lightness derived from French composers including Berlioz and Gounod. How then, asked Cox, could Elgar be "the most English of composers"? Cox found the answer in Elgar's own personality, which "could use the alien idioms in such a way as to make of them a vital form of expression that was his and his alone. And the personality that comes through in the music is English." This point about Elgar's transmuting his influences had been touched on before. In 1930 The Times wrote, "When Elgar's first symphony came out, someone attempted to prove that its main tune on which all depends was like the Grail theme in Parsifal. ... but the attempt fell flat because everyone else, including those who disliked the tune, had instantly recognized it as typically 'Elgarian', while the Grail theme is as typically Wagnerian." As for Elgar's "Englishness", his fellow-composers recognised it: Richard Strauss and Stravinsky made particular reference to it, and Sibelius called him "the personification of the true English character in music ... a noble personality and a born aristocrat". Among Elgar's admirers there is disagreement about which of his works are to be regarded as masterpieces. The Enigma Variations are generally counted among them. The Dream of Gerontius has also been given high praise by Elgarians, and the Cello Concerto is similarly rated. Many rate the Violin Concerto equally highly, but some do not. Sackville-West omitted it from the list of Elgar masterpieces in The Record Guide, and in a long analytical article in The Musical Quarterly, Daniel Gregory Mason criticised the first movement of the concerto for a "kind of sing-songiness ... as fatal to noble rhythm in music as it is in poetry." Falstaff also divides opinion. It has never been a great popular favourite, and Kennedy and Reed identify shortcomings in it. In a Musical Times 1957 centenary symposium on Elgar led by Vaughan Williams, by contrast, several contributors share Eric Blom's view that Falstaff is the greatest of all Elgar's works.
The two symphonies divide opinion even more sharply. Mason rates the Second poorly for its "over-obvious rhythmic scheme", but calls the First "Elgar's masterpiece. ... It is hard to see how any candid student can deny the greatness of this symphony." However, in the 1957 centenary symposium, several leading admirers of Elgar express reservations about one or both symphonies. In the same year, Roger Fiske wrote in The Gramophone, "For some reason few people seem to like the two Elgar symphonies equally; each has its champions and often they are more than a little bored by the rival work." The critic John Warrack wrote, "There are no sadder pages in symphonic literature than the close of the First Symphony's Adagio, as horn and trombones twice softly intone a phrase of utter grief", whereas to Michael Kennedy, the movement is notable for its lack of anguished yearning and angst and is marked instead by a "benevolent tranquillity."
Despite the fluctuating critical assessment of the various works over the years, Elgar's major works taken as a whole have in the twenty-first century recovered strongly from their neglect in the 1950s. The Record Guide in 1955 could list only one currently available recording of the First Symphony, none of the Second, one of the Violin Concerto, two of the Cello Concerto, two of the Enigma Variations, one of Falstaff, and none of The Dream of Gerontius. Since then there have been multiple recordings of all the major works. More than thirty recordings have been made of the First Symphony since 1955, for example, and more than a dozen of The Dream of Gerontius. Similarly, in the concert hall, Elgar's works, after a period of neglect, are once again frequently programmed. The Elgar Society's website, in its diary of forthcoming performances, lists performances of Elgar's works by orchestras, soloists and conductors across Europe, North America and Australasia.
Elgar was knighted in 1904, and in 1911 he was appointed a member of the Order of Merit. In 1920 he received the Cross of Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown; in 1924 he was made Master of the King's Musick; the following year he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society; and in 1928 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO). Between 1900 and 1931, Elgar received honorary degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, Durham, Leeds, Oxford, Yale (USA), Aberdeen, Western Pennsylvania (USA), Birmingham and London. Foreign academies of which he was made a member were Regia Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome; Accademia del Reale Istituto Musicale, Florence; Académie des Beaux Arts, Paris; Institut de France; and the American Academy. In 1931 he was created a Baronet, of Broadheath in the County of Worcester. In 1933 he was promoted within the Royal Victorian Order to Knight Grand Cross (GCVO). In Kennedy's words, he "shamelessly touted" for a peerage, but in vain. In Who's Who, post-First World War, he claimed to have been awarded "several Imperial Russian and German decorations (lapsed)". Elgar was offered, but declined, the office of Mayor of Hereford (despite not being a member of its city council) when he lived in the city in 1905. The same year he was made an honorary freeman of the city of Worcester.
The house in Lower Broadheath where Elgar was born is now the Elgar Birthplace Museum, devoted to his life and work. Elgar's daughter, Carice, helped to found the museum in 1936 and bequeathed to it much of her collection of Elgar's letters and documents on her death in 1970. Carice left Elgar manuscripts to musical colleges: The Black Knight to Trinity College of Music; King Olaf to the Royal Academy of Music; The Music Makers to Birmingham University; the Cello Concerto to the Royal College of Music; The Kingdom to the Bodleian Library; and other manuscripts to the British Museum. The Elgar Society dedicated to the composer and his works was formed in 1951.
Elgar's statue at the end of Worcester High Street stands facing the cathedral, only yards from where his father's shop once stood. Another statue of the composer by Rose Garrard is at the top of Church Street in Malvern, overlooking the town and giving visitors an opportunity to stand next to the composer in the shadow of the Hills that he so often regarded. In September 2005, a third statue sculpted by Jemma Pearson was unveiled near Hereford Cathedral in honour of his many musical and other associations with the city. It depicts Elgar with his bicycle. From 1999 until early 2007, new Bank of England twenty pound notes featured a portrait of Elgar. The change to remove his image generated controversy, particularly because 2007 was the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth. From 2007 the Elgar notes were phased out, ceasing to be legal tender on 30 June 2010. There are around 65 roads in the UK named after Elgar, including six in the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Elgar had three locomotives named in his honour.
Elgar's life and music have inspired works of literature including the novel Gerontius and several plays. Elgar's Rondo, a 1993 stage play by David Pownall depicts the dead Jaeger offering ghostly advice on Elgar's musical development. Pownall also wrote a radio play, Elgar's Third (1994); another Elgar-themed radio play is Alick Rowe's The Dorabella Variation (2003). David Rudkin's BBC television "Play for Today" Penda's Fen (1974) deals with themes including sex and adolescence, spying, and snobbery, with Elgar's music, chiefly The Dream of Gerontius, as its background. In one scene, a ghostly Elgar whispers the secret of the "Enigma" tune to the youthful central character, with an injunction not to reveal it. Elgar on the Journey to Hanley, a novel by Keith Alldritt (1979), tells of the composer's attachment to Dora Penny, later Mrs Powell, (depicted as "Dorabella" in the Enigma Variations).
Perhaps the best-known work depicting Elgar is Ken Russell's 1962 BBC television film Elgar, made when the composer was still largely out of fashion. This hour-long film contradicted the view of Elgar as a jingoistic and bombastic composer, and evoked the more pastoral and melancholy side of his character and music.
Notes
References | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (/ˈɛlɡɑːr/ ; 2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Edward Elgar was born in the small village of Lower Broadheath, near Worcester, England, on 2 June 1857. His father, William Henry Elgar (1821–1906), was raised in Dover and had been apprenticed to a London music publisher. In 1841 William moved to Worcester, where he worked as a piano tuner and set up a shop selling sheet music and musical instruments. In 1848 he married Ann Greening (1822–1902), daughter of a farm worker.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Edward was the fourth of their seven children. Ann Elgar had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly before Edward's birth, and he was baptised and brought up as a Roman Catholic, to the disapproval of his father. William Elgar was a violinist of professional standard and held the post of organist of St George's Roman Catholic Church, Worcester, from 1846 to 1885. At his instigation, masses by Cherubini and Hummel were first heard at the Three Choirs Festival by the orchestra in which he played the violin.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "All the Elgar children received a musical upbringing. By the age of eight, Elgar was taking piano and violin lessons, and his father, who tuned the pianos at many grand houses in Worcestershire, would sometimes take him along, giving him the chance to display his skill to important local figures.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Elgar's mother was interested in the arts and encouraged his musical development. He inherited from her a discerning taste for literature and a passionate love of the countryside. His friend and biographer W. H. \"Billy\" Reed wrote that Elgar's early surroundings had an influence that \"permeated all his work and gave to his whole life that subtle but none the less true and sturdy English quality\". He began composing at an early age; for a play written and acted by the Elgar children when he was about ten, he wrote music that forty years later he rearranged with only minor changes and orchestrated as the suites titled The Wand of Youth.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Until he was fifteen, Elgar received a general education at Littleton (now Lyttleton) House school, near Worcester. His only formal musical training beyond piano and violin lessons from local teachers consisted of more advanced violin studies with Adolf Pollitzer, during brief visits to London in 1877–78. Elgar said, \"my first music was learnt in the Cathedral ... from books borrowed from the music library, when I was eight, nine or ten.\" He worked through manuals of instruction on organ playing and read every book he could find on the theory of music. He later said that he had been most helped by Hubert Parry's articles in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Elgar began to learn German, in the hope of going to the Leipzig Conservatory for further musical studies, but his father could not afford to send him. Years later, a profile in The Musical Times considered that his failure to get to Leipzig was fortunate for Elgar's musical development: \"Thus the budding composer escaped the dogmatism of the schools.\" However, it was a disappointment to Elgar that on leaving school in 1872 he went not to Leipzig but to the office of a local solicitor as a clerk. He did not find an office career congenial, and for fulfilment he turned not only to music but to literature, becoming a voracious reader. Around this time, he made his first public appearances as a violinist and organist.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "After a few months, Elgar left the solicitor to embark on a musical career, giving piano and violin lessons and working occasionally in his father's shop. He was an active member of the Worcester Glee club, along with his father, and he accompanied singers, played the violin, composed and arranged works, and conducted for the first time. Pollitzer believed that, as a violinist, Elgar had the potential to be one of the leading soloists in the country, but Elgar himself, having heard leading virtuosi at London concerts, felt his own violin playing lacked a full enough tone, and he abandoned his ambitions to be a soloist. At twenty-two he took up the post of conductor of the attendants' band at the Worcester and County Lunatic Asylum in Powick, three miles (five km) from Worcester. The band consisted of: piccolo, flute, clarinet, two cornets, euphonium, three or four first and a similar number of second violins, occasional viola, cello, double bass and piano. Elgar coached the players and wrote and arranged their music, including quadrilles and polkas, for the unusual combination of instruments. The Musical Times wrote, \"This practical experience proved to be of the greatest value to the young musician. ... He acquired a practical knowledge of the capabilities of these different instruments. ... He thereby got to know intimately the tone colour, the ins and outs of these and many other instruments.\" He held the post for five years, from 1879, travelling to Powick once a week. Another post he held in his early days was professor of the violin at the Worcester College for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Although rather solitary and introspective by nature, Elgar thrived in Worcester's musical circles. He played in the violins at the Worcester and Birmingham Festivals, and one great experience was to play Dvořák's Symphony No. 6 and Stabat Mater under the composer's baton. Elgar regularly played the bassoon in a wind quintet, alongside his brother Frank, an oboist (and conductor who ran his own wind band). Elgar arranged numerous pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and others for the quintet, honing his arranging and compositional skills.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In his first trips abroad, Elgar visited Paris in 1880 and Leipzig in 1882. He heard Saint-Saëns play the organ at the Madeleine and attended concerts by first-rate orchestras. In 1882 he wrote, \"I got pretty well dosed with Schumann (my ideal!), Brahms, Rubinstein & Wagner, so had no cause to complain.\" In Leipzig he visited a friend, Helen Weaver, who was a student at the Conservatoire. They became engaged in the summer of 1883, but for unknown reasons the engagement was broken off the next year. Elgar was greatly distressed, and some of his later cryptic dedications of romantic music may have alluded to Helen and his feelings for her. Throughout his life, Elgar was often inspired by close women friends; Helen Weaver was succeeded by Mary Lygon, Dora Penny, Julia Worthington, Alice Stuart Wortley and finally Vera Hockman, who enlivened his old age.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1882, seeking more professional orchestral experience, Elgar was employed as a violinist in Birmingham in William Stockley's Orchestra, for whom he played every concert for the next seven years and where he later said he \"learned all the music I know\". On 13 December 1883 he took part with Stockley in a performance at Birmingham Town Hall of one of his first works for full orchestra, the Sérénade mauresque – the first time one of his compositions had been performed by a professional orchestra. Stockley had invited him to conduct the piece but later recalled \"he declined, and, further, insisted upon playing in his place in the orchestra. The consequence was that he had to appear, fiddle in hand, to acknowledge the genuine and hearty applause of the audience.\" Elgar often went to London in an attempt to get his works published, but this period in his life found him frequently despondent and low on money. He wrote to a friend in April 1884, \"My prospects are about as hopeless as ever ... I am not wanting in energy I think, so sometimes I conclude that 'tis want of ability. ... I have no money – not a cent.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "When Elgar was 29, he took on a new pupil, Caroline Alice Roberts, known as Alice, daughter of the late Major-General Sir Henry Roberts, and published author of verse and prose fiction. Eight years older than Elgar, Alice became his wife three years later. Elgar's biographer Michael Kennedy writes, \"Alice's family was horrified by her intention to marry an unknown musician who worked in a shop and was a Roman Catholic. She was disinherited.\" They were married on 8 May 1889, at Brompton Oratory. From then until her death, she acted as his business manager and social secretary, dealt with his mood swings, and was a perceptive musical critic. She did her best to gain him the attention of influential society, though with limited success. In time, he would learn to accept the honours given him, realising that they mattered more to her and her social class and recognising what she had given up to further his career. In her diary, she wrote, \"The care of a genius is enough of a life work for any woman.\" As an engagement present, Elgar dedicated his short violin-and-piano piece Salut d'Amour to her. With Alice's encouragement, the Elgars moved to London to be closer to the centre of British musical life, and Elgar started devoting his time to composition. Their only child, Carice Irene, was born at their home in West Kensington on 14 August 1890. Her name, revealed in Elgar's dedication of Salut d'Amour, was a contraction of her mother's names Caroline and Alice.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Elgar took full advantage of the opportunity to hear unfamiliar music. In the days before miniature scores and recordings were available, it was not easy for young composers to get to know new music. Elgar took every chance to do so at the Crystal Palace Concerts. He and Alice attended day after day, hearing music by a wide range of composers. Among these were masters of orchestration from whom he learned much, such as Berlioz and Richard Wagner. His own compositions made little impact on London's musical scene. August Manns conducted Elgar's orchestral version of Salut d'amour and the Suite in D at the Crystal Palace, and two publishers accepted some of Elgar's violin pieces, organ voluntaries, and part songs. Some tantalising opportunities seemed to be within reach but vanished unexpectedly. For example, an offer from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to run through some of his works was withdrawn at the last second when Sir Arthur Sullivan arrived unannounced to rehearse some of his own music. Sullivan was horrified when Elgar later told him what had happened. Elgar's only important commission while in London came from his home city: the Worcester Festival Committee invited him to compose a short orchestral work for the 1890 Three Choirs Festival. The result is described by Diana McVeagh in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, as \"his first major work, the assured and uninhibited Froissart.\" Elgar conducted the first performance in Worcester in September 1890. For lack of other work, he was obliged to leave London in 1891 and return with his wife and child to Worcestershire, where he could earn a living conducting local musical ensembles and teaching. They settled in Alice's former home town, Great Malvern.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "During the 1890s, Elgar gradually built up a reputation as a composer, chiefly of works for the great choral festivals of the English Midlands. The Black Knight (1892) and King Olaf (1896), both inspired by Longfellow, The Light of Life (1896) and Caractacus (1898) were all modestly successful, and he obtained a long-standing publisher in Novello and Co. Other works of this decade included the Serenade for Strings (1892) and Three Bavarian Dances (1897). Elgar was of enough consequence locally to recommend the young composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to the Three Choirs Festival for a concert piece, which helped establish the younger man's career. Elgar was catching the attention of prominent critics, but their reviews were polite rather than enthusiastic. Although he was in demand as a festival composer, he was only just getting by financially and felt unappreciated. In 1898, he said he was \"very sick at heart over music\" and hoped to find a way to succeed with a larger work. His friend August Jaeger tried to lift his spirits: \"A day's attack of the blues ... will not drive away your desire, your necessity, which is to exercise those creative faculties which a kind providence has given you. Your time of universal recognition will come.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1899, that prediction suddenly came true. At the age of forty-two, Elgar produced the Enigma Variations, which were premiered in London under the baton of the eminent German conductor Hans Richter. In Elgar's own words, \"I have sketched a set of Variations on an original theme. The Variations have amused me because I've labelled them with the nicknames of my particular friends ... that is to say I've written the variations each one to represent the mood of the 'party' (the person) ... and have written what I think they would have written – if they were asses enough to compose\". He dedicated the work \"To my friends pictured within\". Probably the best known variation is \"Nimrod\", depicting Jaeger. Purely musical considerations led Elgar to omit variations depicting Arthur Sullivan and Hubert Parry, whose styles he tried but failed to incorporate in the variations. The large-scale work was received with general acclaim for its originality, charm and craftsmanship, and it established Elgar as the pre-eminent British composer of his generation.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The work is formally titled Variations on an Original Theme; the word \"Enigma\" appears over the first six bars of music, which led to the familiar version of the title. The enigma is that, although there are fourteen variations on the \"original theme\", there is another overarching theme, never identified by Elgar, which he said \"runs through and over the whole set\" but is never heard. Later commentators have observed that although Elgar is today regarded as a characteristically English composer, his orchestral music and this work in particular share much with the Central European tradition typified at the time by the work of Richard Strauss. The Enigma Variations were well received in Germany and Italy, and remain to the present day a worldwide concert staple.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Elgar's biographer Basil Maine commented, \"When Sir Arthur Sullivan died in 1900 it became apparent to many that Elgar, although a composer of another build, was his true successor as first musician of the land.\" Elgar's next major work was eagerly awaited. For the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival of 1900, he set Cardinal John Henry Newman's poem The Dream of Gerontius for soloists, chorus and orchestra. Richter conducted the premiere, which was marred by a poorly prepared chorus, which sang badly. Critics recognised the mastery of the piece despite the defects in performance. It was performed in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1901 and again in 1902, conducted by Julius Buths, who also conducted the European premiere of the Enigma Variations in 1901. The German press was enthusiastic. The Cologne Gazette said, \"In both parts we meet with beauties of imperishable value. ... Elgar stands on the shoulders of Berlioz, Wagner, and Liszt, from whose influences he has freed himself until he has become an important individuality. He is one of the leaders of musical art of modern times.\" The Düsseldorfer Volksblatt wrote, \"A memorable and epoch-making first performance! Since the days of Liszt nothing has been produced in the way of oratorio ... which reaches the greatness and importance of this sacred cantata.\" Richard Strauss, then widely viewed as the leading composer of his day, was so impressed that in Elgar's presence he proposed a toast to the success of \"the first English progressive musician, Meister Elgar.\" Performances in Vienna, Paris and New York followed, and The Dream of Gerontius soon became equally admired in Britain. According to Kennedy, \"It is unquestionably the greatest British work in the oratorio form ... [it] opened a new chapter in the English choral tradition and liberated it from its Handelian preoccupation.\" Elgar, as a Roman Catholic, was much moved by Newman's poem about the death and redemption of a sinner, but some influential members of the Anglican establishment disagreed. His colleague, Charles Villiers Stanford complained that the work \"stinks of incense\". The Dean of Gloucester banned Gerontius from his cathedral in 1901, and at Worcester the following year, the Dean insisted on expurgations before allowing a performance.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Elgar is probably best known for the first of the five Pomp and Circumstance Marches, which were composed between 1901 and 1930. It is familiar to millions of television viewers all over the world every year who watch the Last Night of the Proms, where it is traditionally performed. When the theme of the slower middle section (technically called the \"trio\") of the first march came into his head, he told his friend Dora Penny, \"I've got a tune that will knock 'em – will knock 'em flat\". When the first march was played in 1901 at a London Promenade Concert, it was conducted by Henry Wood, who later wrote that the audience \"rose and yelled ... the one and only time in the history of the Promenade concerts that an orchestral item was accorded a double encore.\" To mark the coronation of Edward VII, Elgar was commissioned to set A. C. Benson's Coronation Ode for a gala concert at the Royal Opera House on 30 June 1902. The approval of the king was confirmed, and Elgar began work. The contralto Clara Butt had persuaded him that the trio of the first Pomp and Circumstance march could have words fitted to it, and Elgar invited Benson to do so. Elgar incorporated the new vocal version into the Ode. The publishers of the score recognised the potential of the vocal piece, \"Land of Hope and Glory\", and asked Benson and Elgar to make a further revision for publication as a separate song. It was immensely popular and is now considered an unofficial British national anthem. In the United States, the trio, known simply as \"Pomp and Circumstance\" or \"The Graduation March\", has been adopted since 1905 for virtually all high school and university graduations.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In March 1904 a three-day festival of Elgar's works was presented at Covent Garden, an honour never before given to any English composer. The Times commented, \"Four or five years ago if any one had predicted that the Opera-house would be full from floor to ceiling for the performance of an oratorio by an English composer he would probably have been supposed to be out of his mind.\" The king and queen attended the first concert, at which Richter conducted The Dream of Gerontius, and returned the next evening for the second, the London premiere of The Apostles (first heard the previous year at the Birmingham Festival). The final concert of the festival, conducted by Elgar, was primarily orchestral, apart for an excerpt from Caractacus and the complete Sea Pictures (sung by Clara Butt). The orchestral items were Froissart, the Enigma Variations, Cockaigne, the first two (at that time the only two) Pomp and Circumstance marches, and the premiere of a new orchestral work, In the South, inspired by a holiday in Italy.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Elgar was knighted at Buckingham Palace on 5 July 1904. The following month, he and his family moved to Plâs Gwyn, a large house on the outskirts of Hereford, overlooking the River Wye, where they lived until 1911. Between 1902 and 1914, Elgar was, in Kennedy's words, at the zenith of popularity. He made four visits to the US, including one conducting tour, and earned considerable fees from the performance of his music. Between 1905 and 1908, he held the post of Peyton Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham. He had accepted the post reluctantly, feeling that a composer should not head a school of music. He was not at ease in the role, and his lectures caused controversy, with his attacks on the critics and on English music in general: \"Vulgarity in the course of time may be refined. Vulgarity often goes with inventiveness ... but the commonplace mind can never be anything but commonplace. An Englishman will take you into a large room, beautifully proportioned, and will point out to you that it is white – all over white – and somebody will say, 'What exquisite taste'. You know in your own mind, in your own soul, that it is not taste at all, that it is the want of taste, that is mere evasion. English music is white, and evades everything.\" He regretted the controversy and was glad to hand on the post to his friend Granville Bantock in 1908. His new life as a celebrity was a mixed blessing to the highly strung Elgar, as it interrupted his privacy, and he often was in ill-health. He complained to Jaeger in 1903, \"My life is one continual giving up of little things which I love.\" Both W. S. Gilbert and Thomas Hardy sought to collaborate with Elgar in this decade. Elgar refused, but would have collaborated with Bernard Shaw had Shaw been willing.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Elgar paid three visits to the USA between 1905 and 1911. His first was to conduct his music and to accept a doctorate from Yale University. His principal composition in 1905 was the Introduction and Allegro for Strings, dedicated to Samuel Sanford. It was well received but did not catch the public imagination as The Dream of Gerontius had done and continued to do. Among keen Elgarians, however, The Kingdom was sometimes preferred to the earlier work: Elgar's friend Frank Schuster told the young Adrian Boult: \"compared with The Kingdom, Gerontius is the work of a raw amateur.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "As Elgar approached his fiftieth birthday, he began work on his first symphony, a project that had been in his mind in various forms for nearly ten years. His First Symphony (1908) was a national and international triumph. Within weeks of the premiere it was performed in New York under Walter Damrosch, Vienna under Ferdinand Löwe, St Petersburg under Alexander Siloti, and Leipzig under Arthur Nikisch. There were performances in Rome, Chicago, Boston, Toronto and fifteen British towns and cities. In just over a year, it received a hundred performances in Britain, America and continental Europe.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The Violin Concerto (1910) was commissioned by Fritz Kreisler, one of the leading international violinists of the time. Elgar wrote it during the summer of 1910, with occasional help from W. H. Reed, the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), who helped the composer with advice on technical points. Elgar and Reed formed a firm friendship, which lasted for the rest of Elgar's life. Reed's biography, Elgar As I Knew Him (1936), records many details of Elgar's methods of composition. The work was presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society, with Kreisler and the LSO, conducted by the composer. Reed recalled, \"the Concerto proved to be a complete triumph, the concert a brilliant and unforgettable occasion.\" So great was the impact of the concerto that Kreisler's rival Eugène Ysaÿe spent much time with Elgar going through the work. There was great disappointment when contractual difficulties prevented Ysaÿe from playing it in London.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Violin Concerto was Elgar's last popular triumph. The following year he presented his Second Symphony in London, but was disappointed at its reception. Unlike the First Symphony, it ends not in a blaze of orchestral splendour but quietly and contemplatively. Reed, who played at the premiere, later wrote that Elgar was recalled to the platform several times to acknowledge the applause, \"but missed that unmistakable note perceived when an audience, even an English audience, is thoroughly roused or worked up, as it was after the Violin Concerto or the First Symphony.\" Elgar asked Reed, \"What is the matter with them, Billy? They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs.\" The work was, by normal standards, a success, with twenty-seven performances within three years of its premiere, but it did not achieve the international furore of the First Symphony.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In June 1911, as part of the celebrations surrounding the coronation of King George V, Elgar was appointed to the Order of Merit, an honour limited to twenty-four holders at any time. The following year, the Elgars moved back to London, to a large house in Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, designed by Norman Shaw. There Elgar composed his last two large-scale works of the pre-war era, the choral ode, The Music Makers (for the Birmingham Festival, 1912) and the symphonic study Falstaff (for the Leeds Festival, 1913). Both were received politely but without enthusiasm. Even the dedicatee of Falstaff, the conductor Landon Ronald, confessed privately that he could not \"make head or tail of the piece,\" while the musical scholar Percy Scholes wrote of Falstaff that it was a \"great work\" but, \"so far as public appreciation goes, a comparative failure.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "When World War I broke out, Elgar was horrified at the prospect of the carnage, but his patriotic feelings were nonetheless aroused. He composed \"A Song for Soldiers\", which he later withdrew. He signed up as a special constable in the local police and later joined the Hampstead Volunteer Reserve of the army. He composed patriotic works, Carillon, a recitation for speaker and orchestra in honour of Belgium, and Polonia, an orchestral piece in honour of Poland. \"Land of Hope and Glory\", already popular, became still more so, and Elgar wished in vain to have new, less nationalistic, words sung to the tune.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Elgar's other compositions during the war included incidental music for a children's play, The Starlight Express (1915); a ballet, The Sanguine Fan (1917); and The Spirit of England (1915–17, to poems by Laurence Binyon), three choral settings very different in character from the romantic patriotism of his earlier years. His last large-scale composition of the war years was The Fringes of the Fleet, settings of verses by Rudyard Kipling, performed with great popular success around the country, until Kipling for unexplained reasons objected to their performance in theatres. Elgar conducted a recording of the work for the Gramophone Company.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Towards the end of the war, Elgar was in poor health. His wife thought it best for him to move to the countryside, and she rented \"Brinkwells\", a house near Fittleworth in Sussex, from the painter Rex Vicat Cole. There Elgar recovered his strength and, in 1918 and 1919, he produced four large-scale works. The first three of these were chamber pieces: the Violin Sonata in E minor, the Piano Quintet in A minor, and the String Quartet in E minor. On hearing the work in progress, Alice Elgar wrote in her diary, \"E. writing wonderful new music\". All three works were well received. The Times wrote, \"Elgar's sonata contains much that we have heard before in other forms, but as we do not at all want him to change and be somebody else, that is as it should be.\" The quartet and quintet were premiered at the Wigmore Hall on 21 May 1919. The Manchester Guardian wrote, \"This quartet, with its tremendous climaxes, curious refinements of dance-rhythms, and its perfect symmetry, and the quintet, more lyrical and passionate, are as perfect examples of chamber music as the great oratorios were of their type.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "By contrast, the remaining work, the Cello Concerto in E minor, had a disastrous premiere, at the opening concert of the LSO's 1919–20 season in October 1919. Apart from the Elgar work, which the composer conducted, the rest of the programme was conducted by Albert Coates, who overran his rehearsal time at the expense of Elgar's. Lady Elgar wrote, \"that brutal selfish ill-mannered bounder ... that brute Coates went on rehearsing.\" The critic of The Observer, Ernest Newman, wrote, \"There have been rumours about during the week of inadequate rehearsal. Whatever the explanation, the sad fact remains that never, in all probability, has so great an orchestra made so lamentable an exhibition of itself. ... The work itself is lovely stuff, very simple – that pregnant simplicity that has come upon Elgar's music in the last couple of years – but with a profound wisdom and beauty underlying its simplicity.\" Elgar attached no blame to his soloist, Felix Salmond, who played the work for him again later. In contrast with the First Symphony and its hundred performances in just over a year, the Cello Concerto did not have a second performance in London for more than a year.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Although in the 1920s Elgar's music was no longer in fashion, his admirers continued to present his works when possible. Reed singles out a performance of the Second Symphony in March 1920 conducted by \"a young man almost unknown to the public\", Adrian Boult, for bringing \"the grandeur and nobility of the work\" to a wider public. Also in 1920, Landon Ronald presented an all-Elgar concert at the Queen's Hall. Alice Elgar wrote with enthusiasm about the reception of the symphony, but this was one of the last times she heard Elgar's music played in public. After a short illness, she died of lung cancer on 7 April 1920, at the age of seventy-two.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Elgar was devastated by the loss of his wife. With no public demand for new works, and deprived of Alice's constant support and inspiration, he allowed himself to be deflected from composition. His daughter later wrote that Elgar inherited from his father a reluctance to \"settle down to work on hand but could cheerfully spend hours over some perfectly unnecessary and entirely unremunerative undertaking\", a trait that became stronger after Alice's death. For much of the rest of his life, Elgar indulged himself in his several hobbies. Throughout his life he was a keen amateur chemist, sometimes using a laboratory in his back garden. He even patented the \"Elgar Sulphuretted Hydrogen Apparatus\" in 1908. He enjoyed football, supporting Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C., for whom he composed an anthem, \"He Banged the Leather for Goal\", and in his later years he frequently attended horseraces. His protégés, the conductor Malcolm Sargent and violinist Yehudi Menuhin, both recalled rehearsals with Elgar at which he swiftly satisfied himself that all was well and then went off to the races. In his younger days, Elgar had been an enthusiastic cyclist, buying Royal Sunbeam bicycles for himself and his wife in 1903 (he named his \"Mr. Phoebus\"). As an elderly widower, he enjoyed being driven about the countryside by his chauffeur. In November and December 1923, he took a voyage to Brazil, journeying up the Amazon to Manaus, where he was impressed by its opera house, the Teatro Amazonas. Almost nothing is recorded about Elgar's activities or the events that he encountered during the trip, which gave the novelist James Hamilton-Paterson considerable latitude when writing Gerontius, a fictional account of the journey.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "After Alice's death, Elgar sold the Hampstead house, and after living for a short time in a flat in St James's in the heart of London, he moved back to Worcestershire, to the village of Kempsey, where he lived from 1923 to 1927. He did not wholly abandon composition in these years. He made large-scale symphonic arrangements of works by Bach and Handel and wrote his Empire March and eight songs Pageant of Empire for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition. Shortly after these were published, he was appointed Master of the King's Musick on 13 May 1924, following the death of Sir Walter Parratt.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "From 1926 onwards, Elgar made a series of recordings of his own works. Described by the music writer Robert Philip as \"the first composer to take the gramophone seriously\", he had already recorded much of his music by the early acoustic-recording process for His Master's Voice (HMV) from 1914 onwards, but the introduction of electrical microphones in 1925 transformed the gramophone from a novelty into a realistic medium for reproducing orchestral and choral music. Elgar was the first composer to take full advantage of this technological advance. Fred Gaisberg of HMV, who produced Elgar's recordings, set up a series of sessions to capture on disc the composer's interpretations of his major orchestral works, including the Enigma Variations, Falstaff, the first and second symphonies, and the cello and violin concertos. For most of these, the orchestra was the LSO, but the Variations were played by the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra. Later in the series of recordings, Elgar also conducted two newly founded orchestras, Boult's BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Thomas Beecham's London Philharmonic Orchestra.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Elgar's recordings were released on 78-rpm discs by both HMV and RCA Victor. After World War II, the 1932 recording of the Violin Concerto with the teenage Menuhin as soloist remained available on 78 and later on LP, but the other recordings were out of the catalogues for some years. When they were reissued by EMI on LP in the 1970s, they caused surprise to many by their fast tempi, in contrast to the slower speeds adopted by many conductors in the years since Elgar's death. The recordings were reissued on CD in the 1990s.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In November 1931, Elgar was filmed by Pathé for a newsreel depicting a recording session of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 at the opening of EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. It is believed to be the only surviving sound film of Elgar, who makes a brief remark before conducting the LSO, asking the musicians to \"play this tune as though you've never heard it before.\" A memorial plaque to Elgar at Abbey Road was unveiled on 24 June 1993.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "A late piece of Elgar's, the Nursery Suite, was an early example of a studio premiere: its first performance was in the Abbey Road studios. For this work, dedicated to the wife and daughters of the Duke of York, Elgar once again drew on his youthful sketch-books.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "In his final years, Elgar experienced a musical revival. The BBC organised a festival of his works to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1932. He flew to Paris in 1933 to conduct the Violin Concerto for Menuhin. While in France, he visited his fellow composer Frederick Delius at his house at Grez-sur-Loing. He was sought out by younger musicians such as Adrian Boult, Malcolm Sargent and John Barbirolli, who championed his music when it was out of fashion. He began work on an opera, The Spanish Lady, and accepted a commission from the BBC to compose a Third Symphony. His final illness prevented their completion. He fretted about the unfinished works. He asked Reed to ensure that nobody would \"tinker\" with the sketches and attempt a completion of the symphony, but at other times he said, \"If I can't complete the Third Symphony, somebody will complete it – or write a better one.\" After Elgar's death, Percy M. Young, in co-operation with the BBC and Elgar's daughter Carice, produced a version of The Spanish Lady, which was issued on CD. The Third Symphony sketches were elaborated by the composer Anthony Payne into a complete score in 1997.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Inoperable colorectal cancer was discovered during an operation on 8 October 1933. He told his consulting doctor, Arthur Thomson, that he had no faith in an afterlife: \"I believe there is nothing but complete oblivion.\" Elgar died on 23 February 1934 at the age of seventy-six and was buried next to his wife at St Wulstan's Roman Catholic Church in Little Malvern.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Elgar was contemptuous of folk music and had little interest in or respect for the early English composers, calling William Byrd and his contemporaries \"museum pieces\". Of later English composers, he regarded Purcell as the greatest, and he said that he had learned much of his own technique from studying Hubert Parry's writings. The continental composers who most influenced Elgar were Handel, Dvořák and, to some degree, Brahms. In Elgar's chromaticism, the influence of Wagner is apparent, but Elgar's individual style of orchestration owes much to the clarity of nineteenth-century French composers, Berlioz, Massenet, Saint-Saëns and, particularly, Delibes, whose music Elgar played and conducted at Worcester and greatly admired.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Elgar began composing when still a child, and all his life he drew on his early sketchbooks for themes and inspiration. The habit of assembling his compositions, even large-scale ones, from scraps of themes jotted down randomly remained throughout his life. His early adult works included violin and piano pieces, music for the wind quintet in which he and his brother played between 1878 and 1881, and music of many types for the Powick Asylum band. Diana McVeagh in Grove's Dictionary finds many embryonic Elgarian touches in these pieces, but few of them are regularly played, except Salut d'Amour and (as arranged decades later into The Wand of Youth Suites) some of the childhood sketches. Elgar's sole work of note during his first spell in London in 1889–91, the overture Froissart, was a romantic-bravura piece, influenced by Mendelssohn and Wagner, but also showing further Elgarian characteristics. Orchestral works composed during the subsequent years in Worcestershire include the Serenade for Strings and Three Bavarian Dances. In this period and later, Elgar wrote songs and part songs. W. H. Reed expressed reservations about these pieces, but praised the part song The Snow, for female voices, and Sea Pictures, a cycle of five songs for contralto and orchestra which remains in the repertory.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Elgar's principal large-scale early works were for chorus and orchestra for the Three Choirs and other festivals. These were The Black Knight, King Olaf, The Light of Life, The Banner of St George and Caractacus. He also wrote a Te Deum and Benedictus for the Hereford Festival. Of these, McVeagh comments favourably on his lavish orchestration and innovative use of leitmotifs, but less favourably on the qualities of his chosen texts and the patchiness of his inspiration. McVeagh makes the point that, because these works of the 1890s were for many years little known (and performances remain rare), the mastery of his first great success, the Enigma Variations, appeared to be a sudden transformation from mediocrity to genius, but in fact his orchestral skills had been building up throughout the decade.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Elgar's best-known works were composed within the twenty-one years between 1899 and 1920. Most of them are orchestral. Reed wrote, \"Elgar's genius rose to its greatest height in his orchestral works\" and quoted the composer as saying that, even in his oratorios, the orchestral part is the most important. The Enigma Variations made Elgar's name nationally. The variation form was ideal for him at this stage of his career, when his comprehensive mastery of orchestration was still in contrast to his tendency to write his melodies in short, sometimes rigid, phrases. His next orchestral works, Cockaigne, a concert-overture (1900–1901), the first two Pomp and Circumstance marches (1901), and the gentle Dream Children (1902), are all short: the longest of them, Cockaigne, lasting less than fifteen minutes. In the South (1903–1904), although designated by Elgar as a concert-overture, is, according to Kennedy, really a tone poem and the longest continuous piece of purely orchestral writing Elgar had essayed. He wrote it after setting aside an early attempt to compose a symphony. The work reveals his continuing progress in writing sustained themes and orchestral lines, although some critics, including Kennedy, find that in the middle part \"Elgar's inspiration burns at less than its brightest.\" In 1905 Elgar completed the Introduction and Allegro for Strings. This work is based, unlike much of Elgar's earlier writing, not on a profusion of themes but on only three. Kennedy called it a \"masterly composition, equalled among English works for strings only by Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia.\"",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "During the next four years Elgar composed three major concert pieces, which, though shorter than comparable works by some of his European contemporaries, are among the most substantial such works by an English composer. These were his First Symphony, Violin Concerto, and Second Symphony, which all play for between forty-five minutes and an hour. McVeagh says of the symphonies that they \"rank high not only in Elgar's output but in English musical history. Both are long and powerful, without published programmes, only hints and quotations to indicate some inward drama from which they derive their vitality and eloquence. Both are based on classical form but differ from it to the extent that ... they were considered prolix and slackly constructed by some critics. Certainly the invention in them is copious; each symphony would need several dozen music examples to chart its progress.\"",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Elgar's Violin Concerto and Cello Concerto, in the view of Kennedy, \"rank not only among his finest works, but among the greatest of their kind\". They are, however, very different from each other. The Violin Concerto, composed in 1909 as Elgar reached the height of his popularity, and written for the instrument dearest to his heart, is lyrical throughout and rhapsodical and brilliant by turns. The Cello Concerto, composed a decade later, immediately after World War I, seems, in Kennedy's words, \"to belong to another age, another world ... the simplest of all Elgar's major works ... also the least grandiloquent.\" Between the two concertos came Elgar's symphonic study Falstaff, which has divided opinion even among Elgar's strongest admirers. Donald Tovey viewed it as \"one of the immeasurably great things in music\", with power \"identical with Shakespeare's\", while Kennedy criticises the work for \"too frequent reliance on sequences\" and an over-idealised depiction of the female characters. Reed thought that the principal themes show less distinction than some of Elgar's earlier works. Elgar himself thought Falstaff the highest point of his purely orchestral work.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The major works for voices and orchestra of the twenty-one years of Elgar's middle period are three large-scale works for soloists, chorus and orchestra: The Dream of Gerontius (1900), and the oratorios The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906); and two shorter odes, the Coronation Ode (1902) and The Music Makers (1912). The first of the odes, as a pièce d'occasion, has rarely been revived after its initial success, with the culminating \"Land of Hope and Glory\". The second is, for Elgar, unusual in that it contains several quotations from his earlier works, as Richard Strauss quoted himself in Ein Heldenleben. The choral works were all successful, although the first, Gerontius, was and remains the best-loved and most performed. On the manuscript Elgar wrote, quoting John Ruskin, \"This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another. My life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw, and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.\" All three of the large-scale works follow the traditional model with sections for soloists, chorus and both together. Elgar's distinctive orchestration, as well as his melodic inspiration, lifts them to a higher level than most of their British predecessors.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Elgar's other works of his middle period include incidental music for Grania and Diarmid, a play by George Moore and W. B. Yeats (1901), and for The Starlight Express, a play based on a story by Algernon Blackwood (1916). Of the former, Yeats called Elgar's music \"wonderful in its heroic melancholy\". Elgar also wrote a number of songs during his peak period, of which Reed observes, \"it cannot be said that he enriched the vocal repertory to the same extent as he did that of the orchestra.\"",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "After the Cello Concerto, Elgar completed no more large-scale works. He made arrangements of works by Bach, Handel and Chopin, in distinctively Elgarian orchestration, and once again turned his youthful notebooks to use for the Nursery Suite (1931). His other compositions of this period have not held a place in the regular repertory. For most of the rest of the twentieth century, it was generally agreed that Elgar's creative impulse ceased after his wife's death. Anthony Payne's elaboration of the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony into a complete score led to a reconsideration of this supposition. Elgar left the opening of the symphony complete in full score, and those pages, along with others, show Elgar's orchestration changed markedly from the richness of his pre-war work. The Gramophone described the opening of the new work as something \"thrilling ... unforgettably gaunt\". Its first public performance was given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Davis in London on 15 February 1998. Payne also subsequently produced a performing version of the sketches for a sixth Pomp and Circumstance March, premiered at the Proms in August 2006. Elgar's sketches for a piano concerto dating from 1913 were elaborated by the composer Robert Walker and first performed in August 1997 by the pianist David Owen Norris. The realisation has since been extensively revised.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Views of Elgar's stature have varied in the decades since his music came to prominence at the beginning of the twentieth century. Richard Strauss, as noted, hailed Elgar as a progressive composer; even the hostile reviewer in The Observer, unimpressed by the thematic material of the First Symphony in 1908, called the orchestration \"magnificently modern\". Hans Richter rated Elgar as \"the greatest modern composer\" in any country, and Richter's colleague Arthur Nikisch considered the First Symphony \"a masterpiece of the first order\" to be \"justly ranked with the great symphonic models – Beethoven and Brahms.\" By contrast, the critic W. J. Turner, in the mid-twentieth century, wrote of Elgar's \"Salvation Army symphonies,\" and Herbert von Karajan called the Enigma Variations \"second-hand Brahms\". Elgar's immense popularity was not long-lived. After the success of his First Symphony and Violin Concerto, his Second Symphony and Cello Concerto were politely received but without the earlier wild enthusiasm. His music was identified in the public mind with the Edwardian era, and after the First World War he no longer seemed a progressive or modern composer. In the early 1920s, even the First Symphony had only one London performance in more than three years. Wood and younger conductors such as Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli championed Elgar's music, but in the recording catalogues and the concert programmes of the middle of the century his works were not well represented.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 1924, the music scholar Edward J. Dent wrote an article for a German music journal in which he identified four features of Elgar's style that gave offence to a section of English opinion (namely, Dent indicated, the academic and snobbish section): \"too emotional\", \"not quite free from vulgarity\", \"pompous\", and \"too deliberately noble in expression\". This article was reprinted in 1930 and caused controversy. In the later years of the century there was, in Britain at least, a revival of interest in Elgar's music. The features that had offended austere taste in the inter-war years were seen from a different perspective. In 1955, the reference book The Record Guide wrote of the Edwardian background during the height of Elgar's career:",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Boastful self-confidence, emotional vulgarity, material extravagance, a ruthless philistinism expressed in tasteless architecture and every kind of expensive yet hideous accessory: such features of a late phase of Imperial England are faithfully reflected in Elgar's larger works and are apt to prove indigestible today. But if it is difficult to overlook the bombastic, the sentimental, and the trivial elements in his music, the effort to do so should nevertheless be made, for the sake of the many inspired pages, the power and eloquence and lofty pathos, of Elgar's best work. ... Anyone who doubts the fact of Elgar's genius should take the first opportunity of hearing The Dream of Gerontius, which remains his masterpiece, as it is his largest and perhaps most deeply felt work; the symphonic study, Falstaff; the Introduction and Allegro for Strings; the Enigma Variations; and the Violoncello Concerto.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "By the 1960s, a less severe view was being taken of the Edwardian era. In 1966 the critic Frank Howes wrote that Elgar reflected the last blaze of opulence, expansiveness and full-blooded life, before World War I swept so much away. In Howes's view, there was a touch of vulgarity in both the era and Elgar's music, but \"a composer is entitled to be judged by posterity for his best work. ... Elgar is historically important for giving to English music a sense of the orchestra, for expressing what it felt like to be alive in the Edwardian age, for conferring on the world at least four unqualified masterpieces, and for thereby restoring England to the comity of musical nations.\"",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1967 the critic and analyst David Cox considered the question of the supposed Englishness of Elgar's music. Cox noted that Elgar disliked folk-songs and never used them in his works, opting for an idiom that was essentially German, leavened by a lightness derived from French composers including Berlioz and Gounod. How then, asked Cox, could Elgar be \"the most English of composers\"? Cox found the answer in Elgar's own personality, which \"could use the alien idioms in such a way as to make of them a vital form of expression that was his and his alone. And the personality that comes through in the music is English.\" This point about Elgar's transmuting his influences had been touched on before. In 1930 The Times wrote, \"When Elgar's first symphony came out, someone attempted to prove that its main tune on which all depends was like the Grail theme in Parsifal. ... but the attempt fell flat because everyone else, including those who disliked the tune, had instantly recognized it as typically 'Elgarian', while the Grail theme is as typically Wagnerian.\" As for Elgar's \"Englishness\", his fellow-composers recognised it: Richard Strauss and Stravinsky made particular reference to it, and Sibelius called him \"the personification of the true English character in music ... a noble personality and a born aristocrat\". Among Elgar's admirers there is disagreement about which of his works are to be regarded as masterpieces. The Enigma Variations are generally counted among them. The Dream of Gerontius has also been given high praise by Elgarians, and the Cello Concerto is similarly rated. Many rate the Violin Concerto equally highly, but some do not. Sackville-West omitted it from the list of Elgar masterpieces in The Record Guide, and in a long analytical article in The Musical Quarterly, Daniel Gregory Mason criticised the first movement of the concerto for a \"kind of sing-songiness ... as fatal to noble rhythm in music as it is in poetry.\" Falstaff also divides opinion. It has never been a great popular favourite, and Kennedy and Reed identify shortcomings in it. In a Musical Times 1957 centenary symposium on Elgar led by Vaughan Williams, by contrast, several contributors share Eric Blom's view that Falstaff is the greatest of all Elgar's works.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The two symphonies divide opinion even more sharply. Mason rates the Second poorly for its \"over-obvious rhythmic scheme\", but calls the First \"Elgar's masterpiece. ... It is hard to see how any candid student can deny the greatness of this symphony.\" However, in the 1957 centenary symposium, several leading admirers of Elgar express reservations about one or both symphonies. In the same year, Roger Fiske wrote in The Gramophone, \"For some reason few people seem to like the two Elgar symphonies equally; each has its champions and often they are more than a little bored by the rival work.\" The critic John Warrack wrote, \"There are no sadder pages in symphonic literature than the close of the First Symphony's Adagio, as horn and trombones twice softly intone a phrase of utter grief\", whereas to Michael Kennedy, the movement is notable for its lack of anguished yearning and angst and is marked instead by a \"benevolent tranquillity.\"",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Despite the fluctuating critical assessment of the various works over the years, Elgar's major works taken as a whole have in the twenty-first century recovered strongly from their neglect in the 1950s. The Record Guide in 1955 could list only one currently available recording of the First Symphony, none of the Second, one of the Violin Concerto, two of the Cello Concerto, two of the Enigma Variations, one of Falstaff, and none of The Dream of Gerontius. Since then there have been multiple recordings of all the major works. More than thirty recordings have been made of the First Symphony since 1955, for example, and more than a dozen of The Dream of Gerontius. Similarly, in the concert hall, Elgar's works, after a period of neglect, are once again frequently programmed. The Elgar Society's website, in its diary of forthcoming performances, lists performances of Elgar's works by orchestras, soloists and conductors across Europe, North America and Australasia.",
"title": "Music"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Elgar was knighted in 1904, and in 1911 he was appointed a member of the Order of Merit. In 1920 he received the Cross of Commander of the Belgian Order of the Crown; in 1924 he was made Master of the King's Musick; the following year he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society; and in 1928 he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO). Between 1900 and 1931, Elgar received honorary degrees from the Universities of Cambridge, Durham, Leeds, Oxford, Yale (USA), Aberdeen, Western Pennsylvania (USA), Birmingham and London. Foreign academies of which he was made a member were Regia Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome; Accademia del Reale Istituto Musicale, Florence; Académie des Beaux Arts, Paris; Institut de France; and the American Academy. In 1931 he was created a Baronet, of Broadheath in the County of Worcester. In 1933 he was promoted within the Royal Victorian Order to Knight Grand Cross (GCVO). In Kennedy's words, he \"shamelessly touted\" for a peerage, but in vain. In Who's Who, post-First World War, he claimed to have been awarded \"several Imperial Russian and German decorations (lapsed)\". Elgar was offered, but declined, the office of Mayor of Hereford (despite not being a member of its city council) when he lived in the city in 1905. The same year he was made an honorary freeman of the city of Worcester.",
"title": "Honours, awards and commemorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The house in Lower Broadheath where Elgar was born is now the Elgar Birthplace Museum, devoted to his life and work. Elgar's daughter, Carice, helped to found the museum in 1936 and bequeathed to it much of her collection of Elgar's letters and documents on her death in 1970. Carice left Elgar manuscripts to musical colleges: The Black Knight to Trinity College of Music; King Olaf to the Royal Academy of Music; The Music Makers to Birmingham University; the Cello Concerto to the Royal College of Music; The Kingdom to the Bodleian Library; and other manuscripts to the British Museum. The Elgar Society dedicated to the composer and his works was formed in 1951.",
"title": "Honours, awards and commemorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Elgar's statue at the end of Worcester High Street stands facing the cathedral, only yards from where his father's shop once stood. Another statue of the composer by Rose Garrard is at the top of Church Street in Malvern, overlooking the town and giving visitors an opportunity to stand next to the composer in the shadow of the Hills that he so often regarded. In September 2005, a third statue sculpted by Jemma Pearson was unveiled near Hereford Cathedral in honour of his many musical and other associations with the city. It depicts Elgar with his bicycle. From 1999 until early 2007, new Bank of England twenty pound notes featured a portrait of Elgar. The change to remove his image generated controversy, particularly because 2007 was the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth. From 2007 the Elgar notes were phased out, ceasing to be legal tender on 30 June 2010. There are around 65 roads in the UK named after Elgar, including six in the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. Elgar had three locomotives named in his honour.",
"title": "Honours, awards and commemorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Elgar's life and music have inspired works of literature including the novel Gerontius and several plays. Elgar's Rondo, a 1993 stage play by David Pownall depicts the dead Jaeger offering ghostly advice on Elgar's musical development. Pownall also wrote a radio play, Elgar's Third (1994); another Elgar-themed radio play is Alick Rowe's The Dorabella Variation (2003). David Rudkin's BBC television \"Play for Today\" Penda's Fen (1974) deals with themes including sex and adolescence, spying, and snobbery, with Elgar's music, chiefly The Dream of Gerontius, as its background. In one scene, a ghostly Elgar whispers the secret of the \"Enigma\" tune to the youthful central character, with an injunction not to reveal it. Elgar on the Journey to Hanley, a novel by Keith Alldritt (1979), tells of the composer's attachment to Dora Penny, later Mrs Powell, (depicted as \"Dorabella\" in the Enigma Variations).",
"title": "Honours, awards and commemorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Perhaps the best-known work depicting Elgar is Ken Russell's 1962 BBC television film Elgar, made when the composer was still largely out of fashion. This hour-long film contradicted the view of Elgar as a jingoistic and bombastic composer, and evoked the more pastoral and melancholy side of his character and music.",
"title": "Honours, awards and commemorations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Notes",
"title": "Notes and references"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "References",
"title": "Notes and references"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and cello, and two symphonies. He also composed choral works, including The Dream of Gerontius, chamber music and songs. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. Although Elgar is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was acutely sensitive about his humble origins even after he achieved recognition. He nevertheless married the daughter of a senior British Army officer. She inspired him both musically and socially, but he struggled to achieve success until his forties, when after a series of moderately successful works his Enigma Variations (1899) became immediately popular in Britain and overseas. He followed the Variations with a choral work, The Dream of Gerontius (1900), based on a Roman Catholic text that caused some disquiet in the Anglican establishment in Britain, but it became, and has remained, a core repertory work in Britain and elsewhere. His later full-length religious choral works were well received but have not entered the regular repertory. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His second symphony and his cello concerto did not gain immediate public popularity and took many years to achieve a regular place in the concert repertory of British orchestras. Elgar's music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences. His stock remained low for a generation after his death. It began to revive significantly in the 1960s, helped by new recordings of his works. Some of his works have, in recent years, been taken up again internationally, but the music continues to be played more in Britain than elsewhere. Elgar has been described as the first composer to take the gramophone seriously. Between 1914 and 1925, he conducted a series of acoustic recordings of his works. The introduction of the moving-coil microphone in 1923 made far more accurate sound reproduction possible, and Elgar made new recordings of most of his major orchestral works and excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius. | 2001-11-17T04:06:11Z | 2023-12-23T17:45:07Z | [
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10,086 | European Investment Fund | The European Investment Fund (EIF), established in 1994, is a financial institution for the provision of finance to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), headquartered in Luxembourg. It is part of the European Investment Bank Group.
It does not lend money to SMEs directly; rather it provides finance through private banks and funds. Its main operations are in the areas of venture capital and guaranteeing loans. Its shareholders are: the European Investment Bank (62%); the European Union, represented by the European Commission (29%); and 30 privately owned EU financial institutions (9%).
The European Investment Bank Group is able to assist the development of a broader creative, green ecosystem through the European Investment Fund: venture capital funds, technical transfer, business perspectives, and private-sector equity (infrastructure funds) in general.
Since 2015, the EaSI Guarantee Instrument (EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation), managed by the European Investment Fund, has provided over €280 million in guarantees across Europe and is expected to provide over €3 billion in financing to micro-enterprises and social enterprises. In the coming years, the EIF intends to continue providing assistance to these types of final beneficiaries in areas heavily impacted by the transition to a low-carbon economy. | [
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"text": "The European Investment Fund (EIF), established in 1994, is a financial institution for the provision of finance to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), headquartered in Luxembourg. It is part of the European Investment Bank Group.",
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"text": "The European Investment Bank Group is able to assist the development of a broader creative, green ecosystem through the European Investment Fund: venture capital funds, technical transfer, business perspectives, and private-sector equity (infrastructure funds) in general.",
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"text": "Since 2015, the EaSI Guarantee Instrument (EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation), managed by the European Investment Fund, has provided over €280 million in guarantees across Europe and is expected to provide over €3 billion in financing to micro-enterprises and social enterprises. In the coming years, the EIF intends to continue providing assistance to these types of final beneficiaries in areas heavily impacted by the transition to a low-carbon economy.",
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| The European Investment Fund (EIF), established in 1994, is a financial institution for the provision of finance to SMEs, headquartered in Luxembourg. It is part of the European Investment Bank Group. It does not lend money to SMEs directly; rather it provides finance through private banks and funds. Its main operations are in the areas of venture capital and guaranteeing loans. Its shareholders are: the European Investment Bank (62%); the European Union, represented by the European Commission (29%); and 30 privately owned EU financial institutions (9%). The European Investment Bank Group is able to assist the development of a broader creative, green ecosystem through the European Investment Fund: venture capital funds, technical transfer, business perspectives, and private-sector equity in general. Since 2015, the EaSI Guarantee Instrument, managed by the European Investment Fund, has provided over €280 million in guarantees across Europe and is expected to provide over €3 billion in financing to micro-enterprises and social enterprises. In the coming years, the EIF intends to continue providing assistance to these types of final beneficiaries in areas heavily impacted by the transition to a low-carbon economy. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-15T21:37:54Z | [
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10,087 | European Currency Unit | The European Currency Unit (French: Unité de compte européenne, Spanish: Unidad Monetaria Europea, German: Europäische Währungseinheit ; ⟨₠⟩, ECU, or XEU) was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the euro (EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999.
As a unit of account, the ECU was not a circulating currency and did not replace or override the value of the currency of EEC member countries. However, it was used to price some international financial transactions and capital transfers.
Using a mechanism known as the "snake in the tunnel", the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was an attempt to minimize fluctuations between member state currencies—initially by managing the variance of each against its respective ECU reference rate—with the aim to achieve fixed ratios over time, and so enable the European Single Currency (which became known as the euro) to replace national currencies.
In 1990 the British Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major proposed the creation of a 'hard' ECU, which different national currencies could compete against and, if the ECU was successful, could lead to a single currency. The move was seen by France and Germany as a wrecking tactic, especially when the increasingly Eurosceptic Thatcher announced her outright opposition to European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and the idea was abandoned.
On 1 January 1999, the euro (with the code EUR and symbol ⟨€⟩) replaced the ECU at par (one-to-one). Unlike the ECU, the euro is a real currency, although not all member states participate (for details on euro membership see Eurozone). Two of the countries in the ECU basket of currencies, UK and Denmark, did not join the eurozone, and a third, Greece, joined late. On the other hand, Finland and Austria joined the eurozone from the beginning, even though their currencies were not part of the ECU basket, since they had joined the EU in 1995, two years after the ECU composition was "frozen".
Due to the ECU being used in some international financial transactions, there was a concern that foreign courts might not recognize the euro as the legal successor to the ECU. This was unlikely to be a problem, since it is a generally accepted principle of private international law that states determine their currencies, and that therefore states would accept the European Union legislation to that effect. However, for abundant caution, several foreign jurisdictions adopted legislation to ensure a smooth transition. Of particular importance, the U.S. states of Illinois and New York adopted legislation to ensure a large proportion of international financial contracts recognized the euro as the successor of the ECU.
The ECU's symbol, ₠, consists of an interlaced C and E —the initials of "European Community" in many languages of Europe. However, the symbol was not widely adopted. Few computer systems utilized by financial institutions and governments could render it, and commercial payment systems were obliged to use the ISO code, XEU, as with other currencies without widely recognised currency symbols. The Unicode designation for the ECU symbol (U+20A0 ₠ EURO-CURRENCY SIGN) was not implemented on many personal computer operating systems until the release of Unicode v1.1 in May 1998, which also introduced the euro sign (U+20AC € EURO SIGN). Microsoft did include the ECU symbol in many of its European versions of Windows beginning in the early 1990s; however, accessing it required the use of an Alt code, and not all typefaces provided a glyph. By 2009, Microsoft referred to the ECU symbol as "historical". Support among other operating systems, including Macintosh operating systems, was inconsistent.
Although the acronym for ECU is formed from the English name of the unit, the écu was a family of gold coins minted during the reign of Louis IX of France. The name of the ECU's successor, the euro, was chosen because the name did not favor any single language, nation, or historical period.
As the ECU was only an electronic unit of account and not a full currency, it did not have any official coins or notes that could be used for everyday transactions. However, various European countries and organizations like the European Parliament made commemorative and mock-up coins and notes. A common theme on the coins was usually celebrating European unity, such as celebrating membership of the European Union.
Gibraltar issued commemorative coins from 1993 through 1996, though these were (nominally) legal tender only in Gibraltar, which uses the pound sterling. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The European Currency Unit (French: Unité de compte européenne, Spanish: Unidad Monetaria Europea, German: Europäische Währungseinheit ; ⟨₠⟩, ECU, or XEU) was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the euro (EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "As a unit of account, the ECU was not a circulating currency and did not replace or override the value of the currency of EEC member countries. However, it was used to price some international financial transactions and capital transfers.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Using a mechanism known as the \"snake in the tunnel\", the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was an attempt to minimize fluctuations between member state currencies—initially by managing the variance of each against its respective ECU reference rate—with the aim to achieve fixed ratios over time, and so enable the European Single Currency (which became known as the euro) to replace national currencies.",
"title": "Exchange rate"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1990 the British Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major proposed the creation of a 'hard' ECU, which different national currencies could compete against and, if the ECU was successful, could lead to a single currency. The move was seen by France and Germany as a wrecking tactic, especially when the increasingly Eurosceptic Thatcher announced her outright opposition to European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and the idea was abandoned.",
"title": "Hard ECU proposal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "On 1 January 1999, the euro (with the code EUR and symbol ⟨€⟩) replaced the ECU at par (one-to-one). Unlike the ECU, the euro is a real currency, although not all member states participate (for details on euro membership see Eurozone). Two of the countries in the ECU basket of currencies, UK and Denmark, did not join the eurozone, and a third, Greece, joined late. On the other hand, Finland and Austria joined the eurozone from the beginning, even though their currencies were not part of the ECU basket, since they had joined the EU in 1995, two years after the ECU composition was \"frozen\".",
"title": "Euro replaces the ECU"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Due to the ECU being used in some international financial transactions, there was a concern that foreign courts might not recognize the euro as the legal successor to the ECU. This was unlikely to be a problem, since it is a generally accepted principle of private international law that states determine their currencies, and that therefore states would accept the European Union legislation to that effect. However, for abundant caution, several foreign jurisdictions adopted legislation to ensure a smooth transition. Of particular importance, the U.S. states of Illinois and New York adopted legislation to ensure a large proportion of international financial contracts recognized the euro as the successor of the ECU.",
"title": "Euro replaces the ECU"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The ECU's symbol, ₠, consists of an interlaced C and E —the initials of \"European Community\" in many languages of Europe. However, the symbol was not widely adopted. Few computer systems utilized by financial institutions and governments could render it, and commercial payment systems were obliged to use the ISO code, XEU, as with other currencies without widely recognised currency symbols. The Unicode designation for the ECU symbol (U+20A0 ₠ EURO-CURRENCY SIGN) was not implemented on many personal computer operating systems until the release of Unicode v1.1 in May 1998, which also introduced the euro sign (U+20AC € EURO SIGN). Microsoft did include the ECU symbol in many of its European versions of Windows beginning in the early 1990s; however, accessing it required the use of an Alt code, and not all typefaces provided a glyph. By 2009, Microsoft referred to the ECU symbol as \"historical\". Support among other operating systems, including Macintosh operating systems, was inconsistent.",
"title": "Symbol and name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Although the acronym for ECU is formed from the English name of the unit, the écu was a family of gold coins minted during the reign of Louis IX of France. The name of the ECU's successor, the euro, was chosen because the name did not favor any single language, nation, or historical period.",
"title": "Symbol and name"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "As the ECU was only an electronic unit of account and not a full currency, it did not have any official coins or notes that could be used for everyday transactions. However, various European countries and organizations like the European Parliament made commemorative and mock-up coins and notes. A common theme on the coins was usually celebrating European unity, such as celebrating membership of the European Union.",
"title": "Coins and notes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Gibraltar issued commemorative coins from 1993 through 1996, though these were (nominally) legal tender only in Gibraltar, which uses the pound sterling.",
"title": "Coins and notes"
}
]
| The European Currency Unit was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the euro (EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999. As a unit of account, the ECU was not a circulating currency and did not replace or override the value of the currency of EEC member countries. However, it was used to price some international financial transactions and capital transfers. | 2001-11-17T16:12:46Z | 2023-09-25T16:13:52Z | [
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10,088 | Eastern Caribbean dollar | The Eastern Caribbean dollar (symbol: EC$; code: XCD) is the currency of all seven full members and one associate member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The successor to the British West Indies dollar, it has existed since 1965, and it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $ or, alternatively, EC$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The EC$ is subdivided into 100 cents. It has been pegged to the United States dollar since 7 July 1976, at the exchange rate of US$1 = EC$2.70.
Six of the states using the EC$ are independent states: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The other two, Anguilla and Montserrat, are British Overseas Territories. These states are all members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union.
The other two associate members of the OECS do not use the Eastern Caribbean dollar as their official currency: the British Virgin Islands and Martinique. The British Virgin Islands were always problematic for currency purposes due to their proximity to the Danish West Indies, which became the United States Virgin Islands in 1917. Officially, the British Virgin Islands used to use sterling, but in practice the situation was more complicated and involved the circulation of French francs and U.S. dollars. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands adopted the British West Indies dollar which at that time operated in conjunction with the sterling coinage, and in 1959 they changed over officially to the U.S. dollar.
Martinique, as part of France, uses the euro as its currency.
British Guiana and Barbados had previously been members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union but withdrew in 1966 and 1972, respectively. Trinidad and Tobago had been a member of the earlier British West Indies currency union, but withdrew in 1964.
The combined population of the EC$ area is about 613,000 (2014 census and estimates), which is comparable to Montenegro or the American capital city of Washington, D.C. The combined GDP is 5.46 billion US dollars, which is comparable to Bermuda.
The late Queen Elizabeth II appears on the banknotes and also on the obverse of the coins. She was the head of state of all the states and territories using the EC$, except for Dominica. Dominica is nevertheless a member of the Commonwealth of Nations which now recognizes King Charles III as Head of the Commonwealth.
Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704 was the first attempt to introduce sterling currency to the British West Indies, however it failed to displace the existing Spanish dollar currency system right up until the late 1870s. In 1822, the British government coined 1⁄4, 1⁄8, and 1⁄16 fractional 'Anchor dollars' for use in Mauritius and the British West Indies (but not Jamaica). A few years later copper fractional dollars were coined for Mauritius, Sierra Leone, and the British West Indies.
The next attempts to introduce British sterling silver coinage to the colonies came with an imperial order-in-council dated 1825. This move was inspired by a number of factors. The United Kingdom was now operating a very successful gold standard in relation to the gold sovereign that was introduced in 1816, and there was a desire to extend this system to the colonies. In addition to this, there was that the supply of Spanish dollars (pieces of eight) had been cut off as a result of the revolutions in Latin America where most of the Spanish dollars were minted. The last Spanish Dollar was in fact minted at Potosi in 1825. There was now a growing desire to have a stable and steady supply of British shillings everywhere the British drum was beating. The 1825 order-in-council was largely a failure because it made sterling silver coinage legal tender at the unrealistic rating in relation to the Spanish dollar of $1 = 4 shillings 4 pence. It succeeded in Jamaica, Bermuda, and British Honduras because the authorities in those territories set aside the official ratings and used the more realistic rating of $1 = 4 shillings. The reality of the rating between the dollar and the pound was based on the silver content of the Spanish pieces of eight as compared to the gold content of the British gold sovereign.
A second imperial order-in-council was passed in 1838 with the correct rating of $1 = 4 shillings 2 pence. In the years following the 1838 order-in-council, the British West Indies territories began to enact local legislation for the purposes of assimilating their monies of account with the British pound sterling. Gold discoveries in Australia in 1851 drove the silver dollar out of the West Indies, but it returned again with the great depreciation in the value of silver that followed with Germany's transition to the gold standard between 1871 and 1873. In the years immediately following 1873, there was a fear that the British West Indies might return to a silver standard. As such, legislation was passed in the individual territories to demonetize the silver dollars. Even though the British coinage was also silver, it represented fractions of the gold sovereign and so its value was based on a gold standard.
During this period, and into the nineteenth century, accounts could be kept in either dollars or sterling. Jamaica, Bermuda, and the Bahamas preferred to use sterling accounts whereas British Guiana used dollar accounts. British Guiana used dollar accounts for the purpose of assisting in the transition from the Dutch guilder system of currency to the British pound sterling system. In the Eastern Caribbean territories the private sector preferred to use dollar accounts whereas the government preferred to use sterling accounts. In some of the Eastern Caribbean territories, notes were issued by various private banks, denominated in dollars equivalent to 4 shillings 2 pence. See Antigua dollar, Barbadian dollar, Dominican dollar, Grenadian dollar, Guyanese dollar, Saint Kitts dollar, Saint Lucia dollar, Saint Vincent dollar and Trinidad and Tobago dollar.
In 1946, a West Indian Currency Conference saw Barbados, British Guiana, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the Windward Islands agree to establish a unified decimal currency system based on a West Indian dollar to replace the current arrangement of having three different Boards of Commissioners of Currency (for Barbados (which also served the Leeward and Windward Islands), British Guiana and Trinidad & Tobago).
In 1949, the British government formalized the dollar system of accounts in British Guiana and the Eastern Caribbean territories by introducing the British West Indies dollar (BWI$) at the already existing conversion rate of $4.80 per pound sterling (or $1 = 4 shillings 2 pence). It was one of the many experimental political and economic ventures tested by the British government to form a uniform system within the British West Indies territories. The symbol "BWI$" was frequently used and the currency was known verbally as the "Beewee" (slang for British West Indies) dollar. Shortly thereafter in 1950, the British Caribbean Currency Board (BCCB) was set up in Trinidad with the sole right to issue notes and coins of the new unified currency and given the mandate of keeping full foreign exchange cover to ensure convertibility at $4.80 per pound sterling. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands joined the arrangement, but this led to discontent because that territory was more naturally drawn to the currency of the neighbouring U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1961, the British Virgin Islands withdrew from the arrangement and adopted the U.S. dollar.
Until 1955, the BWI$ existed only as banknotes in conjunction with sterling fractional coinage. Decimal coins replaced the sterling coins in 1955. These decimal coins were denominated in cents, with each cent worth one halfpenny in sterling.
In 1958, the West Indies Federation was established and the BWI$ was its currency. However, although Jamaica (including the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands) was part of the West Indies Federation, it retained the Jamaican pound, despite adopting the BWI$ as legal tender from 1954. Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands were already long established users of the sterling accounts system of pounds, shillings, and pence.
In 1964 Jamaica ended the legal tender status of the BWI$ and Trinidad and Tobago withdrew from the currency union (adopting the Trinidad and Tobago dollar) forcing the movement of the headquarters of the BCCB to Barbados and soon the "BWI$" dollar lost its regional support.
In 1965, the British West Indies dollar of the now defunct West Indies Federation was replaced at par by the Eastern Caribbean dollar and the BCCB was replaced by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority or ECCA (established by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Agreement 1965). British Guiana withdrew from the currency union the following year. Grenada, which had used the Trinidad and Tobago dollar from 1964, rejoined the common currency arrangement in 1968. Barbados withdrew from the currency union in 1972, following which the ECCA headquarters were moved to St. Kitts.
Between 1965 and 1983, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued the EC$, with banknotes from 1965 and coins from 1981. The EC$ is now issued by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, based in the city of Basseterre, in Saint Kitts and Nevis. The bank was established by an agreement (the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Agreement) signed at Port of Spain on 5 July 1983.
The exchange rate of $4.80 = £1 sterling (equivalent to the old $1 = 4s 2d) continued until 1976 for the new Eastern Caribbean dollar.
For a wider outline of the history of currency in the region see Currencies of the British West Indies.
Until 1981, the coins of the BWI$ circulated. In 1982, a new series of coins was introduced in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 25 cents and 1 dollar. The 1 and 5 cent coins were scalloped in shape while the 2 cent coin was square. These three were struck in aluminum. The 10 and 25 cent coins were round and cupro-nickel. The dollar was aluminum bronze and also round. The round, aluminum bronze dollar coin was replaced in 1989 with a decagonal, cupro-nickel type. In 2002 new and larger round-shaped 1, 2, and 5 cent pieces were introduced, along with a new 1 dollar coin which was also round. The effigy of Queen Elizabeth II was also changed that same year on all coin denominations to the Ian Rank-Broadley design, making it the last commonwealth currency up to that date to discontinue the Arnold Machin portrait. Their compositions remained aluminum and cupro-nickel, respectively. Higher denominations exist, but these were issued only as medal-coins. 1 and 2 cent coins were withdrawn from circulation in July 2015, and remained legal tender until 30 June 2020.
In 1965, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued banknotes in denominations of 1, 5, 20 and 100 dollars, all featuring Pietro Annigoni's 1956 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in regalia of the Order of the Garter. The first issues in the name of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in 1985 were of the same denominations, with the addition of 10 dollar notes. The last 1 dollar notes were issued in 1989 and 50 dollar notes were introduced in 1993. On 1 April 2008, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank issued a new series of banknotes which are like the preceding issues, except for omitting both the barcode and the country code letters which form part of the serial number on current notes. In 2012, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank issued a series of banknotes with Braille features in an effort to provide notes which are easier for blind and visually impaired persons to use. The raised Braille characters on the upgraded notes feature a cricket theme in the form of balls and stumps. These characters have been added to the 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar notes.
In 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is set to introduce a new family of notes produced in polymer substrate and are to be presented in a vertical format.
The 2012 issue included raised braille elements for the visually-impaired in the form of a cricket ball and stumps. These were added to the EC$10, $20, $50, and $100 banknotes. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Eastern Caribbean dollar (symbol: EC$; code: XCD) is the currency of all seven full members and one associate member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The successor to the British West Indies dollar, it has existed since 1965, and it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $ or, alternatively, EC$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The EC$ is subdivided into 100 cents. It has been pegged to the United States dollar since 7 July 1976, at the exchange rate of US$1 = EC$2.70.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Six of the states using the EC$ are independent states: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The other two, Anguilla and Montserrat, are British Overseas Territories. These states are all members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union.",
"title": "Circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The other two associate members of the OECS do not use the Eastern Caribbean dollar as their official currency: the British Virgin Islands and Martinique. The British Virgin Islands were always problematic for currency purposes due to their proximity to the Danish West Indies, which became the United States Virgin Islands in 1917. Officially, the British Virgin Islands used to use sterling, but in practice the situation was more complicated and involved the circulation of French francs and U.S. dollars. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands adopted the British West Indies dollar which at that time operated in conjunction with the sterling coinage, and in 1959 they changed over officially to the U.S. dollar.",
"title": "Circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Martinique, as part of France, uses the euro as its currency.",
"title": "Circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "British Guiana and Barbados had previously been members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union but withdrew in 1966 and 1972, respectively. Trinidad and Tobago had been a member of the earlier British West Indies currency union, but withdrew in 1964.",
"title": "Circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The combined population of the EC$ area is about 613,000 (2014 census and estimates), which is comparable to Montenegro or the American capital city of Washington, D.C. The combined GDP is 5.46 billion US dollars, which is comparable to Bermuda.",
"title": "Circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The late Queen Elizabeth II appears on the banknotes and also on the obverse of the coins. She was the head of state of all the states and territories using the EC$, except for Dominica. Dominica is nevertheless a member of the Commonwealth of Nations which now recognizes King Charles III as Head of the Commonwealth.",
"title": "Circulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704 was the first attempt to introduce sterling currency to the British West Indies, however it failed to displace the existing Spanish dollar currency system right up until the late 1870s. In 1822, the British government coined 1⁄4, 1⁄8, and 1⁄16 fractional 'Anchor dollars' for use in Mauritius and the British West Indies (but not Jamaica). A few years later copper fractional dollars were coined for Mauritius, Sierra Leone, and the British West Indies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The next attempts to introduce British sterling silver coinage to the colonies came with an imperial order-in-council dated 1825. This move was inspired by a number of factors. The United Kingdom was now operating a very successful gold standard in relation to the gold sovereign that was introduced in 1816, and there was a desire to extend this system to the colonies. In addition to this, there was that the supply of Spanish dollars (pieces of eight) had been cut off as a result of the revolutions in Latin America where most of the Spanish dollars were minted. The last Spanish Dollar was in fact minted at Potosi in 1825. There was now a growing desire to have a stable and steady supply of British shillings everywhere the British drum was beating. The 1825 order-in-council was largely a failure because it made sterling silver coinage legal tender at the unrealistic rating in relation to the Spanish dollar of $1 = 4 shillings 4 pence. It succeeded in Jamaica, Bermuda, and British Honduras because the authorities in those territories set aside the official ratings and used the more realistic rating of $1 = 4 shillings. The reality of the rating between the dollar and the pound was based on the silver content of the Spanish pieces of eight as compared to the gold content of the British gold sovereign.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "A second imperial order-in-council was passed in 1838 with the correct rating of $1 = 4 shillings 2 pence. In the years following the 1838 order-in-council, the British West Indies territories began to enact local legislation for the purposes of assimilating their monies of account with the British pound sterling. Gold discoveries in Australia in 1851 drove the silver dollar out of the West Indies, but it returned again with the great depreciation in the value of silver that followed with Germany's transition to the gold standard between 1871 and 1873. In the years immediately following 1873, there was a fear that the British West Indies might return to a silver standard. As such, legislation was passed in the individual territories to demonetize the silver dollars. Even though the British coinage was also silver, it represented fractions of the gold sovereign and so its value was based on a gold standard.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During this period, and into the nineteenth century, accounts could be kept in either dollars or sterling. Jamaica, Bermuda, and the Bahamas preferred to use sterling accounts whereas British Guiana used dollar accounts. British Guiana used dollar accounts for the purpose of assisting in the transition from the Dutch guilder system of currency to the British pound sterling system. In the Eastern Caribbean territories the private sector preferred to use dollar accounts whereas the government preferred to use sterling accounts. In some of the Eastern Caribbean territories, notes were issued by various private banks, denominated in dollars equivalent to 4 shillings 2 pence. See Antigua dollar, Barbadian dollar, Dominican dollar, Grenadian dollar, Guyanese dollar, Saint Kitts dollar, Saint Lucia dollar, Saint Vincent dollar and Trinidad and Tobago dollar.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1946, a West Indian Currency Conference saw Barbados, British Guiana, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the Windward Islands agree to establish a unified decimal currency system based on a West Indian dollar to replace the current arrangement of having three different Boards of Commissioners of Currency (for Barbados (which also served the Leeward and Windward Islands), British Guiana and Trinidad & Tobago).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1949, the British government formalized the dollar system of accounts in British Guiana and the Eastern Caribbean territories by introducing the British West Indies dollar (BWI$) at the already existing conversion rate of $4.80 per pound sterling (or $1 = 4 shillings 2 pence). It was one of the many experimental political and economic ventures tested by the British government to form a uniform system within the British West Indies territories. The symbol \"BWI$\" was frequently used and the currency was known verbally as the \"Beewee\" (slang for British West Indies) dollar. Shortly thereafter in 1950, the British Caribbean Currency Board (BCCB) was set up in Trinidad with the sole right to issue notes and coins of the new unified currency and given the mandate of keeping full foreign exchange cover to ensure convertibility at $4.80 per pound sterling. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands joined the arrangement, but this led to discontent because that territory was more naturally drawn to the currency of the neighbouring U.S. Virgin Islands. In 1961, the British Virgin Islands withdrew from the arrangement and adopted the U.S. dollar.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Until 1955, the BWI$ existed only as banknotes in conjunction with sterling fractional coinage. Decimal coins replaced the sterling coins in 1955. These decimal coins were denominated in cents, with each cent worth one halfpenny in sterling.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1958, the West Indies Federation was established and the BWI$ was its currency. However, although Jamaica (including the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands) was part of the West Indies Federation, it retained the Jamaican pound, despite adopting the BWI$ as legal tender from 1954. Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands were already long established users of the sterling accounts system of pounds, shillings, and pence.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1964 Jamaica ended the legal tender status of the BWI$ and Trinidad and Tobago withdrew from the currency union (adopting the Trinidad and Tobago dollar) forcing the movement of the headquarters of the BCCB to Barbados and soon the \"BWI$\" dollar lost its regional support.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1965, the British West Indies dollar of the now defunct West Indies Federation was replaced at par by the Eastern Caribbean dollar and the BCCB was replaced by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority or ECCA (established by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Agreement 1965). British Guiana withdrew from the currency union the following year. Grenada, which had used the Trinidad and Tobago dollar from 1964, rejoined the common currency arrangement in 1968. Barbados withdrew from the currency union in 1972, following which the ECCA headquarters were moved to St. Kitts.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Between 1965 and 1983, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued the EC$, with banknotes from 1965 and coins from 1981. The EC$ is now issued by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, based in the city of Basseterre, in Saint Kitts and Nevis. The bank was established by an agreement (the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Agreement) signed at Port of Spain on 5 July 1983.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The exchange rate of $4.80 = £1 sterling (equivalent to the old $1 = 4s 2d) continued until 1976 for the new Eastern Caribbean dollar.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "For a wider outline of the history of currency in the region see Currencies of the British West Indies.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Until 1981, the coins of the BWI$ circulated. In 1982, a new series of coins was introduced in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 25 cents and 1 dollar. The 1 and 5 cent coins were scalloped in shape while the 2 cent coin was square. These three were struck in aluminum. The 10 and 25 cent coins were round and cupro-nickel. The dollar was aluminum bronze and also round. The round, aluminum bronze dollar coin was replaced in 1989 with a decagonal, cupro-nickel type. In 2002 new and larger round-shaped 1, 2, and 5 cent pieces were introduced, along with a new 1 dollar coin which was also round. The effigy of Queen Elizabeth II was also changed that same year on all coin denominations to the Ian Rank-Broadley design, making it the last commonwealth currency up to that date to discontinue the Arnold Machin portrait. Their compositions remained aluminum and cupro-nickel, respectively. Higher denominations exist, but these were issued only as medal-coins. 1 and 2 cent coins were withdrawn from circulation in July 2015, and remained legal tender until 30 June 2020.",
"title": "Coins"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1965, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued banknotes in denominations of 1, 5, 20 and 100 dollars, all featuring Pietro Annigoni's 1956 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in regalia of the Order of the Garter. The first issues in the name of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in 1985 were of the same denominations, with the addition of 10 dollar notes. The last 1 dollar notes were issued in 1989 and 50 dollar notes were introduced in 1993. On 1 April 2008, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank issued a new series of banknotes which are like the preceding issues, except for omitting both the barcode and the country code letters which form part of the serial number on current notes. In 2012, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank issued a series of banknotes with Braille features in an effort to provide notes which are easier for blind and visually impaired persons to use. The raised Braille characters on the upgraded notes feature a cricket theme in the form of balls and stumps. These characters have been added to the 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar notes.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank is set to introduce a new family of notes produced in polymer substrate and are to be presented in a vertical format.",
"title": "Banknotes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The 2012 issue included raised braille elements for the visually-impaired in the form of a cricket ball and stumps. These were added to the EC$10, $20, $50, and $100 banknotes.",
"title": "Banknotes"
}
]
| The Eastern Caribbean dollar is the currency of all seven full members and one associate member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The successor to the British West Indies dollar, it has existed since 1965, and it is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $ or, alternatively, EC$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The EC$ is subdivided into 100 cents. It has been pegged to the United States dollar since 7 July 1976, at the exchange rate of US$1 = EC$2.70. | 2001-11-17T18:38:51Z | 2023-12-23T21:45:53Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Caribbean_dollar |
10,090 | Erythromycin | Erythromycin is an antibiotic used for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections. This includes respiratory tract infections, skin infections, chlamydia infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, and syphilis. It may also be used during pregnancy to prevent Group B streptococcal infection in the newborn, and to improve delayed stomach emptying. It can be given intravenously and by mouth. An eye ointment is routinely recommended after delivery to prevent eye infections in the newborn.
Common side effects include abdominal cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. More serious side effects may include Clostridium difficile colitis, liver problems, prolonged QT, and allergic reactions. It is generally safe in those who are allergic to penicillin. Erythromycin also appears to be safe to use during pregnancy. While generally regarded as safe during breastfeeding, its use by the mother during the first two weeks of life may increase the risk of pyloric stenosis in the baby. This risk also applies if taken directly by the baby during this age. It is in the macrolide family of antibiotics and works by decreasing bacterial protein production.
Erythromycin was first isolated in 1952 from the bacteria Saccharopolyspora erythraea. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In 2020, it was the 225th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 2 million prescriptions.
Erythromycin can be used to treat bacteria responsible for causing infections of the skin and upper respiratory tract, including Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Haemophilus and Corynebacterium genera. The following represents MIC susceptibility data for a few medically significant bacteria:
It may be useful in treating gastroparesis due to this promotility effect. It has been shown to improve feeding intolerances in those who are critically ill. Intravenous erythromycin may also be used in endoscopy to help clear stomach contents.
Erythromycin is available in enteric-coated tablets, slow-release capsules, oral suspensions, ophthalmic solutions, ointments, gels, enteric-coated capsules, non enteric-coated tablets, non enteric-coated capsules, and injections. The following erythromycin combinations are available for oral dosage:
For injection, the available combinations are:
For ophthalmic use:
Gastrointestinal disturbances, such as diarrhea, nausea, abdominal pain, and vomiting, are very common because erythromycin is a motilin agonist.
More serious side effects include arrhythmia with prolonged QT intervals, including torsades de pointes, and reversible deafness. Allergic reactions range from urticaria to anaphylaxis. Cholestasis and Stevens–Johnson syndrome are some other rare side effects that may occur.
Studies have shown evidence both for and against the association of pyloric stenosis and exposure to erythromycin prenatally and postnatally. Exposure to erythromycin (especially long courses at antimicrobial doses, and also through breastfeeding) has been linked to an increased probability of pyloric stenosis in young infants. Erythromycin used for feeding intolerance in young infants has not been associated with hypertrophic pyloric stenosis.
Erythromycin estolate has been associated with reversible hepatotoxicity in pregnant women in the form of elevated serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase and is not recommended during pregnancy. Some evidence suggests similar hepatotoxicity in other populations.
It can also affect the central nervous system, causing psychotic reactions, nightmares, and night sweats.
Erythromycin is metabolized by enzymes of the cytochrome P450 system, in particular, by isozymes of the CYP3A superfamily. The activity of the CYP3A enzymes can be induced or inhibited by certain drugs (e.g., dexamethasone), which can cause it to affect the metabolism of many different drugs, including erythromycin. If other CYP3A substrates — drugs that are broken down by CYP3A — such as simvastatin (Zocor), lovastatin (Mevacor), or atorvastatin (Lipitor) — are taken concomitantly with erythromycin, levels of the substrates increase, often causing adverse effects. A noted drug interaction involves erythromycin and simvastatin, resulting in increased simvastatin levels and the potential for rhabdomyolysis. Another group of CYP3A4 substrates are drugs used for migraine such as ergotamine and dihydroergotamine; their adverse effects may be more pronounced if erythromycin is associated.
Earlier case reports on sudden death prompted a study on a large cohort that confirmed a link between erythromycin, ventricular tachycardia, and sudden cardiac death in patients also taking drugs that prolong the metabolism of erythromycin (like verapamil or diltiazem) by interfering with CYP3A4. Hence, erythromycin should not be administered to people using these drugs, or drugs that also prolong the QT interval. Other examples include terfenadine (Seldane, Seldane-D), astemizole (Hismanal), cisapride (Propulsid, withdrawn in many countries for prolonging the QT time) and pimozide (Orap). Interactions with theophylline, which is used mostly in asthma, were also shown.
Erythromycin and doxycycline can have a synergistic effect when combined and kill bacteria (E. coli) with a higher potency than the sum of the two drugs together. This synergistic relationship is only temporary. After approximately 72 hours, the relationship shifts to become antagonistic, whereby a 50/50 combination of the two drugs kills less bacteria than if the two drugs were administered separately.
It may alter the effectiveness of combined oral contraceptive pills because of its effect on the gut flora. A review found that when erythromycin was given with certain oral contraceptives, there was an increase in the maximum serum concentrations and AUC of estradiol and dienogest.
Erythromycin is an inhibitor of the cytochrome P450 system, which means it can have a rapid effect on levels of other drugs metabolised by this system, e.g., warfarin.
Erythromycin displays bacteriostatic activity or inhibits growth of bacteria, especially at higher concentrations. By binding to the 50s subunit of the bacterial rRNA complex, protein synthesis and subsequent structure and function processes critical for life or replication are inhibited. Erythromycin interferes with aminoacyl translocation, preventing the transfer of the tRNA bound at the A site of the rRNA complex to the P site of the rRNA complex. Without this translocation, the A site remains occupied, thus the addition of an incoming tRNA and its attached amino acid to the nascent polypeptide chain is inhibited. This interferes with the production of functionally useful proteins, which is the basis of this antimicrobial action.
Erythromycin increases gut motility by binding to motilin receptor, thus it is a motilin receptor agonist in addition to its antimicrobial properties. It can be therefore administered intravenously as a stomach emptying stimulant.
Erythromycin is easily inactivated by gastric acid; therefore, all orally administered formulations are given as either enteric-coated or more-stable salts or esters, such as erythromycin ethylsuccinate. Erythromycin is very rapidly absorbed, and diffuses into most tissues and phagocytes. Due to the high concentration in phagocytes, erythromycin is actively transported to the site of infection, where, during active phagocytosis, large concentrations of erythromycin are released.
Most of erythromycin is metabolised by demethylation in the liver by the hepatic enzyme CYP3A4. Its main elimination route is in the bile with little renal excretion, 2%–15% unchanged drug. Erythromycin's elimination half-life ranges between 1.5 and 2.0 hours and is between 5 and 6 hours in patients with end-stage renal disease. Erythromycin levels peak in the serum 4 hours after dosing; ethylsuccinate peaks 0.5–2.5 hours after dosing, but can be delayed if digested with food.
Erythromycin crosses the placenta and enters breast milk. The American Association of Pediatrics determined erythromycin is safe to take while breastfeeding. Absorption in pregnant patients has been shown to be variable, frequently resulting in levels lower than in nonpregnant patients.
Standard-grade erythromycin is primarily composed of four related compounds known as erythromycins A, B, C, and D. Each of these compounds can be present in varying amounts and can differ by lot. Erythromycin A has been found to have the most antibacterial activity, followed by erythromycin B. Erythromycins C and D are about half as active as erythromycin A. Some of these related compounds have been purified and can be studied and researched individually.
Over the three decades after the discovery of erythromycin A and its activity as an antimicrobial, many attempts were made to synthesize it in the laboratory. The presence of 10 stereogenic carbons and several points of distinct substitution has made the total synthesis of erythromycin A a formidable task. Complete syntheses of erythromycins’ related structures and precursors such as 6-deoxyerythronolide B have been accomplished, giving way to possible syntheses of different erythromycins and other macrolide antimicrobials. Woodward successfully completed the synthesis of erythromycin A.
In 1949 Abelardo B. Aguilar, a Filipino scientist, sent some soil samples to his employer at Eli Lilly. Aguilar managed to isolate erythromycin from the metabolic products of a strain of Streptomyces erythreus (designation changed to Saccharopolyspora erythraea) found in the samples. Aguilar received no further credit or compensation for his discovery.
The scientist was allegedly promised a trip to the company's manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, but it was never fulfilled. In a letter to the company's president, Aguilar wrote: “A leave of absence is all I ask as I do not wish to sever my connection with a great company which has given me wonderful breaks in life.” The request was not granted.
Aguilar reached out to Eli Lilly again in 1993, requesting royalties from sales of the drug over the years, intending to use them to put up a foundation for poor and sickly Filipinos. This request was also denied. He died in September of the same year.
Lilly filed for patent protection on the compound which was granted in 1953. The product was launched commercially in 1952 under the brand name Ilosone (after the Philippine region of Iloilo where it was originally collected). Erythromycin was formerly also called Ilotycin.
The antibiotic clarithromycin was invented by scientists at the Japanese drug company Taisho Pharmaceutical in the 1970s as a result of their efforts to overcome the acid instability of erythromycin.
It is available as a generic medication.
In the United States, in 2014, the price increased to seven dollars per tablet.
The price of erythromycin rose three times between 2010 and 2015, from 24 cents per tablet in 2010 to $8.96 in 2015. In 2017, a Kaiser Health News study found that the per-unit cost of dozens of generics doubled or even tripled from 2015 to 2016, increasing spending by the Medicaid program. Due to price increases by drug manufacturers, Medicaid paid on average $2,685,330 more for Erythromycin in 2016 compared to 2015 (not including rebates). By 2018, generic drug prices had climbed another 5% on average.
Brand names include Robimycin, E-Mycin, E.E.S. Granules, E.E.S.-200, E.E.S.-400, E.E.S.-400 Filmtab, Erymax, Ery-Tab, Eryc, Ranbaxy, Erypar, EryPed, Eryped 200, Eryped 400, Erythrocin Stearate Filmtab, Erythrocot, E-Base, Erythroped, Ilosone, MY-E, Pediamycin, Zineryt, Abboticin, Abboticin-ES, Erycin, PCE Dispertab, Stiemycine, Acnasol, and Tiloryth.
This drug is also used in fishcare for the 'broad spectrum treatment and control of bacterial disease'. Body slime, mouth fungus, Furunculosis, bacterial gill illness, and hemorrhagic septicaemia are all examples of bacterial diseases in fish that may be treated and controlled with this therapy. It mainly attacks gram-positive bacteria in fish. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Erythromycin is an antibiotic used for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections. This includes respiratory tract infections, skin infections, chlamydia infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, and syphilis. It may also be used during pregnancy to prevent Group B streptococcal infection in the newborn, and to improve delayed stomach emptying. It can be given intravenously and by mouth. An eye ointment is routinely recommended after delivery to prevent eye infections in the newborn.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Common side effects include abdominal cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. More serious side effects may include Clostridium difficile colitis, liver problems, prolonged QT, and allergic reactions. It is generally safe in those who are allergic to penicillin. Erythromycin also appears to be safe to use during pregnancy. While generally regarded as safe during breastfeeding, its use by the mother during the first two weeks of life may increase the risk of pyloric stenosis in the baby. This risk also applies if taken directly by the baby during this age. It is in the macrolide family of antibiotics and works by decreasing bacterial protein production.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Erythromycin was first isolated in 1952 from the bacteria Saccharopolyspora erythraea. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In 2020, it was the 225th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 2 million prescriptions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Erythromycin can be used to treat bacteria responsible for causing infections of the skin and upper respiratory tract, including Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Haemophilus and Corynebacterium genera. The following represents MIC susceptibility data for a few medically significant bacteria:",
"title": "Medical uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "It may be useful in treating gastroparesis due to this promotility effect. It has been shown to improve feeding intolerances in those who are critically ill. Intravenous erythromycin may also be used in endoscopy to help clear stomach contents.",
"title": "Medical uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Erythromycin is available in enteric-coated tablets, slow-release capsules, oral suspensions, ophthalmic solutions, ointments, gels, enteric-coated capsules, non enteric-coated tablets, non enteric-coated capsules, and injections. The following erythromycin combinations are available for oral dosage:",
"title": "Medical uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "For injection, the available combinations are:",
"title": "Medical uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "For ophthalmic use:",
"title": "Medical uses"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Gastrointestinal disturbances, such as diarrhea, nausea, abdominal pain, and vomiting, are very common because erythromycin is a motilin agonist.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "More serious side effects include arrhythmia with prolonged QT intervals, including torsades de pointes, and reversible deafness. Allergic reactions range from urticaria to anaphylaxis. Cholestasis and Stevens–Johnson syndrome are some other rare side effects that may occur.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Studies have shown evidence both for and against the association of pyloric stenosis and exposure to erythromycin prenatally and postnatally. Exposure to erythromycin (especially long courses at antimicrobial doses, and also through breastfeeding) has been linked to an increased probability of pyloric stenosis in young infants. Erythromycin used for feeding intolerance in young infants has not been associated with hypertrophic pyloric stenosis.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Erythromycin estolate has been associated with reversible hepatotoxicity in pregnant women in the form of elevated serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase and is not recommended during pregnancy. Some evidence suggests similar hepatotoxicity in other populations.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It can also affect the central nervous system, causing psychotic reactions, nightmares, and night sweats.",
"title": "Adverse effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Erythromycin is metabolized by enzymes of the cytochrome P450 system, in particular, by isozymes of the CYP3A superfamily. The activity of the CYP3A enzymes can be induced or inhibited by certain drugs (e.g., dexamethasone), which can cause it to affect the metabolism of many different drugs, including erythromycin. If other CYP3A substrates — drugs that are broken down by CYP3A — such as simvastatin (Zocor), lovastatin (Mevacor), or atorvastatin (Lipitor) — are taken concomitantly with erythromycin, levels of the substrates increase, often causing adverse effects. A noted drug interaction involves erythromycin and simvastatin, resulting in increased simvastatin levels and the potential for rhabdomyolysis. Another group of CYP3A4 substrates are drugs used for migraine such as ergotamine and dihydroergotamine; their adverse effects may be more pronounced if erythromycin is associated.",
"title": "Interactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Earlier case reports on sudden death prompted a study on a large cohort that confirmed a link between erythromycin, ventricular tachycardia, and sudden cardiac death in patients also taking drugs that prolong the metabolism of erythromycin (like verapamil or diltiazem) by interfering with CYP3A4. Hence, erythromycin should not be administered to people using these drugs, or drugs that also prolong the QT interval. Other examples include terfenadine (Seldane, Seldane-D), astemizole (Hismanal), cisapride (Propulsid, withdrawn in many countries for prolonging the QT time) and pimozide (Orap). Interactions with theophylline, which is used mostly in asthma, were also shown.",
"title": "Interactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Erythromycin and doxycycline can have a synergistic effect when combined and kill bacteria (E. coli) with a higher potency than the sum of the two drugs together. This synergistic relationship is only temporary. After approximately 72 hours, the relationship shifts to become antagonistic, whereby a 50/50 combination of the two drugs kills less bacteria than if the two drugs were administered separately.",
"title": "Interactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "It may alter the effectiveness of combined oral contraceptive pills because of its effect on the gut flora. A review found that when erythromycin was given with certain oral contraceptives, there was an increase in the maximum serum concentrations and AUC of estradiol and dienogest.",
"title": "Interactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Erythromycin is an inhibitor of the cytochrome P450 system, which means it can have a rapid effect on levels of other drugs metabolised by this system, e.g., warfarin.",
"title": "Interactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Erythromycin displays bacteriostatic activity or inhibits growth of bacteria, especially at higher concentrations. By binding to the 50s subunit of the bacterial rRNA complex, protein synthesis and subsequent structure and function processes critical for life or replication are inhibited. Erythromycin interferes with aminoacyl translocation, preventing the transfer of the tRNA bound at the A site of the rRNA complex to the P site of the rRNA complex. Without this translocation, the A site remains occupied, thus the addition of an incoming tRNA and its attached amino acid to the nascent polypeptide chain is inhibited. This interferes with the production of functionally useful proteins, which is the basis of this antimicrobial action.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Erythromycin increases gut motility by binding to motilin receptor, thus it is a motilin receptor agonist in addition to its antimicrobial properties. It can be therefore administered intravenously as a stomach emptying stimulant.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Erythromycin is easily inactivated by gastric acid; therefore, all orally administered formulations are given as either enteric-coated or more-stable salts or esters, such as erythromycin ethylsuccinate. Erythromycin is very rapidly absorbed, and diffuses into most tissues and phagocytes. Due to the high concentration in phagocytes, erythromycin is actively transported to the site of infection, where, during active phagocytosis, large concentrations of erythromycin are released.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Most of erythromycin is metabolised by demethylation in the liver by the hepatic enzyme CYP3A4. Its main elimination route is in the bile with little renal excretion, 2%–15% unchanged drug. Erythromycin's elimination half-life ranges between 1.5 and 2.0 hours and is between 5 and 6 hours in patients with end-stage renal disease. Erythromycin levels peak in the serum 4 hours after dosing; ethylsuccinate peaks 0.5–2.5 hours after dosing, but can be delayed if digested with food.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Erythromycin crosses the placenta and enters breast milk. The American Association of Pediatrics determined erythromycin is safe to take while breastfeeding. Absorption in pregnant patients has been shown to be variable, frequently resulting in levels lower than in nonpregnant patients.",
"title": "Pharmacology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Standard-grade erythromycin is primarily composed of four related compounds known as erythromycins A, B, C, and D. Each of these compounds can be present in varying amounts and can differ by lot. Erythromycin A has been found to have the most antibacterial activity, followed by erythromycin B. Erythromycins C and D are about half as active as erythromycin A. Some of these related compounds have been purified and can be studied and researched individually.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Over the three decades after the discovery of erythromycin A and its activity as an antimicrobial, many attempts were made to synthesize it in the laboratory. The presence of 10 stereogenic carbons and several points of distinct substitution has made the total synthesis of erythromycin A a formidable task. Complete syntheses of erythromycins’ related structures and precursors such as 6-deoxyerythronolide B have been accomplished, giving way to possible syntheses of different erythromycins and other macrolide antimicrobials. Woodward successfully completed the synthesis of erythromycin A.",
"title": "Chemistry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1949 Abelardo B. Aguilar, a Filipino scientist, sent some soil samples to his employer at Eli Lilly. Aguilar managed to isolate erythromycin from the metabolic products of a strain of Streptomyces erythreus (designation changed to Saccharopolyspora erythraea) found in the samples. Aguilar received no further credit or compensation for his discovery.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The scientist was allegedly promised a trip to the company's manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, but it was never fulfilled. In a letter to the company's president, Aguilar wrote: “A leave of absence is all I ask as I do not wish to sever my connection with a great company which has given me wonderful breaks in life.” The request was not granted.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Aguilar reached out to Eli Lilly again in 1993, requesting royalties from sales of the drug over the years, intending to use them to put up a foundation for poor and sickly Filipinos. This request was also denied. He died in September of the same year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Lilly filed for patent protection on the compound which was granted in 1953. The product was launched commercially in 1952 under the brand name Ilosone (after the Philippine region of Iloilo where it was originally collected). Erythromycin was formerly also called Ilotycin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The antibiotic clarithromycin was invented by scientists at the Japanese drug company Taisho Pharmaceutical in the 1970s as a result of their efforts to overcome the acid instability of erythromycin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "It is available as a generic medication.",
"title": "Society and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In the United States, in 2014, the price increased to seven dollars per tablet.",
"title": "Society and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The price of erythromycin rose three times between 2010 and 2015, from 24 cents per tablet in 2010 to $8.96 in 2015. In 2017, a Kaiser Health News study found that the per-unit cost of dozens of generics doubled or even tripled from 2015 to 2016, increasing spending by the Medicaid program. Due to price increases by drug manufacturers, Medicaid paid on average $2,685,330 more for Erythromycin in 2016 compared to 2015 (not including rebates). By 2018, generic drug prices had climbed another 5% on average.",
"title": "Society and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Brand names include Robimycin, E-Mycin, E.E.S. Granules, E.E.S.-200, E.E.S.-400, E.E.S.-400 Filmtab, Erymax, Ery-Tab, Eryc, Ranbaxy, Erypar, EryPed, Eryped 200, Eryped 400, Erythrocin Stearate Filmtab, Erythrocot, E-Base, Erythroped, Ilosone, MY-E, Pediamycin, Zineryt, Abboticin, Abboticin-ES, Erycin, PCE Dispertab, Stiemycine, Acnasol, and Tiloryth.",
"title": "Society and culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "This drug is also used in fishcare for the 'broad spectrum treatment and control of bacterial disease'. Body slime, mouth fungus, Furunculosis, bacterial gill illness, and hemorrhagic septicaemia are all examples of bacterial diseases in fish that may be treated and controlled with this therapy. It mainly attacks gram-positive bacteria in fish.",
"title": "Use in fishcare"
}
]
| Erythromycin is an antibiotic used for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections. This includes respiratory tract infections, skin infections, chlamydia infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, and syphilis. It may also be used during pregnancy to prevent Group B streptococcal infection in the newborn, and to improve delayed stomach emptying. It can be given intravenously and by mouth. An eye ointment is routinely recommended after delivery to prevent eye infections in the newborn. Common side effects include abdominal cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea. More serious side effects may include Clostridium difficile colitis, liver problems, prolonged QT, and allergic reactions. It is generally safe in those who are allergic to penicillin. Erythromycin also appears to be safe to use during pregnancy. While generally regarded as safe during breastfeeding, its use by the mother during the first two weeks of life may increase the risk of pyloric stenosis in the baby. This risk also applies if taken directly by the baby during this age. It is in the macrolide family of antibiotics and works by decreasing bacterial protein production. Erythromycin was first isolated in 1952 from the bacteria Saccharopolyspora erythraea. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In 2020, it was the 225th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 2 million prescriptions. | 2002-01-30T23:20:23Z | 2023-12-31T10:28:33Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythromycin |
10,091 | Environmental law | Environmental laws are laws that protect the environment. Environmental law is the collection of laws, regulations, agreements and common law that governs how humans interact with their environment. This includes environmental regulations; laws governing management of natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries; and related topics such as environmental impact assessments.Environmental law is seen as the body of laws concerned with the protection of living things (human beings inclusive) from the harm that human activity may immediately or eventually cause to them or their species, either directly or to the media and the habits on which they depend.
Early examples of laws designed to preserve the environment for its own sake or for human enjoyment are found throughout history. In the common law, the primary protection was found in the law of nuisance, but this only allowed for private actions for damages or injunctions if there was harm to land. Thus, smells emanating from pigsties, strict liability against dumping rubbish, or damage from exploding dams. Private enforcement, however, was limited and found to be woefully inadequate to deal with major environmental threats, particularly threats to common resources. During the "Great Stink" of 1858, the dumping of sewerage into the River Thames began to smell so ghastly in the summer heat that Parliament had to be evacuated. Ironically, the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers Act 1848 had allowed the Metropolitan Commission for Sewers to close cesspits around the city in an attempt to "clean up" but this simply led people to pollute the river. In 19 days, Parliament passed a further Act to build the London sewerage system. London also suffered from terrible air pollution, and this culminated in the "Great Smog" of 1952, which in turn triggered its own legislative response: the Clean Air Act 1956. The basic regulatory structure was to set limits on emissions for households and businesses (particularly burning of coal) while an inspectorate would enforce compliance.
Chemical safety laws govern the use of chemicals in human activities, particularly human-made chemicals in modern industrial applications. As contrasted with media-oriented environmental laws (e.g., air or water quality laws), chemical control laws seek to manage the (potential) pollutants themselves. Regulatory efforts include banning specific chemical constituents in consumer products (e.g., Bisphenol A in plastic bottles), and regulating pesticides.
Water resources laws govern the ownership and use of water resources, including surface water and ground water. Regulatory areas may include water conservation, use restrictions, and ownership regimes.
Forestry laws govern activities in designated forest lands, most commonly with respect to forest management and timber harvesting. Forestry laws generally adopt management policies for public forest resources, such as multiple use and sustained yield. Forest management is split between private and public management, with public forests being sovereign property of the State. Forestry laws are now considered an international affair.
Wildlife laws govern the potential impact of human activity on wild animals, whether directly on individuals or populations, or indirectly via habitat degradation. Similar laws may operate to protect plant species. Such laws may be enacted entirely to protect biodiversity, or as a means for protecting species deemed important for other reasons. Regulatory efforts may including the creation of special conservation statuses, prohibitions on killing, harming, or disturbing protected species, efforts to induce and support species recovery, establishment of wildlife refuges to support conservation, and prohibitions on trafficking in species or animal parts to combat poaching.
Fish and game laws regulate the right to pursue and take or kill certain kinds of fish and wild animal (game). Such laws may restrict the days to harvest fish or game, the number of animals caught per person, the species harvested, or the weapons or fishing gear used. Such laws may seek to balance dueling needs for preservation and harvest and to manage both environment and populations of fish and game. Game laws can provide a legal structure to collect license fees and other money which is used to fund conservation efforts as well as to obtain harvest information used in wildlife management practice.
Environmental law has developed in response to emerging awareness of and concern over issues impacting the entire world. While laws have developed piecemeal and for a variety of reasons, some effort has gone into identifying key concepts and guiding principles common to environmental law as a whole. The principles discussed below are not an exhaustive list and are not universally recognized or accepted. Nonetheless, they represent important principles for the understanding of environmental law around the world.
Defined by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs," sustainable development may be considered together with the concepts of "integration" (development cannot be considered in isolation from sustainability) and "interdependence" (social and economic development, and environmental protection, are interdependent). Laws mandating environmental impact assessment and requiring or encouraging development to minimize environmental impacts may be assessed against this principle.
The modern concept of sustainable development was a topic of discussion at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Conference), and the driving force behind the 1983 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, or Bruntland Commission). In 1992, the first UN Earth Summit resulted in the Rio Declaration, Principle 3 of which reads: "The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations." Sustainable development has been a core concept of international environmental discussion ever since, including at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002), and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2012, or Rio+20).
Defined by UNEP to include intergenerational equity – "the right of future generations to enjoy a fair level of the common patrimony" – and intragenerational equity – "the right of all people within the current generation to fair access to the current generation's entitlement to the Earth's natural resources" – environmental equity considers the present generation under an obligation to account for long-term impacts of activities, and to act to sustain the global environment and resource base for future generations. Pollution control and resource management laws may be assessed against this principle.
Defined in the international law context as an obligation to protect one's own environment, and to prevent damage to neighboring environments, UNEP considers transboundary responsibility at the international level as a potential limitation on the rights of the sovereign state. Laws that act to limit externalities imposed upon human health and the environment may be assessed against this principle.
Identified as essential conditions for "accountable governments,... industrial concerns," and organizations generally, public participation and transparency are presented by UNEP as requiring "effective protection of the human right to hold and express opinions and to seek, receive and impart ideas,... a right of access to appropriate, comprehensible and timely information held by governments and industrial concerns on economic and social policies regarding the sustainable use of natural resources and the protection of the environment, without imposing undue financial burdens upon the applicants and with adequate protection of privacy and business confidentiality," and "effective judicial and administrative proceedings." These principles are present in environmental impact assessment, laws requiring publication and access to relevant environmental data, and administrative procedure.
One of the most commonly encountered and controversial principles of environmental law, the Rio Declaration formulated the precautionary principle as follows:
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
The principle may play a role in any debate over the need for environmental regulation.
The polluter pays principle stands for the idea that "the environmental costs of economic activities, including the cost of preventing potential harm, should be internalized rather than imposed upon society at large." All issues related to responsibility for cost for environmental remediation and compliance with pollution control regulations involve this principle.
Environmental law is a continuing source of controversy. Debates over the necessity, fairness, and cost of environmental regulation are ongoing, as well as regarding the appropriateness of regulations vs. market solutions to achieve even agreed-upon ends.
Allegations of scientific uncertainty fuel the ongoing debate over greenhouse gas regulation, and are a major factor in debates over whether to ban particular pesticides. In cases where the science is well-settled, it is not unusual to find that corporations intentionally hide or distort the facts, or sow confusion.
It is very common for regulated industry to argue against environmental regulation on the basis of cost. Difficulties arise in performing cost-benefit analysis of environmental issues. It is difficult to quantify the value of an environmental value such as a healthy ecosystem, clean air, or species diversity. Many environmentalists' response to pitting economy vs. ecology is summed up by former Senator and founder of Earth Day Gaylord Nelson, "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around." Furthermore, environmental issues are seen by many as having an ethical or moral dimension, which would transcend financial cost. Even so, there are some efforts underway to systemically recognize environmental costs and assets, and account for them properly in economic terms.
While affected industries spark controversy in fighting regulation, there are also many environmentalists and public interest groups who believe that current regulations are inadequate, and advocate for stronger protection. Environmental law conferences – such as the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Oregon – typically have this focus, also connecting environmental law with class, race, and other issues.
An additional debate is to what extent environmental laws are fair to all regulated parties. For instance, researchers Preston Teeter and Jorgen Sandberg highlight how smaller organizations can often incur disproportionately larger costs as a result of environmental regulations, which can ultimately create an additional barrier to entry for new firms, thus stifling competition and innovation.
Global and regional environmental issues are increasingly the subject of international law. Debates over environmental concerns implicate core principles of international law and have been the subject of numerous international agreements and declarations.
Customary international law is an important source of international environmental law. These are the norms and rules that countries follow as a matter of custom and they are so prevalent that they bind all states in the world. When a principle becomes customary law is not clear cut and many arguments are put forward by states not wishing to be bound. Examples of customary international law relevant to the environment include the duty to warn other states promptly about icons of an environmental nature and environmental damages to which another state or states may be exposed, and Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration ('good neighborliness' or sic utere).
Given that customary international law is not static but ever evolving and the continued increase of air pollution (carbon dioxide) causing climate changes, has led to discussions on whether basic customary principles of international law, such as the jus cogens (peremptory norms) and erga omnes principles could be applicable for enforcing international environmental law.
Numerous legally binding international agreements encompass a wide variety of issue-areas, from terrestrial, marine and atmospheric pollution through to wildlife and biodiversity protection. International environmental agreements are generally multilateral (or sometimes bilateral) treaties (a.k.a. convention, agreement, protocol, etc.). Protocols are subsidiary agreements built from a primary treaty. They exist in many areas of international law but are especially useful in the environmental field, where they may be used to regularly incorporate recent scientific knowledge. They also permit countries to reach an agreement on a framework that would be contentious if every detail were to be agreed upon in advance. The most widely known protocol in international environmental law is the Kyoto Protocol, which followed from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
While the bodies that proposed, argued, agreed upon, and ultimately adopted existing international agreements vary according to each agreement, certain conferences, including 1972's United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 1983's World Commission on Environment and Development, 1992's United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, and 2002's World Summit on Sustainable Development have been particularly important. Multilateral environmental agreements sometimes create an International Organization, Institution or Body responsible for implementing the agreement. Major examples are the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
International environmental law also includes the opinions of international courts and tribunals. While there are few and they have limited authority, the decisions carry much weight with legal commentators and are quite influential on the development of international environmental law. One of the biggest challenges in international decisions is to determine an adequate compensation for environmental damages. The courts include the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights and other regional treaty tribunals.
According to the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE), the major environmental issues in Africa are "drought and flooding, air pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, freshwater availability, degradation of soil and vegetation, and widespread poverty." The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is focused on the "growing urban and industrial pollution, water quality, electronic waste and indoor air from cookstoves." They hope to provide enough aid on concerns regarding pollution before their impacts contaminate the African environment as well as the global environment. By doing so, they intend to "protect human health, particularly vulnerable populations such as children and the poor." In order to accomplish these goals in Africa, EPA programs are focused on strengthening the ability to enforce environmental laws as well as public compliance to them. Other programs work on developing stronger environmental laws, regulations, and standards.
The Asian Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Network (AECEN) is an agreement between 16 Asian countries dedicated to improving cooperation with environmental laws in Asia. These countries include Cambodia, China, Indonesia, India, Maldives, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and Lao PDR.
The European Union issues secondary legislation on environmental issues that are valid throughout the EU (so called regulations) and many directives that must be implemented into national legislation from the 27 member states (national states). Examples are the Regulation (EC) No. 338/97 on the implementation of CITES; or the Natura 2000 network the centerpiece for nature & biodiversity policy, encompassing the bird Directive (79/409/EEC/ changed to 2009/147/EC)and the habitats directive (92/43/EEC). Which are made up of multiple SACs (Special Areas of Conservation, linked to the habitats directive) & SPAs (Special Protected Areas, linked to the bird directive), throughout Europe.
EU legislation is ruled in Article 249 Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Topics for common EU legislation are:
Environmental law is rapidly growing in the Middle East. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with countries in the Middle East to improve "environmental governance, water pollution and water security, clean fuels and vehicles, public participation, and pollution prevention."
The main concerns about environmental issues in Oceania are "illegal releases of air and water pollutants, illegal logging/timber trade, illegal shipment of hazardous wastes, including e-waste and ships slated for destruction, and insufficient institutional structure/lack of enforcement capacity". The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) is an international organization between Australia, the Cook Islands, FMS, Fiji, France, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, PNG, Samoa, Solomon Island, Tonga, Tuvalu, US, and Vanuatu. The SPREP was established in order to provide assistance in improving and protecting the environment as well as assure sustainable development for future generations.
Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983), also known as the "Tasmanian Dam Case", was a highly significant case in Australian environmental law.
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is the centerpiece of environmental legislation in Australia. It sets up the "legal framework to protect and manage nationally and internationally important flora, fauna, ecological communities and heritage places" and focuses on protecting world heritage properties, national heritage properties, wetlands of international importance, nationally threatened species and ecological communities, migratory species, Commonwealth marine areas, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and the environment surrounding nuclear activities. However, it has been subject to numerous reviews examining its shortcomings, the latest taking place in mid-2020. The interim report of this review concluded that the laws created to protect unique species and habitats are ineffective.
The Brazilian government created the Ministry of Environment in 1992 in order to develop better strategies for protecting the environment, using natural resources sustainably, and enforcing public environmental policies. The Ministry of Environment has authority over policies involving environment, water resources, preservation, and environmental programs involving the Amazon.
The Department of the Environment Act establishes the Department of the Environment in the Canadian government as well as the position Minister of the Environment. Their duties include "the preservation and enhancement of the quality of the natural environment, including water, air and soil quality; renewable resources, including migratory birds and other non-domestic flora and fauna; water; meteorology;" The Environmental Protection Act is the main piece of Canadian environmental legislation that was put into place March 31, 2000. The Act focuses on "respecting pollution prevention and the protection of the environment and human health in order to contribute to sustainable development." Other principle federal statutes include the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and the Species at Risk Act. When provincial and federal legislation are in conflict federal legislation takes precedence, that being said individual provinces can have their own legislation such as Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights, and Clean Water Act.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "China has been working with great determination in recent years to develop, implement, and enforce a solid environmental law framework. Chinese officials face critical challenges in effectively implementing the laws, clarifying the roles of their national and provincial governments, and strengthening the operation of their legal system." Explosive economic and industrial growth in China has led to significant environmental degradation, and China is currently in the process of developing more stringent legal controls. The harmonization of Chinese society and the natural environment is billed as a rising policy priority.
Environmental lawsuits have been available in China since the early 2000s. Public protest, however, plays a greater role in shaping China's environmental policy than litigation does.
In the Republic of Congo, inspired by the African models of the 1990s, the phenomenon of constitutionalization of environmental law appeared in 1992, which completed an historical development of environmental law and policy dating back to the years of independence and even long before the colonization. It gives a constitutional basis to environmental protection, which traditionally was part of the legal framework. The two Constitutions of 15 March 1992 and 20 January 2002 concretize this paradigm, by stating a legal obligation of a clean environment, by establishing a principle of compensation and a foundation of criminal nature. By this phenomenon, Congolese environmental law is situated between non-regression and the search for efficiency."
With the enactment of the 2008 Constitution, Ecuador became the first country in the world to codify the Rights of Nature. The Constitution, specifically Articles 10 and 71–74, recognizes the inalienable rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish, gives people the authority to petition on the behalf of ecosystems, and requires the government to remedy violations of these rights. The rights approach is a break away from traditional environmental regulatory systems, which regard nature as property and legalize and manage degradation of the environment rather than prevent it.
The Rights of Nature articles in Ecuador's constitution are part of a reaction to a combination of political, economic, and social phenomena. Ecuador's abusive past with the oil industry, most famously the class-action litigation against Chevron, and the failure of an extraction-based economy and neoliberal reforms to bring economic prosperity to the region has resulted in the election of a New Leftist regime, led by President Rafael Correa, and sparked a demand for new approaches to development. In conjunction with this need, the principle of "Buen Vivir," or good living – focused on social, environmental and spiritual wealth versus material wealth – gained popularity among citizens and was incorporated into the new constitution.
The influence of indigenous groups, from whom the concept of "Buen Vivir" originates, in the forming of the constitutional ideals also facilitated the incorporation of the Rights of Nature as a basic tenet of their culture and conceptualization of "Buen Vivir."
The Environmental Protection Law outlines the responsibilities of the Egyptian government to "preparation of draft legislation and decrees pertinent to environmental management, collection of data both nationally and internationally on the state of the environment, preparation of periodical reports and studies on the state of the environment, formulation of the national plan and its projects, preparation of environmental profiles for new and urban areas, and setting of standards to be used in planning for their development, and preparation of an annual report on the state of the environment to be prepared to the President."
In India, Environmental law is governed by the Environment Protection Act, 1986. This act is enforced by the Central Pollution Control Board and the numerous State Pollution Control Boards. Apart from this, there are also individual legislation specifically enacted for the protection of Water, Air, Wildlife, etc. Such legislations include :
The Basic Environmental Law is the basic structure of Japan's environmental policies replacing the Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control and the Nature Conservation Law. The updated law aims to address "global environmental problems, urban pollution by everyday life, loss of accessible natural environment in urban areas and degrading environmental protection capacity in forests and farmlands."
The three basic environmental principles that the Basic Environmental Law follows are "the blessings of the environment should be enjoyed by the present generation and succeeded to the future generations, a sustainable society should be created where environmental loads by human activities are minimized, and Japan should contribute actively to global environmental conservation through international cooperation." From these principles, the Japanese government have established policies such as "environmental consideration in policy formulation, establishment of the Basic Environment Plan which describes the directions of long-term environmental policy, environmental impact assessment for development projects, economic measures to encourage activities for reducing environmental load, improvement of social infrastructure such as sewerage system, transport facilities etc., promotion of environmental activities by corporations, citizens and NGOs, environmental education, and provision of information, promotion of science and technology."
The Ministry for the Environment and Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment were established by the Environment Act 1986. These positions are responsible for advising the Minister on all areas of environmental legislation. A common theme of New Zealand's environmental legislation is sustainably managing natural and physical resources, fisheries, and forests. The Resource Management Act 1991 is the main piece of environmental legislation that outlines the government's strategy to managing the "environment, including air, water soil, biodiversity, the coastal environment, noise, subdivision, and land use planning in general."
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation makes regulation regarding "conservation of natural resources, including the subsoil, water bodies, forests located in designated conservation areas, fauna and their habitat, in the field of hunting, hydrometeorology and related areas, environmental monitoring and pollution control, including radiation monitoring and control, and functions of public environmental policy making and implementation and statutory regulation."
Singapore is a signatory of the Convention on Biological Diversity; with most of its CBD obligations being overseen by the National Biodiversity Reference Centre, a division of its National Parks Board (NParks). Singapore is also a signatory of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Animals, with its obligations under that treaty also being overseen by NParks. The Parliament of Singapore has enacted numerous pieces of legislation to fulfil its obligations under these treaties, such as the Parks and Trees Act, Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act, and Wildlife Act. The new Wildlife (Protected Wildlife Species) Rules 2020 marks the first instance in Singapore's history that direct legal protection has been offered for specific named species, as listed in Parts 1-5 of the Rules' schedule.
Vietnam is currently working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on dioxin remediation and technical assistance in order to lower methane emissions. In March 2002, the U.S and Vietnam signed the U.S.-Vietnam Memorandum of Understanding on Research on Human Health and the Environmental Effects of Agent Orange/Dioxin. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Environmental laws are laws that protect the environment. Environmental law is the collection of laws, regulations, agreements and common law that governs how humans interact with their environment. This includes environmental regulations; laws governing management of natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries; and related topics such as environmental impact assessments.Environmental law is seen as the body of laws concerned with the protection of living things (human beings inclusive) from the harm that human activity may immediately or eventually cause to them or their species, either directly or to the media and the habits on which they depend.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Early examples of laws designed to preserve the environment for its own sake or for human enjoyment are found throughout history. In the common law, the primary protection was found in the law of nuisance, but this only allowed for private actions for damages or injunctions if there was harm to land. Thus, smells emanating from pigsties, strict liability against dumping rubbish, or damage from exploding dams. Private enforcement, however, was limited and found to be woefully inadequate to deal with major environmental threats, particularly threats to common resources. During the \"Great Stink\" of 1858, the dumping of sewerage into the River Thames began to smell so ghastly in the summer heat that Parliament had to be evacuated. Ironically, the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers Act 1848 had allowed the Metropolitan Commission for Sewers to close cesspits around the city in an attempt to \"clean up\" but this simply led people to pollute the river. In 19 days, Parliament passed a further Act to build the London sewerage system. London also suffered from terrible air pollution, and this culminated in the \"Great Smog\" of 1952, which in turn triggered its own legislative response: the Clean Air Act 1956. The basic regulatory structure was to set limits on emissions for households and businesses (particularly burning of coal) while an inspectorate would enforce compliance.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Chemical safety laws govern the use of chemicals in human activities, particularly human-made chemicals in modern industrial applications. As contrasted with media-oriented environmental laws (e.g., air or water quality laws), chemical control laws seek to manage the (potential) pollutants themselves. Regulatory efforts include banning specific chemical constituents in consumer products (e.g., Bisphenol A in plastic bottles), and regulating pesticides.",
"title": "Pollution control"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Water resources laws govern the ownership and use of water resources, including surface water and ground water. Regulatory areas may include water conservation, use restrictions, and ownership regimes.",
"title": "Resource sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Forestry laws govern activities in designated forest lands, most commonly with respect to forest management and timber harvesting. Forestry laws generally adopt management policies for public forest resources, such as multiple use and sustained yield. Forest management is split between private and public management, with public forests being sovereign property of the State. Forestry laws are now considered an international affair.",
"title": "Resource sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Wildlife laws govern the potential impact of human activity on wild animals, whether directly on individuals or populations, or indirectly via habitat degradation. Similar laws may operate to protect plant species. Such laws may be enacted entirely to protect biodiversity, or as a means for protecting species deemed important for other reasons. Regulatory efforts may including the creation of special conservation statuses, prohibitions on killing, harming, or disturbing protected species, efforts to induce and support species recovery, establishment of wildlife refuges to support conservation, and prohibitions on trafficking in species or animal parts to combat poaching.",
"title": "Resource sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Fish and game laws regulate the right to pursue and take or kill certain kinds of fish and wild animal (game). Such laws may restrict the days to harvest fish or game, the number of animals caught per person, the species harvested, or the weapons or fishing gear used. Such laws may seek to balance dueling needs for preservation and harvest and to manage both environment and populations of fish and game. Game laws can provide a legal structure to collect license fees and other money which is used to fund conservation efforts as well as to obtain harvest information used in wildlife management practice.",
"title": "Resource sustainability"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Environmental law has developed in response to emerging awareness of and concern over issues impacting the entire world. While laws have developed piecemeal and for a variety of reasons, some effort has gone into identifying key concepts and guiding principles common to environmental law as a whole. The principles discussed below are not an exhaustive list and are not universally recognized or accepted. Nonetheless, they represent important principles for the understanding of environmental law around the world.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Defined by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as \"development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,\" sustainable development may be considered together with the concepts of \"integration\" (development cannot be considered in isolation from sustainability) and \"interdependence\" (social and economic development, and environmental protection, are interdependent). Laws mandating environmental impact assessment and requiring or encouraging development to minimize environmental impacts may be assessed against this principle.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The modern concept of sustainable development was a topic of discussion at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm Conference), and the driving force behind the 1983 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, or Bruntland Commission). In 1992, the first UN Earth Summit resulted in the Rio Declaration, Principle 3 of which reads: \"The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations.\" Sustainable development has been a core concept of international environmental discussion ever since, including at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002), and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2012, or Rio+20).",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Defined by UNEP to include intergenerational equity – \"the right of future generations to enjoy a fair level of the common patrimony\" – and intragenerational equity – \"the right of all people within the current generation to fair access to the current generation's entitlement to the Earth's natural resources\" – environmental equity considers the present generation under an obligation to account for long-term impacts of activities, and to act to sustain the global environment and resource base for future generations. Pollution control and resource management laws may be assessed against this principle.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Defined in the international law context as an obligation to protect one's own environment, and to prevent damage to neighboring environments, UNEP considers transboundary responsibility at the international level as a potential limitation on the rights of the sovereign state. Laws that act to limit externalities imposed upon human health and the environment may be assessed against this principle.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Identified as essential conditions for \"accountable governments,... industrial concerns,\" and organizations generally, public participation and transparency are presented by UNEP as requiring \"effective protection of the human right to hold and express opinions and to seek, receive and impart ideas,... a right of access to appropriate, comprehensible and timely information held by governments and industrial concerns on economic and social policies regarding the sustainable use of natural resources and the protection of the environment, without imposing undue financial burdens upon the applicants and with adequate protection of privacy and business confidentiality,\" and \"effective judicial and administrative proceedings.\" These principles are present in environmental impact assessment, laws requiring publication and access to relevant environmental data, and administrative procedure.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "One of the most commonly encountered and controversial principles of environmental law, the Rio Declaration formulated the precautionary principle as follows:",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The principle may play a role in any debate over the need for environmental regulation.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The polluter pays principle stands for the idea that \"the environmental costs of economic activities, including the cost of preventing potential harm, should be internalized rather than imposed upon society at large.\" All issues related to responsibility for cost for environmental remediation and compliance with pollution control regulations involve this principle.",
"title": "Principles"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Environmental law is a continuing source of controversy. Debates over the necessity, fairness, and cost of environmental regulation are ongoing, as well as regarding the appropriateness of regulations vs. market solutions to achieve even agreed-upon ends.",
"title": "Theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Allegations of scientific uncertainty fuel the ongoing debate over greenhouse gas regulation, and are a major factor in debates over whether to ban particular pesticides. In cases where the science is well-settled, it is not unusual to find that corporations intentionally hide or distort the facts, or sow confusion.",
"title": "Theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "It is very common for regulated industry to argue against environmental regulation on the basis of cost. Difficulties arise in performing cost-benefit analysis of environmental issues. It is difficult to quantify the value of an environmental value such as a healthy ecosystem, clean air, or species diversity. Many environmentalists' response to pitting economy vs. ecology is summed up by former Senator and founder of Earth Day Gaylord Nelson, \"The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.\" Furthermore, environmental issues are seen by many as having an ethical or moral dimension, which would transcend financial cost. Even so, there are some efforts underway to systemically recognize environmental costs and assets, and account for them properly in economic terms.",
"title": "Theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "While affected industries spark controversy in fighting regulation, there are also many environmentalists and public interest groups who believe that current regulations are inadequate, and advocate for stronger protection. Environmental law conferences – such as the annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Oregon – typically have this focus, also connecting environmental law with class, race, and other issues.",
"title": "Theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "An additional debate is to what extent environmental laws are fair to all regulated parties. For instance, researchers Preston Teeter and Jorgen Sandberg highlight how smaller organizations can often incur disproportionately larger costs as a result of environmental regulations, which can ultimately create an additional barrier to entry for new firms, thus stifling competition and innovation.",
"title": "Theory"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Global and regional environmental issues are increasingly the subject of international law. Debates over environmental concerns implicate core principles of international law and have been the subject of numerous international agreements and declarations.",
"title": "International environmental law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Customary international law is an important source of international environmental law. These are the norms and rules that countries follow as a matter of custom and they are so prevalent that they bind all states in the world. When a principle becomes customary law is not clear cut and many arguments are put forward by states not wishing to be bound. Examples of customary international law relevant to the environment include the duty to warn other states promptly about icons of an environmental nature and environmental damages to which another state or states may be exposed, and Principle 21 of the Stockholm Declaration ('good neighborliness' or sic utere).",
"title": "International environmental law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Given that customary international law is not static but ever evolving and the continued increase of air pollution (carbon dioxide) causing climate changes, has led to discussions on whether basic customary principles of international law, such as the jus cogens (peremptory norms) and erga omnes principles could be applicable for enforcing international environmental law.",
"title": "International environmental law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Numerous legally binding international agreements encompass a wide variety of issue-areas, from terrestrial, marine and atmospheric pollution through to wildlife and biodiversity protection. International environmental agreements are generally multilateral (or sometimes bilateral) treaties (a.k.a. convention, agreement, protocol, etc.). Protocols are subsidiary agreements built from a primary treaty. They exist in many areas of international law but are especially useful in the environmental field, where they may be used to regularly incorporate recent scientific knowledge. They also permit countries to reach an agreement on a framework that would be contentious if every detail were to be agreed upon in advance. The most widely known protocol in international environmental law is the Kyoto Protocol, which followed from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.",
"title": "International environmental law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "While the bodies that proposed, argued, agreed upon, and ultimately adopted existing international agreements vary according to each agreement, certain conferences, including 1972's United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 1983's World Commission on Environment and Development, 1992's United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, and 2002's World Summit on Sustainable Development have been particularly important. Multilateral environmental agreements sometimes create an International Organization, Institution or Body responsible for implementing the agreement. Major examples are the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).",
"title": "International environmental law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "International environmental law also includes the opinions of international courts and tribunals. While there are few and they have limited authority, the decisions carry much weight with legal commentators and are quite influential on the development of international environmental law. One of the biggest challenges in international decisions is to determine an adequate compensation for environmental damages. The courts include the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights and other regional treaty tribunals.",
"title": "International environmental law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "According to the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE), the major environmental issues in Africa are \"drought and flooding, air pollution, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, freshwater availability, degradation of soil and vegetation, and widespread poverty.\" The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is focused on the \"growing urban and industrial pollution, water quality, electronic waste and indoor air from cookstoves.\" They hope to provide enough aid on concerns regarding pollution before their impacts contaminate the African environment as well as the global environment. By doing so, they intend to \"protect human health, particularly vulnerable populations such as children and the poor.\" In order to accomplish these goals in Africa, EPA programs are focused on strengthening the ability to enforce environmental laws as well as public compliance to them. Other programs work on developing stronger environmental laws, regulations, and standards.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The Asian Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Network (AECEN) is an agreement between 16 Asian countries dedicated to improving cooperation with environmental laws in Asia. These countries include Cambodia, China, Indonesia, India, Maldives, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, and Lao PDR.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The European Union issues secondary legislation on environmental issues that are valid throughout the EU (so called regulations) and many directives that must be implemented into national legislation from the 27 member states (national states). Examples are the Regulation (EC) No. 338/97 on the implementation of CITES; or the Natura 2000 network the centerpiece for nature & biodiversity policy, encompassing the bird Directive (79/409/EEC/ changed to 2009/147/EC)and the habitats directive (92/43/EEC). Which are made up of multiple SACs (Special Areas of Conservation, linked to the habitats directive) & SPAs (Special Protected Areas, linked to the bird directive), throughout Europe.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "EU legislation is ruled in Article 249 Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Topics for common EU legislation are:",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Environmental law is rapidly growing in the Middle East. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with countries in the Middle East to improve \"environmental governance, water pollution and water security, clean fuels and vehicles, public participation, and pollution prevention.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The main concerns about environmental issues in Oceania are \"illegal releases of air and water pollutants, illegal logging/timber trade, illegal shipment of hazardous wastes, including e-waste and ships slated for destruction, and insufficient institutional structure/lack of enforcement capacity\". The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) is an international organization between Australia, the Cook Islands, FMS, Fiji, France, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, PNG, Samoa, Solomon Island, Tonga, Tuvalu, US, and Vanuatu. The SPREP was established in order to provide assistance in improving and protecting the environment as well as assure sustainable development for future generations.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983), also known as the \"Tasmanian Dam Case\", was a highly significant case in Australian environmental law.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is the centerpiece of environmental legislation in Australia. It sets up the \"legal framework to protect and manage nationally and internationally important flora, fauna, ecological communities and heritage places\" and focuses on protecting world heritage properties, national heritage properties, wetlands of international importance, nationally threatened species and ecological communities, migratory species, Commonwealth marine areas, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and the environment surrounding nuclear activities. However, it has been subject to numerous reviews examining its shortcomings, the latest taking place in mid-2020. The interim report of this review concluded that the laws created to protect unique species and habitats are ineffective.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Brazilian government created the Ministry of Environment in 1992 in order to develop better strategies for protecting the environment, using natural resources sustainably, and enforcing public environmental policies. The Ministry of Environment has authority over policies involving environment, water resources, preservation, and environmental programs involving the Amazon.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Department of the Environment Act establishes the Department of the Environment in the Canadian government as well as the position Minister of the Environment. Their duties include \"the preservation and enhancement of the quality of the natural environment, including water, air and soil quality; renewable resources, including migratory birds and other non-domestic flora and fauna; water; meteorology;\" The Environmental Protection Act is the main piece of Canadian environmental legislation that was put into place March 31, 2000. The Act focuses on \"respecting pollution prevention and the protection of the environment and human health in order to contribute to sustainable development.\" Other principle federal statutes include the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and the Species at Risk Act. When provincial and federal legislation are in conflict federal legislation takes precedence, that being said individual provinces can have their own legislation such as Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights, and Clean Water Act.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, \"China has been working with great determination in recent years to develop, implement, and enforce a solid environmental law framework. Chinese officials face critical challenges in effectively implementing the laws, clarifying the roles of their national and provincial governments, and strengthening the operation of their legal system.\" Explosive economic and industrial growth in China has led to significant environmental degradation, and China is currently in the process of developing more stringent legal controls. The harmonization of Chinese society and the natural environment is billed as a rising policy priority.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Environmental lawsuits have been available in China since the early 2000s. Public protest, however, plays a greater role in shaping China's environmental policy than litigation does.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "In the Republic of Congo, inspired by the African models of the 1990s, the phenomenon of constitutionalization of environmental law appeared in 1992, which completed an historical development of environmental law and policy dating back to the years of independence and even long before the colonization. It gives a constitutional basis to environmental protection, which traditionally was part of the legal framework. The two Constitutions of 15 March 1992 and 20 January 2002 concretize this paradigm, by stating a legal obligation of a clean environment, by establishing a principle of compensation and a foundation of criminal nature. By this phenomenon, Congolese environmental law is situated between non-regression and the search for efficiency.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "With the enactment of the 2008 Constitution, Ecuador became the first country in the world to codify the Rights of Nature. The Constitution, specifically Articles 10 and 71–74, recognizes the inalienable rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish, gives people the authority to petition on the behalf of ecosystems, and requires the government to remedy violations of these rights. The rights approach is a break away from traditional environmental regulatory systems, which regard nature as property and legalize and manage degradation of the environment rather than prevent it.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Rights of Nature articles in Ecuador's constitution are part of a reaction to a combination of political, economic, and social phenomena. Ecuador's abusive past with the oil industry, most famously the class-action litigation against Chevron, and the failure of an extraction-based economy and neoliberal reforms to bring economic prosperity to the region has resulted in the election of a New Leftist regime, led by President Rafael Correa, and sparked a demand for new approaches to development. In conjunction with this need, the principle of \"Buen Vivir,\" or good living – focused on social, environmental and spiritual wealth versus material wealth – gained popularity among citizens and was incorporated into the new constitution.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The influence of indigenous groups, from whom the concept of \"Buen Vivir\" originates, in the forming of the constitutional ideals also facilitated the incorporation of the Rights of Nature as a basic tenet of their culture and conceptualization of \"Buen Vivir.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Environmental Protection Law outlines the responsibilities of the Egyptian government to \"preparation of draft legislation and decrees pertinent to environmental management, collection of data both nationally and internationally on the state of the environment, preparation of periodical reports and studies on the state of the environment, formulation of the national plan and its projects, preparation of environmental profiles for new and urban areas, and setting of standards to be used in planning for their development, and preparation of an annual report on the state of the environment to be prepared to the President.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In India, Environmental law is governed by the Environment Protection Act, 1986. This act is enforced by the Central Pollution Control Board and the numerous State Pollution Control Boards. Apart from this, there are also individual legislation specifically enacted for the protection of Water, Air, Wildlife, etc. Such legislations include :",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Basic Environmental Law is the basic structure of Japan's environmental policies replacing the Basic Law for Environmental Pollution Control and the Nature Conservation Law. The updated law aims to address \"global environmental problems, urban pollution by everyday life, loss of accessible natural environment in urban areas and degrading environmental protection capacity in forests and farmlands.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "The three basic environmental principles that the Basic Environmental Law follows are \"the blessings of the environment should be enjoyed by the present generation and succeeded to the future generations, a sustainable society should be created where environmental loads by human activities are minimized, and Japan should contribute actively to global environmental conservation through international cooperation.\" From these principles, the Japanese government have established policies such as \"environmental consideration in policy formulation, establishment of the Basic Environment Plan which describes the directions of long-term environmental policy, environmental impact assessment for development projects, economic measures to encourage activities for reducing environmental load, improvement of social infrastructure such as sewerage system, transport facilities etc., promotion of environmental activities by corporations, citizens and NGOs, environmental education, and provision of information, promotion of science and technology.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The Ministry for the Environment and Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment were established by the Environment Act 1986. These positions are responsible for advising the Minister on all areas of environmental legislation. A common theme of New Zealand's environmental legislation is sustainably managing natural and physical resources, fisheries, and forests. The Resource Management Act 1991 is the main piece of environmental legislation that outlines the government's strategy to managing the \"environment, including air, water soil, biodiversity, the coastal environment, noise, subdivision, and land use planning in general.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation makes regulation regarding \"conservation of natural resources, including the subsoil, water bodies, forests located in designated conservation areas, fauna and their habitat, in the field of hunting, hydrometeorology and related areas, environmental monitoring and pollution control, including radiation monitoring and control, and functions of public environmental policy making and implementation and statutory regulation.\"",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Singapore is a signatory of the Convention on Biological Diversity; with most of its CBD obligations being overseen by the National Biodiversity Reference Centre, a division of its National Parks Board (NParks). Singapore is also a signatory of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Animals, with its obligations under that treaty also being overseen by NParks. The Parliament of Singapore has enacted numerous pieces of legislation to fulfil its obligations under these treaties, such as the Parks and Trees Act, Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act, and Wildlife Act. The new Wildlife (Protected Wildlife Species) Rules 2020 marks the first instance in Singapore's history that direct legal protection has been offered for specific named species, as listed in Parts 1-5 of the Rules' schedule.",
"title": "Around the world"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Vietnam is currently working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on dioxin remediation and technical assistance in order to lower methane emissions. In March 2002, the U.S and Vietnam signed the U.S.-Vietnam Memorandum of Understanding on Research on Human Health and the Environmental Effects of Agent Orange/Dioxin.",
"title": "Around the world"
}
]
| Environmental laws are laws that protect the environment. Environmental law is the collection of laws, regulations, agreements and common law that governs how humans interact with their environment. This includes environmental regulations; laws governing management of natural resources, such as forests, minerals, or fisheries; and related topics such as environmental impact assessments.Environmental law is seen as the body of laws concerned with the protection of living things from the harm that human activity may immediately or eventually cause to them or their species, either directly or to the media and the habits on which they depend. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-12-31T00:35:30Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_law |
10,093 | Eurostar | Eurostar is an international high-speed rail service in Western Europe, connecting Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
The service is operated by the Eurostar Group which was formed from the merger of Eurostar, which operated trains through the Channel Tunnel to the United Kingdom, and Thalys which operated in Western Europe. The operator is exploring future network expansions and aims to double passenger numbers by 2030.
This section covers the history of the Eurostar brand, for history of the former Thalys operator, see Thalys.
The history of the Eurostar brand can be traced to the choice in 1986 of a rail tunnel to provide a cross-channel link between Britain and France. A previous attempt to construct a tunnel between the two nations had begun in 1974, but was quickly aborted. Construction began afresh in 1988. Eurotunnel was created to manage and own the tunnel, which was finished in 1993, the official opening taking place on 6 May 1994.
In addition to the tunnel's shuttle trains carrying cars and lorries between Folkestone and Calais, the tunnel opened up the possibility of through passenger and freight train services between places further afield. British Rail and France's SNCF contracted with Eurotunnel to use half the tunnel's capacity for this purpose. In 1987, Britain, France and Belgium set up an International Project Group to specify a train to provide an international high-speed passenger service through the tunnel. France had been operating high-speed TGV services since 1981, and had begun construction of a new high-speed line between Paris and the Channel Tunnel, LGV Nord; French TGV technology was chosen as the basis for the new trains. An order for 30 trainsets, to be manufactured in France but with some British and Belgian components, was placed in December 1989. On 20 June 1993, the first Eurostar test train travelled through the tunnel to the UK. Various technical difficulties in running the new trains on British tracks were quickly overcome.
On 14 November 1994, Eurostar services began running from Waterloo International station in London, to Paris-Nord, as well as Brussels-South railway station. The train service started with a limited Discovery service; the full daily service started from 28 May 1995.
In 1995, Eurostar was achieving an average end-to-end speed of 171.5 km/h (106.6 mph) from London to Paris. On 8 January 1996, Eurostar launched services from a second railway station in the UK when Ashford International was opened.
Also in 1996, Eurostar commenced its year-round service to Disneyland with the first train running on 29 June. The following year saw the introduction of services to the French Alps during the winter.
On 20 July 2002 a summer seasonal service to Avignon-Centre was launched. The service ran until 2014 after which it was replaced on 1 May 2015 by an expanded service calling at Avignon TGV and also serving Lyon and Marseille.
On 23 September 2003, passenger services began running on the first completed section of High Speed 1. Following a high-profile glamorous opening ceremony and a large advertising campaign, on 14 November 2007, Eurostar services in London transferred from Waterloo to the extended and extensively refurbished London St Pancras International.
Direct services from London to Amsterdam (returning to Brussels only) were launched on 4 April 2018. This service was made a return service on 26 October 2020.
The Channel Tunnel used by Eurostar services holds the record for having the longest underwater section of any tunnel in the world, and it is the third-longest railway tunnel (behind the Seikan Tunnel and the Gotthard Base Tunnel) in the world.
On 30 July 2003, a Eurostar train set a new British speed record of 334.7 km/h (208.0 mph) on the first section of the "High Speed 1" railway between the Channel Tunnel, and Fawkham Junction in north Kent, two months before official public services began running.
On 16 May 2006, Eurostar set a new record for the longest non-stop high-speed journey, a distance of 1,421 km (883 miles) from London to Cannes taking 7 hours 25 minutes.
On 4 September 2007, a record-breaking train left Paris-Nord at 10:44 (09:44 BST) and reached London St Pancras International in 2 hours 3 minutes 39 seconds, carrying journalists and railway workers. This record trip was also the first passenger-carrying arrival at the new London St Pancras International station. On 20 September 2007, Eurostar broke another record when it completed the journey from Brussels to London in 1 hour 43 minutes.
The original proposals for Eurostar included direct services to Paris and Brussels from cities north of London: Manchester Piccadilly via Birmingham New Street on the West Coast Main Line and Leeds and Glasgow Central via Edinburgh Waverley, Newcastle and York on the East Coast Main Line.
Seven 14-coach "North of London" Eurostar trains for these Regional Eurostar services were built, but these services never came to fruition. Predicted journey times of almost nine hours for Glasgow to Paris at the time of growth of low-cost air travel during the 1990s made the plans commercially unviable against the cheaper and quicker airlines. Other reasons that have been suggested for these services having never been run were both government policies and the disruptive privatisation of British Rail. Three of the Regional Eurostar units were leased by Great North Eastern Railway (GNER) to increase domestic services from London King's Cross to York and later Leeds. The lease expired in December 2005, and most of the North of London sets were transferred to SNCF for TGV services in northern France.
An international Nightstar sleeper train was also planned; this would have travelled the same routes as Regional Eurostar, plus the Great Western Main Line to Cardiff Central. These were also deemed commercially unviable, and the scheme was abandoned with no services ever operated. In 2000, the coaches were sold to Via Rail in Canada.
On 27 September 2019, the heads of two of Eurostar's major shareholders, Guillaume Pepy of SNCF, and the chair of SNCB, Sophie Dutordoir, publicised that Eurostar was planning to come together with its sister company the Franco-Belgian transnational rail service Thalys. The arrangement is to merge their operations under the working title of "Green Speed" and expand services outside the core London-Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam service, to create a grand Western European high-speed rail service covering the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, serving up to 30 million customers by 2030.
As of 2019, Thalys assisted Eurostar with onward connections between Amsterdam and Brussels, and to provide the Amsterdam to London service, in lieu of passport and customs checks at Amsterdam Centraal station.
In September 2020, the merger between Thalys and Eurostar International was confirmed, a year after Thalys announced its intention to merge with the cross-Channel provider subject to gaining European Commission clearance, to form "Green Speed". SNCF and SNCB already hold a controlling shareholding in Eurostar. In October 2021, it was announced that, following the completion of the merger, the Thalys brand would be discontinued, with all of the new operation's services to be operated under the Eurostar name but with each service's own liveries.
In October 2023, the Eurostar brand replaced Thalys, operating as one network and combining ticket sales in a single system.
Eurostar was originally operated as a collaboration of three separate French, British and Belgian corporate entities. On 1 September 2010, Eurostar was incorporated as a single corporate entity, Eurostar International Limited (EIL), replacing the joint operation between EUKL, SNCF and SNCB/NMBS. EIL is ultimately owned by SNCF (55%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) (30%), Hermes Infrastructure (10%) and SNCB (5%).
By January 2021, Eurostar ridership went down to less than 1% of pre-pandemic levels. The combined financial troubles and lack of ridership caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to Eurostar seeking governmental assistance from Britain's Treasury and Department for Transport, even though Britain sold its 40% Eurostar holding in 2015. Eurostar's appeal included granting the company access to Bank of England-backed loans and a temporary reduction in track access charges for use of the UK's high-speed rail line. Despite being majority-owned by the French state railway, SNCF, Eurostar was thought to have already exhausted options for governmental assistance from Paris, but both the French transport minister and the UK Department for Transport confirmed they were working on further plans to maintain the service.
By the end of 2022, Eurostar had debts of €964m, following French bailouts and commercial loans. Ridership levels returned to around 8 million in 2022, however this figure was still 3 million below 2019 levels. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostar has not served the Ashford International or Ebbsfleet International stations in the UK, or Calais Frethun in France, and has withdrawn its Disneyland Paris and Avignon services, as part of plans to focus on the most profitable routes.
The LGV Nord (French: Ligne à Grande Vitesse Nord, English: north high-speed line) is a 333-kilometre-long (207 mi) French high-speed rail line that connects Paris with the HSL 1 at the Belgium–France border and the Channel Tunnel. It opened in 1993. Of all French high-speed lines, LGV Nord sees the widest variety of high-speed rolling stock and is quite busy; a proposed cut-off bypassing Lille, which would reduce Eurostar journey times, is called LGV Picardie.
The Channel Tunnel is the only rail connection between Great Britain and the European mainland. It joins LGV Nord in France with High Speed 1 in Britain. Tunnelling began in 1988, and the 50.5 km (31.4-mile) tunnel was officially opened by British sovereign, Elizabeth II, and the French President, François Mitterrand, on 6 May 1994. It is owned by Getlink, which charges a toll to Eurostar for its use. Within the Channel Tunnel, Eurostar trains operate at a reduced speed of 160 km/h (100 mph) for safety reasons. Since the launch of Eurostar services, severe disruptions and cancellations have been caused by fires breaking out within the Channel Tunnel, such as in 1996 and 2008.
The HSL 1 (Dutch: Hogesnelheidslijn 1, English: High-Speed Line 1) is a 88 km-long (55 mi) Belgian high-speed rail line that connects Brussels with the LGV Nord at the Belgium–France border. It opened on 14 December 1997. Prior to the opening of the HSL 1, Eurostar trains were routed via the slower traditional Belgian railway line 94. A further four-minute improvement for London–Brussels trains was achieved in December 2006, with the opening of the 435 m (1,427 ft) Brussels South Viaduct. Linking the international platforms of Brussels-South railway station with the high-speed line, the viaduct separates Eurostar from local services.
High Speed 1, formerly known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), is a 108 km-long (67 mi) British high-speed rail line that connects London with the Channel Tunnel. It opened in two stages. The first section between the tunnel and north Kent opened in September 2003, cutting journey times by 21 minutes. On 14 November 2007, commercial services began over the whole of the High Speed 1 reducing journey times by a further 20 minutes. The line's London terminal is St Pancras station, which was redeveloped for the project.
The HSL-Zuid (Dutch: Hogesnelheidslijn Zuid, English: South high-speed line), is a 125 km-long (78 mi) Dutch high-speed railway line that connects Amsterdam with the HSL 4 at the Belgum-Netherlands border. It opened on on 7 September 2009.
Eurostar offers up to 15 weekday London – Paris services (19 on Fridays) including nine non-stop (13 on Fridays). There are also nine (ten on Friday) London–Brussels services, of which two run non-stop (continuing to Amsterdam) and a further two call at Lille only. One service daily operates to Amsterdam via Brussels and Rotterdam, also calling at Lille. There were also seasonal services: in the winter, "Snow trains", aimed at skiers, to Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Aime-la-Plagne and Moûtiers in the Alps; these ran weekly, arriving in the alps in the evening and leaving the same evening to arrive in London the following morning. This service was confirmed as withdrawn in August 2023, and its future is unknown.
In February 2018, Eurostar announced the start of its long-planned service from London to Amsterdam, with an initial two trains per day from April of that year running between St Pancras and Amsterdam Centraal. This launched as a one-way service, with return trains carrying passengers to Rotterdam and Brussels Midi/Zuid, making a 28-minute stop (which was not deemed long enough to process UK-bound passengers) and then carrying different passengers from Brussels to London. Initially passengers travelling back took a Thalys service to Brussels Midi/Zuid where they could join the Eurostar. This was due to the lack of facilities for juxtaposed controls by the UK Border Force at Amsterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Centraal. On 4 February 2020, the Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management, Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, and the UK Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, announced that juxtaposed controls would be established at Amsterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Centraal. The direct train from Amsterdam was originally due to launch on 30 April 2020, and from Rotterdam on 18 May 2020, although it was later postponed to 26 October 2020 for both cities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since 14 November 2007, all Eurostar trains have been routed via High Speed–1 to or from the redeveloped London terminus at London St Pancras International, which at a cost of £800 million was extensively rebuilt and extended to cope with 394 m (431-yard) long Eurostar trains. It had been intended to retain some Eurostar services at Waterloo International, but this was ruled out on cost grounds. Completion of High Speed–1 increased the potential number of trains serving London. Separation of Eurostar from British domestic services through Kent meant that timetabling was no longer affected by peak-hour restrictions.
Eurostar's fares were significantly higher in its early years; the cheapest fare in 1994 was £99 return. In 2002, Eurostar was planning cheaper fares, an example of which was an offer of £50-day returns from London to Paris or Brussels. By March 2003, the cheapest fare from the UK was £59 return, available all year around. In June 2009 it was announced that one-way single fares would be available at £31 at the cheapest. Competition between Eurostar and airline services was a large factor in ticket prices being reduced from the initial levels. Business Premier fares also slightly undercut air fares on similar routes, targeted at regular business travellers. In 2009, Eurostar greatly increased its budget ticket availability to help maintain and grow its dominant market share. The Eurostar ticketing system is very complex, being distributed through no fewer than 48 individual sales systems. Eurostar is a member of the Amadeus CRS distribution system, making its tickets available alongside those of airlines worldwide.
Eurostar has two sub-classes of first class: Standard Premier and Business Premier; benefits include guaranteed faster checking-in and meals served at-seat, as well as the improved furnishings and interior of carriages. The rebranding is part of Eurostar's marketing drive to attract more business professionals. Increasingly, business people in a group have been chartering private carriages as opposed to individual seats on the train.
Without the operation of Regional Eurostar services using the North of London trainsets across the rest of Britain, Eurostar has developed its connections with other transport services instead, such as integrating effectively with traditional UK rail operators' schedules and routes, making it possible for passengers to use Eurostar as a quick connection to further destinations on the continent. All three main terminals used by the Eurostar service – St Pancras International, Paris Gare du Nord, and Brussels Midi/Zuid – are served by domestic trains and by local urban transport networks such as the London Underground, Paris Metro, Brussels Metro and Amsterdam Metro. Standard Eurostar tickets no longer include free onward connections to or from any other station in Belgium: this is now available for a flat-rate supplement, currently £5.50.
Eurostar has announced several partnerships with other rail services, most notably Thalys connections at Lille and Brussels for passengers to go beyond current Eurostar routes towards the Netherlands and Germany. In 2002, Eurostar initiated the Eurostar-Plus program, offering connecting tickets for onward journeys from Lille and Paris to dozens of destinations in France. Through fares are also available from 68 British towns and cities to destinations in France and Belgium. In May 2009 Eurostar announced that a formal connection to Switzerland had been established in a partnership between Eurostar and Lyria, which will operate TGV services from Lille to the Swiss Alps for Eurostar connection.
In May 2019, Eurostar ended its agreement with Deutsche Bahn that allowed passengers to travel by train from the UK to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Under the agreement passengers could travel on a single booking which made rescheduling easier. However, the direct tickets ceased to be sold from 9 November 2019.
Because the UK is not part of the European Union or the Schengen Area, and because the Netherlands, Belgium and France are not part of the Common Travel Area, all Eurostar passengers must go through border controls. Both the British Government and the Schengen governments concerned (Belgium, Netherlands and France) have legal obligations to check the travel documents of those entering and leaving their respective countries.
To allow passengers to walk off the train without arrival checks in most cases, juxtaposed controls ordinarily take place at the embarkation station.
To comply with UK law, there are full security checks similar to those at airports, scanning both bags and people's pockets. The recommended check-in time is 90–120 minutes except for business class where it is 45–60 minutes; these are much longer than previously because of extra checks in place due to Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eurostar passengers travelling within the Schengen area on trains towards London bypass border checks, and enter the preallocated cars at the rear of the train, which are reserved for these passengers. This area is then searched at Lille and all passengers removed. This arrangement was set up after numerous people entered the UK without prior authorisation, by buying a ticket from Brussels to Lille or Calais but remaining on the train until London – an issue exacerbated by Belgian police threatening to arrest UK Border Agency staff at Brussels-South if they tried to prevent passengers whom they suspected of attempting to exploit this loophole from boarding Eurostar trains. Travel from Calais or Lille towards Brussels and the Netherlands has no border or security control. On 7 July 2020, a modified agreement was signed in Brussels that includes The Netherlands in the previous agreement. This allows for juxtaposed controls in Amsterdam and Rotterdam like those in Brussels and Paris.
When the tripartite agreements were signed, the Belgian Government said that it had serious questions about the compatibility of this agreement with the Schengen Convention and the principle of free movement of people enshrined in various European treaties.
On 30 June 2009, Eurostar raised concerns at the UK House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that it was illegal under French law to collect the information required by the UK government under the e-Borders scheme, and the company would be unable to cooperate.
On the northbound Disneyland and ski trains, the security check and French passport check take place at the origin, while the UK passport check takes place at the UK arrival stations. These are the only route where passengers are not cleared by UK border officials before crossing the Channel.
On the northbound Marseille-London train, there is no facility for security or passport checks at the southern French stations, so passengers must leave the train at Lille-Europe, taking all their belongings with them, and undergo security and border checks there before rejoining the train which waits at the station for just over an hour.
On several occasions, people have tried to stow away illegally on board the train, sometimes in large groups, trying to enter the UK; border monitoring and security is therefore extremely tight. Eurostar claims to have good and well-funded security measures.
Eurostar's punctuality has fluctuated from year to year, but usually remains over 90%; in the first quarter of 1999, 89% of services operated were on time, and in the second quarter it reached 92%. Eurostar's best punctuality record was 97.35%, between 16 and 22 August 2004. In 2006, it was 92.7%, and in 2007, 91.5% were on time. In the first quarter of 2009, 96% of Eurostar services were punctual, compared with rival air routes' 76%.
An advantage held by Eurostar is the convenience and speed of the service: with shorter check-in times than at most airports and hence quicker boarding and less queueing and high punctuality, it takes less time to travel between central London and central Paris by high-speed rail than by air. Eurostar now has a dominant share of the combined rail–air market on its routes to Paris and Brussels. In 2004, it had a 66% share of the London–Paris market, and a 59% share of the London–Brussels market. In 2007, it achieved record market shares of 71% for London–Paris and 65% for London–Brussels routes.
Eurostar's passenger numbers initially failed to meet predictions. In 1996, London and Continental Railways forecast that passenger numbers would reach 21.4 million annually by 2004, but only 7.3 million was achieved. Eighty-two million passengers used Waterloo International Station from its opening in 1994 to its closure in 2007. 2008 was a record year for Eurostar, with a 10.3% rise in passenger use, which was attributed to the use of High Speed 1 and the move to St Pancras. The following year, Eurostar saw an 11.5% fall in passenger numbers during the first three months of 2009, attributed to the 2008 Channel Tunnel fire and the 2009 recession.
As a result of the poor economic conditions, Eurostar received state aid in May 2009 to cancel out some of the accumulated debt from the High Speed 1 construction programme. Later that year, during snowy conditions in the run-up to Christmas, thousands of passengers were left stranded as several trains broke down and many more were cancelled. In an independent review commissioned by Eurostar, the company came in for serious criticism about its handling of the incident and lack of plans for such a scenario.
In 2006, the Department for Transport predicted that, by 2037, annual cross-channel passenger numbers would probably reach 16 million, considerably less optimistic than London and Continental Railways's original 1996 forecast. In 2007 Eurostar set a target of carrying 10 million passengers by 2010. The company cited several factors to support this objective, such as improved journey times, punctuality and station facilities. Passengers in general, it stated, are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental effects of air travel, and Eurostar services emit much less carbon dioxide. and that its remaining carbon emissions are now offset, making its services carbon neutral. Further expansion of the high-speed rail network in Europe, such as the HSL-Zuid line between Belgium and the Netherlands, continues to bring more destinations within rail-competitive range, giving Eurostar the possibility of opening up new services in future.
The following chart presents the estimated number of passengers annually transported by the Eurostar service since 1995:
In 2019, cumulative ridership since 1994 surpassed 200 million. Eleven million passengers travelled on its international services during 2018, the highest ever, a 7% increase on the 10.3 million carried in 2017.
Eurostar has been hailed as having set new standards in international rail travel and has won praise several times over for its high standards. However, Eurostar had previously struggled with its reputation and brand image. One commentator had defined the situation at the time as:
In June 2003, Eurostar was battling to recover from the worst period in its 10-year history. Negative media coverage combined with poor sales and the general public's low opinion of the British rail industry, created a major challenge... Eurostar was finding it difficult to pick itself up from one of the worst periods in its decade-long history. The period post 9/11 had sent the business into a downturn. Passenger numbers were drying up due to worries over international travel. Several management changes had led to a pause in strategy. Punctuality had suffered badly because of wider problems with the UK's rail infrastructure.
Eurostar won the Train Operator of the Year award in the HSBC Rail Awards for 2005. In 2006, Eurostar's Environment Group was set up, with the aim of making changes in the Eurostar services' daily running to decrease negative environmental impact. The organisation set itself a target of reducing carbon emissions per passenger journey by 25% by 2012. Drivers were trained in techniques to achieve maximum energy efficiency, and lighting was minimised; the provider of the bulk of the energy for the Channel Tunnel was switched to nuclear power stations in France. Eurostar's target was to reduce emissions by 35 percent per passenger journey by 2012, putting itself beyond the efforts of other railway companies in this field and thereby winning the 2007 Network Rail Efficiency Award. In the grand opening ceremony of St Pancras International, one of the Eurostar trains was given the name 'Tread Lightly', said to symbolise their smaller impact on the environment compared to planes. By 2008, Eurostar's environmental credentials had become highly developed and promoted.
Since then, Eurostar has received multiple awards. It was declared the Best Train Company in the joint Guardian/Observer Travel Awards 2008 and earned a spot on the Sunday Times' Best Green Companies List (2009). Other awards include: ICARUS’ Environmental Award for Best Rail Provider (2009), Guardian & Observer Travel Award for Best Train Company (2009), Travel Weekly's Golden Globes Award for Best Rail Operator (2010), World Travel Market's Responsible Tourism Award for Best Low Carbon Initiative (2011), TNT Magazine's Gold Backpack Award for Favourite Travel Transport (2012), World Travel Awards Europe's Leading Passenger Rail Operator (2011), National Rail Awards Train of the Year (2017), PETA's Travel Award for Best Travel Experience (2019), Mobile Industry Awards' Distributor of the Year (2020).
In 2007, Eurostar became the world's first carbon-neutral train service through its launch of "Tread Lightly," an environmental programme with the goal of reducing the service's carbon-dioxide emissions by 25% by 2012. The programme included: reducing power consumption on its rolling stock; sourcing more electricity from lower-emission generators; adding new controls on lighting, heating, and air conditioning; reducing paper usage via electronic tickets; recycling water and employee uniforms; sourcing all food on board from Britain, France, or Belgium. Eurostar also funded three renewable energy projects in developing regions around the world: a windfarm in Tamil Nadu, India; a micro-hydropower project in China; and a plan specifying improvements on fuel consumption of three-wheeler taxis in Indonesia.
In 2019, Eurostar removed all single-use plastics from its trains between London and Paris. Now the trains serve only wooden cutlery, recyclable cans of water, glass wine bottles, paper-based coffee cups, and eco-friendly food packaging. Eurostar partnered with the Woodland Trust, ReforestAction, and Trees for All in 2020, with the goal of planting 20,000 trees each year in woodlands along its routes across the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Since Tread Lightly launched, Eurostar has reduced its carbon footprint by over 40% and now emits up to 90% less greenhouse gas emissions than the equivalent flight.
Eurostar is a member of Railteam, a marketing alliance formed in July 2007 of seven European high-speed rail operators. The alliance plans to allow tickets to be booked from one end of Europe to the other on a single website. In June 2009 London and Continental Railways, and the Eurostar UK operations they held ownership of, became fully nationalised by the UK government.
Eurostar is not permitted to carry passengers on London services for journeys within one country, so passengers cannot travel (for example) from Lille to Marne-la-Vallée–Chessy, London to Ashford, or Rotterdam to Amsterdam on a London service. Lille to Brussels is the only international intra-Schengen journey that Eurostar is offering for sale on London services.
Built between 1992 and 1996, Eurostar's fleet consisted of 38 EMU trains, designated Class 373 in the United Kingdom and TGV TMST in France. The units have also been branded as the Eurostar e300 by Eurostar since 2015. There are two variants:
Each train has a unique four-digit number starting with "3" (3xxx). This designates the train as a Mark 3 TGV (Mark 1 being SNCF TGV Sud-Est; Mark 2 being SNCF TGV Atlantique). The second digit denotes the country of ownership:
The trains are essentially modified TGV sets, and can operate at up to 300 km/h (186 mph) on high-speed lines, and 160 km/h (100 mph) in the Channel Tunnel. It is possible to exceed the 300 km/h speed limit, but only with special permission from the safety authorities in the respective country. Speed limits in the Channel Tunnel are dictated by air-resistance, energy (heat) dissipation and the need to be used with other, slower trains. The trains were designed with Channel Tunnel safety in mind, and consist of two independent "half-sets" each with its own power car. In the event of a serious fire on board while travelling through the tunnel, passengers would be transferred into the undamaged half of the train, which would then be detached and driven out of the tunnel to safety. If the undamaged part were the rear half of the train, this would be driven by the Chef du Train (conductor), who is a fully authorized driver and occupies the rear driving cab while the train travels through the tunnel for this purpose.
As the Class 374 units have entered service the Class 373 fleet has gradually been reduced. Eleven remain in regular service with 17 scrapped and ten in storage.
In 2004–2005 the "Inter-Capital" sets still in daily use for international services were refurbished with a new interior designed by Philippe Starck. The original grey-yellow scheme in Standard class and grey-red of First/Premium First were replaced with a grey-brown look in Standard and grey-burnt-orange in First class. Power points were added to seats in First class and coaches 5 and 14 in Standard class. Premium First class was renamed BusinessPremier.
In 2008, Eurostar announced that it would be carrying out a mid-life refurbishment of its Class 373 trains to allow the fleet to remain in service beyond 2020. This will include the 28 units making up the Eurostar fleet, but not the three Class 373/1 units used by SNCF or the seven Class 373/2 "North of London" sets. As part of the refurbishment, the Italian company Pininfarina was contracted to redesign the interiors, and The Yard Creative was selected to design the new buffet cars. On 11 May 2009 Eurostar revealed the new look for its first-class compartments. The first refurbished train was due in service in 2012, and Eurostar planned to complete the entire process by 2014. On 13 November 2014 Eurostar announced the first refurbished trains would not re-enter the fleet until the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2015 due to delays at the completion centre. The last refurbished e300 eventually re-entered service in April 2019.
In addition to the announced mid-life update of the existing Class 373 fleet, Eurostar in 2009 began looking to purchase eight new trainsets. Any new trains would need to meet the same safety rules governing passage through the Channel Tunnel as the existing Class 373 fleet. The replacement to the Class 373 trains has been decided jointly between the French Transport Ministry and the UK Department for Transport. The new trains will be equipped to use the new ERTMS in-cab signalling system, due to be fitted to High Speed 1 around 2040.
On 7 October 2010, it was reported that Eurostar had selected Siemens as preferred bidder to supply 10 Siemens Velaro trainsets at a cost of €600 million These would be sixteen-car, self-propelled, 400-metre-long (1,300 ft) trainsets built to meet Channel Tunnel requirements. The top speed of the e320 trainsets is 320 km/h (200 mph) with 902 seats, compared to the e300 fleet which has a top speed of 300 km/h (186 mph) and a seating capacity of 750. Total traction power will be rated at 16 MW (21,000 hp). The e320 trainsets would also be quadri-current, adding the ability to run on the 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC system used in Germany, allowing for an expanded route network, including services between London and Cologne.
The selection of Siemens would see it break into the French high-speed market for the first time, as all French high-speed operators use TGV derivatives produced by Alstom. Alstom attempted legal action to prevent Eurostar from acquiring the German-built trains, claiming that the Siemens sets would breach Channel Tunnel safety rules, but the case was thrown out by the High Court in London. On 4 November 2010, Alstom lodged a complaint with the European Commission over the tendering process. Alstom then started legal action claiming that the Eurostar tender process was "ineffective", the High Court rejected the second suit in July 2011. In April 2012, Alstom said it would call off court actions against Siemens.
On 13 November 2014, Eurostar announced the purchase of an additional seven e320s for delivery in the second half of 2016. At the same time, Eurostar announced the first five e320s from the original order of ten would be available by December 2015, with the remaining five entering service by May 2016. Of the five sets ready by December 2015, three of them were planned to be used on London-Paris and London-Brussels routes.
A number of technical incidents have affected Eurostar services over the years, but up to the present there has only been one major accident involving a service operated by Eurostar, a derailment in June 2000. Other incidents in the Channel Tunnel – such as the 1996 and 2008 Channel Tunnel fires – have affected Eurostar services but were not directly related to Eurostar's operations. However, the breakdowns in the tunnel, which resulted in cessation of service and inconvenience to thousands of passengers, in the run-up to Christmas 2009, proved a public-relations disaster.
On 5 June 2000, a Eurostar train travelling from Paris to London derailed on the LGV Nord high-speed line while traveling at 290 km/h (180 mph). Fourteen people were treated for light injuries or shock, with no fatalities or major injuries. The articulated nature of the trainset was credited with maintaining stability during the incident and all of the train stayed upright. The incident was caused by a traction link on the second bogie of the front power car coming loose, leading to components of the transmission system on that bogie impacting the track.
During the December 2009 European snowfall, five Eurostar trains broke down inside the Channel Tunnel, after leaving France, and one in Kent on 18 December. Although the trains had been winterised, the systems had not coped with the conditions. Over 2,000 passengers were stuck inside failed trains inside the tunnel, and over 75,000 had their services disrupted. All Eurostar services were cancelled from Saturday 19 December to Monday 21 December 2009. An independent review, published on 12 February 2010, was critical of the contingency plans in place for assisting passengers stranded by the delays, calling them "insufficient".
Eurostar and Thalys merged in 2023, with the intention to double combined passenger numbers from 14.8 million to 30 million.
In an interview with Eurostar's former Chief Executive Nicolas Petrovic in the Financial Times in May 2012, an intention for cross-Channel Eurostar to serve ten new destinations was expressed, including Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Cologne, Lyon, Marseille and Geneva, along with a likely second hub to be created in Brussels. London-Amsterdam services launched in 2018.
In March 2016, in an interview with Bloomberg, Eurostar's Chief Executive expressed interest in operating a direct train service between London and Bordeaux, but not before 2019. Journey time was said to be around 4.5 hours using the new LGV Sud Europe Atlantique.
"We know we can go to most places in France physically, because our trains are compatible with French infrastructure, but then you've got to look at impact on fleet utilisation, you've got to have a station that's got the spare capacity to have a train stood for a number of hours, for all the security, screening, passport control passes. So it's not possible to go just anywhere. And you've got to be able to get the control authorities to agree that there's a big enough market for it to be worthwhile for them to set up there."
Richard Brown, former Chief Executive of Eurostar.
The e320 trains allow Eurostar for the possibility of London to Germany services in the future. Due to the UK's not having signed up to the Schengen Agreement, which allows unrestricted movement across borders of member countries, as well as different operational standards, expansion cross-Channel services is complex. For example, when the Amsterdam to London route began, it was direct in only one way, with people needing to get a train to Brussels to go through the juxtaposed controls; the direct connection was subject to talks between the UK and Dutch governments, and became completed in 2020 for services to start.
The difficulties that Eurostar faces in expanding its services would also be faced by any potential competitors to Eurostar. As the UK is outside the Schengen Agreement, London-bound trains must use platforms that are physically isolated, a constraint which other international operators such as Thalys do not face. In addition, the British authorities are required to make passenger security and passport checks before they board the train, which might deter domestic passengers. Compounding the difficulties in providing a similar service are the Channel Tunnel safety rules, the major ones being the "half-train rule" and the "length rule". The "half-train rule" stipulated that passenger trains had to be able to split in the case of emergency. Class 373 trains were designed as two half-sets, which when coupled form a complete train, enabling them to be split easily in the event of an emergency while in the tunnel, with the unaffected set able to be driven out. The half-train rule was finally abolished in May 2010. However, the "length rule", which states that passenger trains must be at least 375 m (1,230 ft) long with a through corridor (to match the distance between the safety doors in the tunnel), was retained, preventing any potential operators from applying to run services with existing fleets – the majority of both TGV and ICE trains are only 200 m (660 ft) long.
Following the liberalisation of international rail travel by European Union directives in 2010, various operators have announced proposals for competition with Eurostar.
Deutsche Bahn (DB) intended to run services between London to Frankfurt and Amsterdam (two of the biggest air travel markets in Europe), with trains 'splitting & joining' in Brussels. In July 2010, DB announced that it intended to make a test run with a high-speed ICE-3MF train through the Channel Tunnel in October 2010 in preparation for possible future operations. The trial ran on 19 October 2010 with a Class 406 ICE train specially liveried with a British "Union flag" decal. The train was then put on display for the press at London St Pancras International. However, this was not the class of train planned for the proposed service, instead proposing to use Class 407 ICE units, specially adapted for stronger Channel Tunnel safety standards.
DB scrapped the plan, mainly due to advance passport check requirements. DB had hoped that immigration checks could be done on board, but British authorities required immigration and security checks to be done at Lille-Europe station, taking at least 30 minutes.
In 2021, Renfe, the national operator of Spain announced it was proposing competing London to Paris services. In 2022, Getlink, the owner of the Channel Tunnel had reportedly considered purchasing trains suitable for competing services, leasing them to rival operations., while in 2023, Mobico Group, the owner of National Express has also been reported to be considering cross-Channel services named 'Evoyln'.
Eurostar trains do not currently call at Stratford International, which was intended to be a London stop for the regional Eurostars when the station was constructed. This was to be reviewed following the 2012 Olympics. However, in 2013, Eurostar claimed that its 'business would be hit' by stopping trains there.
Although the original plan for Regional Eurostar services to destinations north of London was abandoned, the significantly improved journey times available since the opening of High Speed 1 — which is physically connected to both the East Coast Main Line and the North London Line (for the West Coast Main Line) at London St Pancras International – and the increased maximum speeds on the West Coast Main Line since the 2000s may make potential Regional Eurostar services more commercially viable. This would be even more likely if proposals are adopted for a new high-speed line from London to the north of Britain. Simon Montague, Eurostar's Director of Communications, commented that: "...International services to the regions are only likely once High Speed 2 is built." However, as of 2014 the current plans for High Speed 2 do not allow for a direct rail link between that new line, and High Speed 1, meaning passengers would still be required to change at London Euston and take some form of transportation to London St Pancras International.
Key pieces of infrastructure still belong to LCR via its subsidiary London & Continental Stations and Property, such as the Manchester International Depot, and Eurostar (UK) still owns several track access rights and the rights to paths on both the East Coast Main Line and the West Coast Main Line. While no announcement has been made of plans to start Regional Eurostar services, it remains a possibility for the future. In the meantime, the closest equivalent to Regional Eurostar services are same-station connections with East Midlands Railway and Thameslink, changing at London St Pancras International. The construction of a new concourse at adjacent London King's Cross improved interchange with St Pancras and provided London North Eastern Railway, Great Northern, Hull Trains and Grand Central services with easier connections to Eurostar.
LGV Picardie is a proposed high-speed line between Paris and Calais via Amiens. By cutting off the corner of the LGV Nord at Lille, it would enable Eurostar trains to save 20 minutes on the journey between Paris and Calais, bringing the London–Paris journey time under 2 hours. In 2008 the French Government announced its future investment plans for new LGVs to be built up to 2020; LGV Picardie was not included but was listed as planned in the longer term. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eurostar is an international high-speed rail service in Western Europe, connecting Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The service is operated by the Eurostar Group which was formed from the merger of Eurostar, which operated trains through the Channel Tunnel to the United Kingdom, and Thalys which operated in Western Europe. The operator is exploring future network expansions and aims to double passenger numbers by 2030.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "This section covers the history of the Eurostar brand, for history of the former Thalys operator, see Thalys.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The history of the Eurostar brand can be traced to the choice in 1986 of a rail tunnel to provide a cross-channel link between Britain and France. A previous attempt to construct a tunnel between the two nations had begun in 1974, but was quickly aborted. Construction began afresh in 1988. Eurotunnel was created to manage and own the tunnel, which was finished in 1993, the official opening taking place on 6 May 1994.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In addition to the tunnel's shuttle trains carrying cars and lorries between Folkestone and Calais, the tunnel opened up the possibility of through passenger and freight train services between places further afield. British Rail and France's SNCF contracted with Eurotunnel to use half the tunnel's capacity for this purpose. In 1987, Britain, France and Belgium set up an International Project Group to specify a train to provide an international high-speed passenger service through the tunnel. France had been operating high-speed TGV services since 1981, and had begun construction of a new high-speed line between Paris and the Channel Tunnel, LGV Nord; French TGV technology was chosen as the basis for the new trains. An order for 30 trainsets, to be manufactured in France but with some British and Belgian components, was placed in December 1989. On 20 June 1993, the first Eurostar test train travelled through the tunnel to the UK. Various technical difficulties in running the new trains on British tracks were quickly overcome.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On 14 November 1994, Eurostar services began running from Waterloo International station in London, to Paris-Nord, as well as Brussels-South railway station. The train service started with a limited Discovery service; the full daily service started from 28 May 1995.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In 1995, Eurostar was achieving an average end-to-end speed of 171.5 km/h (106.6 mph) from London to Paris. On 8 January 1996, Eurostar launched services from a second railway station in the UK when Ashford International was opened.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Also in 1996, Eurostar commenced its year-round service to Disneyland with the first train running on 29 June. The following year saw the introduction of services to the French Alps during the winter.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "On 20 July 2002 a summer seasonal service to Avignon-Centre was launched. The service ran until 2014 after which it was replaced on 1 May 2015 by an expanded service calling at Avignon TGV and also serving Lyon and Marseille.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "On 23 September 2003, passenger services began running on the first completed section of High Speed 1. Following a high-profile glamorous opening ceremony and a large advertising campaign, on 14 November 2007, Eurostar services in London transferred from Waterloo to the extended and extensively refurbished London St Pancras International.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Direct services from London to Amsterdam (returning to Brussels only) were launched on 4 April 2018. This service was made a return service on 26 October 2020.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Channel Tunnel used by Eurostar services holds the record for having the longest underwater section of any tunnel in the world, and it is the third-longest railway tunnel (behind the Seikan Tunnel and the Gotthard Base Tunnel) in the world.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On 30 July 2003, a Eurostar train set a new British speed record of 334.7 km/h (208.0 mph) on the first section of the \"High Speed 1\" railway between the Channel Tunnel, and Fawkham Junction in north Kent, two months before official public services began running.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On 16 May 2006, Eurostar set a new record for the longest non-stop high-speed journey, a distance of 1,421 km (883 miles) from London to Cannes taking 7 hours 25 minutes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On 4 September 2007, a record-breaking train left Paris-Nord at 10:44 (09:44 BST) and reached London St Pancras International in 2 hours 3 minutes 39 seconds, carrying journalists and railway workers. This record trip was also the first passenger-carrying arrival at the new London St Pancras International station. On 20 September 2007, Eurostar broke another record when it completed the journey from Brussels to London in 1 hour 43 minutes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The original proposals for Eurostar included direct services to Paris and Brussels from cities north of London: Manchester Piccadilly via Birmingham New Street on the West Coast Main Line and Leeds and Glasgow Central via Edinburgh Waverley, Newcastle and York on the East Coast Main Line.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Seven 14-coach \"North of London\" Eurostar trains for these Regional Eurostar services were built, but these services never came to fruition. Predicted journey times of almost nine hours for Glasgow to Paris at the time of growth of low-cost air travel during the 1990s made the plans commercially unviable against the cheaper and quicker airlines. Other reasons that have been suggested for these services having never been run were both government policies and the disruptive privatisation of British Rail. Three of the Regional Eurostar units were leased by Great North Eastern Railway (GNER) to increase domestic services from London King's Cross to York and later Leeds. The lease expired in December 2005, and most of the North of London sets were transferred to SNCF for TGV services in northern France.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "An international Nightstar sleeper train was also planned; this would have travelled the same routes as Regional Eurostar, plus the Great Western Main Line to Cardiff Central. These were also deemed commercially unviable, and the scheme was abandoned with no services ever operated. In 2000, the coaches were sold to Via Rail in Canada.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "On 27 September 2019, the heads of two of Eurostar's major shareholders, Guillaume Pepy of SNCF, and the chair of SNCB, Sophie Dutordoir, publicised that Eurostar was planning to come together with its sister company the Franco-Belgian transnational rail service Thalys. The arrangement is to merge their operations under the working title of \"Green Speed\" and expand services outside the core London-Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam service, to create a grand Western European high-speed rail service covering the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, serving up to 30 million customers by 2030.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "As of 2019, Thalys assisted Eurostar with onward connections between Amsterdam and Brussels, and to provide the Amsterdam to London service, in lieu of passport and customs checks at Amsterdam Centraal station.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In September 2020, the merger between Thalys and Eurostar International was confirmed, a year after Thalys announced its intention to merge with the cross-Channel provider subject to gaining European Commission clearance, to form \"Green Speed\". SNCF and SNCB already hold a controlling shareholding in Eurostar. In October 2021, it was announced that, following the completion of the merger, the Thalys brand would be discontinued, with all of the new operation's services to be operated under the Eurostar name but with each service's own liveries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In October 2023, the Eurostar brand replaced Thalys, operating as one network and combining ticket sales in a single system.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Eurostar was originally operated as a collaboration of three separate French, British and Belgian corporate entities. On 1 September 2010, Eurostar was incorporated as a single corporate entity, Eurostar International Limited (EIL), replacing the joint operation between EUKL, SNCF and SNCB/NMBS. EIL is ultimately owned by SNCF (55%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) (30%), Hermes Infrastructure (10%) and SNCB (5%).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "By January 2021, Eurostar ridership went down to less than 1% of pre-pandemic levels. The combined financial troubles and lack of ridership caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to Eurostar seeking governmental assistance from Britain's Treasury and Department for Transport, even though Britain sold its 40% Eurostar holding in 2015. Eurostar's appeal included granting the company access to Bank of England-backed loans and a temporary reduction in track access charges for use of the UK's high-speed rail line. Despite being majority-owned by the French state railway, SNCF, Eurostar was thought to have already exhausted options for governmental assistance from Paris, but both the French transport minister and the UK Department for Transport confirmed they were working on further plans to maintain the service.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "By the end of 2022, Eurostar had debts of €964m, following French bailouts and commercial loans. Ridership levels returned to around 8 million in 2022, however this figure was still 3 million below 2019 levels. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostar has not served the Ashford International or Ebbsfleet International stations in the UK, or Calais Frethun in France, and has withdrawn its Disneyland Paris and Avignon services, as part of plans to focus on the most profitable routes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The LGV Nord (French: Ligne à Grande Vitesse Nord, English: north high-speed line) is a 333-kilometre-long (207 mi) French high-speed rail line that connects Paris with the HSL 1 at the Belgium–France border and the Channel Tunnel. It opened in 1993. Of all French high-speed lines, LGV Nord sees the widest variety of high-speed rolling stock and is quite busy; a proposed cut-off bypassing Lille, which would reduce Eurostar journey times, is called LGV Picardie.",
"title": "Mainline routes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Channel Tunnel is the only rail connection between Great Britain and the European mainland. It joins LGV Nord in France with High Speed 1 in Britain. Tunnelling began in 1988, and the 50.5 km (31.4-mile) tunnel was officially opened by British sovereign, Elizabeth II, and the French President, François Mitterrand, on 6 May 1994. It is owned by Getlink, which charges a toll to Eurostar for its use. Within the Channel Tunnel, Eurostar trains operate at a reduced speed of 160 km/h (100 mph) for safety reasons. Since the launch of Eurostar services, severe disruptions and cancellations have been caused by fires breaking out within the Channel Tunnel, such as in 1996 and 2008.",
"title": "Mainline routes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The HSL 1 (Dutch: Hogesnelheidslijn 1, English: High-Speed Line 1) is a 88 km-long (55 mi) Belgian high-speed rail line that connects Brussels with the LGV Nord at the Belgium–France border. It opened on 14 December 1997. Prior to the opening of the HSL 1, Eurostar trains were routed via the slower traditional Belgian railway line 94. A further four-minute improvement for London–Brussels trains was achieved in December 2006, with the opening of the 435 m (1,427 ft) Brussels South Viaduct. Linking the international platforms of Brussels-South railway station with the high-speed line, the viaduct separates Eurostar from local services.",
"title": "Mainline routes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "High Speed 1, formerly known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), is a 108 km-long (67 mi) British high-speed rail line that connects London with the Channel Tunnel. It opened in two stages. The first section between the tunnel and north Kent opened in September 2003, cutting journey times by 21 minutes. On 14 November 2007, commercial services began over the whole of the High Speed 1 reducing journey times by a further 20 minutes. The line's London terminal is St Pancras station, which was redeveloped for the project.",
"title": "Mainline routes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The HSL-Zuid (Dutch: Hogesnelheidslijn Zuid, English: South high-speed line), is a 125 km-long (78 mi) Dutch high-speed railway line that connects Amsterdam with the HSL 4 at the Belgum-Netherlands border. It opened on on 7 September 2009.",
"title": "Mainline routes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Eurostar offers up to 15 weekday London – Paris services (19 on Fridays) including nine non-stop (13 on Fridays). There are also nine (ten on Friday) London–Brussels services, of which two run non-stop (continuing to Amsterdam) and a further two call at Lille only. One service daily operates to Amsterdam via Brussels and Rotterdam, also calling at Lille. There were also seasonal services: in the winter, \"Snow trains\", aimed at skiers, to Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Aime-la-Plagne and Moûtiers in the Alps; these ran weekly, arriving in the alps in the evening and leaving the same evening to arrive in London the following morning. This service was confirmed as withdrawn in August 2023, and its future is unknown.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In February 2018, Eurostar announced the start of its long-planned service from London to Amsterdam, with an initial two trains per day from April of that year running between St Pancras and Amsterdam Centraal. This launched as a one-way service, with return trains carrying passengers to Rotterdam and Brussels Midi/Zuid, making a 28-minute stop (which was not deemed long enough to process UK-bound passengers) and then carrying different passengers from Brussels to London. Initially passengers travelling back took a Thalys service to Brussels Midi/Zuid where they could join the Eurostar. This was due to the lack of facilities for juxtaposed controls by the UK Border Force at Amsterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Centraal. On 4 February 2020, the Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management, Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, and the UK Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, announced that juxtaposed controls would be established at Amsterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Centraal. The direct train from Amsterdam was originally due to launch on 30 April 2020, and from Rotterdam on 18 May 2020, although it was later postponed to 26 October 2020 for both cities due to the COVID-19 pandemic.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Since 14 November 2007, all Eurostar trains have been routed via High Speed–1 to or from the redeveloped London terminus at London St Pancras International, which at a cost of £800 million was extensively rebuilt and extended to cope with 394 m (431-yard) long Eurostar trains. It had been intended to retain some Eurostar services at Waterloo International, but this was ruled out on cost grounds. Completion of High Speed–1 increased the potential number of trains serving London. Separation of Eurostar from British domestic services through Kent meant that timetabling was no longer affected by peak-hour restrictions.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Eurostar's fares were significantly higher in its early years; the cheapest fare in 1994 was £99 return. In 2002, Eurostar was planning cheaper fares, an example of which was an offer of £50-day returns from London to Paris or Brussels. By March 2003, the cheapest fare from the UK was £59 return, available all year around. In June 2009 it was announced that one-way single fares would be available at £31 at the cheapest. Competition between Eurostar and airline services was a large factor in ticket prices being reduced from the initial levels. Business Premier fares also slightly undercut air fares on similar routes, targeted at regular business travellers. In 2009, Eurostar greatly increased its budget ticket availability to help maintain and grow its dominant market share. The Eurostar ticketing system is very complex, being distributed through no fewer than 48 individual sales systems. Eurostar is a member of the Amadeus CRS distribution system, making its tickets available alongside those of airlines worldwide.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Eurostar has two sub-classes of first class: Standard Premier and Business Premier; benefits include guaranteed faster checking-in and meals served at-seat, as well as the improved furnishings and interior of carriages. The rebranding is part of Eurostar's marketing drive to attract more business professionals. Increasingly, business people in a group have been chartering private carriages as opposed to individual seats on the train.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Without the operation of Regional Eurostar services using the North of London trainsets across the rest of Britain, Eurostar has developed its connections with other transport services instead, such as integrating effectively with traditional UK rail operators' schedules and routes, making it possible for passengers to use Eurostar as a quick connection to further destinations on the continent. All three main terminals used by the Eurostar service – St Pancras International, Paris Gare du Nord, and Brussels Midi/Zuid – are served by domestic trains and by local urban transport networks such as the London Underground, Paris Metro, Brussels Metro and Amsterdam Metro. Standard Eurostar tickets no longer include free onward connections to or from any other station in Belgium: this is now available for a flat-rate supplement, currently £5.50.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Eurostar has announced several partnerships with other rail services, most notably Thalys connections at Lille and Brussels for passengers to go beyond current Eurostar routes towards the Netherlands and Germany. In 2002, Eurostar initiated the Eurostar-Plus program, offering connecting tickets for onward journeys from Lille and Paris to dozens of destinations in France. Through fares are also available from 68 British towns and cities to destinations in France and Belgium. In May 2009 Eurostar announced that a formal connection to Switzerland had been established in a partnership between Eurostar and Lyria, which will operate TGV services from Lille to the Swiss Alps for Eurostar connection.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In May 2019, Eurostar ended its agreement with Deutsche Bahn that allowed passengers to travel by train from the UK to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Under the agreement passengers could travel on a single booking which made rescheduling easier. However, the direct tickets ceased to be sold from 9 November 2019.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Because the UK is not part of the European Union or the Schengen Area, and because the Netherlands, Belgium and France are not part of the Common Travel Area, all Eurostar passengers must go through border controls. Both the British Government and the Schengen governments concerned (Belgium, Netherlands and France) have legal obligations to check the travel documents of those entering and leaving their respective countries.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "To allow passengers to walk off the train without arrival checks in most cases, juxtaposed controls ordinarily take place at the embarkation station.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "To comply with UK law, there are full security checks similar to those at airports, scanning both bags and people's pockets. The recommended check-in time is 90–120 minutes except for business class where it is 45–60 minutes; these are much longer than previously because of extra checks in place due to Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Eurostar passengers travelling within the Schengen area on trains towards London bypass border checks, and enter the preallocated cars at the rear of the train, which are reserved for these passengers. This area is then searched at Lille and all passengers removed. This arrangement was set up after numerous people entered the UK without prior authorisation, by buying a ticket from Brussels to Lille or Calais but remaining on the train until London – an issue exacerbated by Belgian police threatening to arrest UK Border Agency staff at Brussels-South if they tried to prevent passengers whom they suspected of attempting to exploit this loophole from boarding Eurostar trains. Travel from Calais or Lille towards Brussels and the Netherlands has no border or security control. On 7 July 2020, a modified agreement was signed in Brussels that includes The Netherlands in the previous agreement. This allows for juxtaposed controls in Amsterdam and Rotterdam like those in Brussels and Paris.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "When the tripartite agreements were signed, the Belgian Government said that it had serious questions about the compatibility of this agreement with the Schengen Convention and the principle of free movement of people enshrined in various European treaties.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "On 30 June 2009, Eurostar raised concerns at the UK House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that it was illegal under French law to collect the information required by the UK government under the e-Borders scheme, and the company would be unable to cooperate.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "On the northbound Disneyland and ski trains, the security check and French passport check take place at the origin, while the UK passport check takes place at the UK arrival stations. These are the only route where passengers are not cleared by UK border officials before crossing the Channel.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "On the northbound Marseille-London train, there is no facility for security or passport checks at the southern French stations, so passengers must leave the train at Lille-Europe, taking all their belongings with them, and undergo security and border checks there before rejoining the train which waits at the station for just over an hour.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "On several occasions, people have tried to stow away illegally on board the train, sometimes in large groups, trying to enter the UK; border monitoring and security is therefore extremely tight. Eurostar claims to have good and well-funded security measures.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Eurostar's punctuality has fluctuated from year to year, but usually remains over 90%; in the first quarter of 1999, 89% of services operated were on time, and in the second quarter it reached 92%. Eurostar's best punctuality record was 97.35%, between 16 and 22 August 2004. In 2006, it was 92.7%, and in 2007, 91.5% were on time. In the first quarter of 2009, 96% of Eurostar services were punctual, compared with rival air routes' 76%.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "An advantage held by Eurostar is the convenience and speed of the service: with shorter check-in times than at most airports and hence quicker boarding and less queueing and high punctuality, it takes less time to travel between central London and central Paris by high-speed rail than by air. Eurostar now has a dominant share of the combined rail–air market on its routes to Paris and Brussels. In 2004, it had a 66% share of the London–Paris market, and a 59% share of the London–Brussels market. In 2007, it achieved record market shares of 71% for London–Paris and 65% for London–Brussels routes.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Eurostar's passenger numbers initially failed to meet predictions. In 1996, London and Continental Railways forecast that passenger numbers would reach 21.4 million annually by 2004, but only 7.3 million was achieved. Eighty-two million passengers used Waterloo International Station from its opening in 1994 to its closure in 2007. 2008 was a record year for Eurostar, with a 10.3% rise in passenger use, which was attributed to the use of High Speed 1 and the move to St Pancras. The following year, Eurostar saw an 11.5% fall in passenger numbers during the first three months of 2009, attributed to the 2008 Channel Tunnel fire and the 2009 recession.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "As a result of the poor economic conditions, Eurostar received state aid in May 2009 to cancel out some of the accumulated debt from the High Speed 1 construction programme. Later that year, during snowy conditions in the run-up to Christmas, thousands of passengers were left stranded as several trains broke down and many more were cancelled. In an independent review commissioned by Eurostar, the company came in for serious criticism about its handling of the incident and lack of plans for such a scenario.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "In 2006, the Department for Transport predicted that, by 2037, annual cross-channel passenger numbers would probably reach 16 million, considerably less optimistic than London and Continental Railways's original 1996 forecast. In 2007 Eurostar set a target of carrying 10 million passengers by 2010. The company cited several factors to support this objective, such as improved journey times, punctuality and station facilities. Passengers in general, it stated, are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental effects of air travel, and Eurostar services emit much less carbon dioxide. and that its remaining carbon emissions are now offset, making its services carbon neutral. Further expansion of the high-speed rail network in Europe, such as the HSL-Zuid line between Belgium and the Netherlands, continues to bring more destinations within rail-competitive range, giving Eurostar the possibility of opening up new services in future.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The following chart presents the estimated number of passengers annually transported by the Eurostar service since 1995:",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 2019, cumulative ridership since 1994 surpassed 200 million. Eleven million passengers travelled on its international services during 2018, the highest ever, a 7% increase on the 10.3 million carried in 2017.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Eurostar has been hailed as having set new standards in international rail travel and has won praise several times over for its high standards. However, Eurostar had previously struggled with its reputation and brand image. One commentator had defined the situation at the time as:",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In June 2003, Eurostar was battling to recover from the worst period in its 10-year history. Negative media coverage combined with poor sales and the general public's low opinion of the British rail industry, created a major challenge... Eurostar was finding it difficult to pick itself up from one of the worst periods in its decade-long history. The period post 9/11 had sent the business into a downturn. Passenger numbers were drying up due to worries over international travel. Several management changes had led to a pause in strategy. Punctuality had suffered badly because of wider problems with the UK's rail infrastructure.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Eurostar won the Train Operator of the Year award in the HSBC Rail Awards for 2005. In 2006, Eurostar's Environment Group was set up, with the aim of making changes in the Eurostar services' daily running to decrease negative environmental impact. The organisation set itself a target of reducing carbon emissions per passenger journey by 25% by 2012. Drivers were trained in techniques to achieve maximum energy efficiency, and lighting was minimised; the provider of the bulk of the energy for the Channel Tunnel was switched to nuclear power stations in France. Eurostar's target was to reduce emissions by 35 percent per passenger journey by 2012, putting itself beyond the efforts of other railway companies in this field and thereby winning the 2007 Network Rail Efficiency Award. In the grand opening ceremony of St Pancras International, one of the Eurostar trains was given the name 'Tread Lightly', said to symbolise their smaller impact on the environment compared to planes. By 2008, Eurostar's environmental credentials had become highly developed and promoted.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Since then, Eurostar has received multiple awards. It was declared the Best Train Company in the joint Guardian/Observer Travel Awards 2008 and earned a spot on the Sunday Times' Best Green Companies List (2009). Other awards include: ICARUS’ Environmental Award for Best Rail Provider (2009), Guardian & Observer Travel Award for Best Train Company (2009), Travel Weekly's Golden Globes Award for Best Rail Operator (2010), World Travel Market's Responsible Tourism Award for Best Low Carbon Initiative (2011), TNT Magazine's Gold Backpack Award for Favourite Travel Transport (2012), World Travel Awards Europe's Leading Passenger Rail Operator (2011), National Rail Awards Train of the Year (2017), PETA's Travel Award for Best Travel Experience (2019), Mobile Industry Awards' Distributor of the Year (2020).",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In 2007, Eurostar became the world's first carbon-neutral train service through its launch of \"Tread Lightly,\" an environmental programme with the goal of reducing the service's carbon-dioxide emissions by 25% by 2012. The programme included: reducing power consumption on its rolling stock; sourcing more electricity from lower-emission generators; adding new controls on lighting, heating, and air conditioning; reducing paper usage via electronic tickets; recycling water and employee uniforms; sourcing all food on board from Britain, France, or Belgium. Eurostar also funded three renewable energy projects in developing regions around the world: a windfarm in Tamil Nadu, India; a micro-hydropower project in China; and a plan specifying improvements on fuel consumption of three-wheeler taxis in Indonesia.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In 2019, Eurostar removed all single-use plastics from its trains between London and Paris. Now the trains serve only wooden cutlery, recyclable cans of water, glass wine bottles, paper-based coffee cups, and eco-friendly food packaging. Eurostar partnered with the Woodland Trust, ReforestAction, and Trees for All in 2020, with the goal of planting 20,000 trees each year in woodlands along its routes across the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Since Tread Lightly launched, Eurostar has reduced its carbon footprint by over 40% and now emits up to 90% less greenhouse gas emissions than the equivalent flight.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Eurostar is a member of Railteam, a marketing alliance formed in July 2007 of seven European high-speed rail operators. The alliance plans to allow tickets to be booked from one end of Europe to the other on a single website. In June 2009 London and Continental Railways, and the Eurostar UK operations they held ownership of, became fully nationalised by the UK government.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Eurostar is not permitted to carry passengers on London services for journeys within one country, so passengers cannot travel (for example) from Lille to Marne-la-Vallée–Chessy, London to Ashford, or Rotterdam to Amsterdam on a London service. Lille to Brussels is the only international intra-Schengen journey that Eurostar is offering for sale on London services.",
"title": "Services"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Built between 1992 and 1996, Eurostar's fleet consisted of 38 EMU trains, designated Class 373 in the United Kingdom and TGV TMST in France. The units have also been branded as the Eurostar e300 by Eurostar since 2015. There are two variants:",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Each train has a unique four-digit number starting with \"3\" (3xxx). This designates the train as a Mark 3 TGV (Mark 1 being SNCF TGV Sud-Est; Mark 2 being SNCF TGV Atlantique). The second digit denotes the country of ownership:",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The trains are essentially modified TGV sets, and can operate at up to 300 km/h (186 mph) on high-speed lines, and 160 km/h (100 mph) in the Channel Tunnel. It is possible to exceed the 300 km/h speed limit, but only with special permission from the safety authorities in the respective country. Speed limits in the Channel Tunnel are dictated by air-resistance, energy (heat) dissipation and the need to be used with other, slower trains. The trains were designed with Channel Tunnel safety in mind, and consist of two independent \"half-sets\" each with its own power car. In the event of a serious fire on board while travelling through the tunnel, passengers would be transferred into the undamaged half of the train, which would then be detached and driven out of the tunnel to safety. If the undamaged part were the rear half of the train, this would be driven by the Chef du Train (conductor), who is a fully authorized driver and occupies the rear driving cab while the train travels through the tunnel for this purpose.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "As the Class 374 units have entered service the Class 373 fleet has gradually been reduced. Eleven remain in regular service with 17 scrapped and ten in storage.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In 2004–2005 the \"Inter-Capital\" sets still in daily use for international services were refurbished with a new interior designed by Philippe Starck. The original grey-yellow scheme in Standard class and grey-red of First/Premium First were replaced with a grey-brown look in Standard and grey-burnt-orange in First class. Power points were added to seats in First class and coaches 5 and 14 in Standard class. Premium First class was renamed BusinessPremier.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "In 2008, Eurostar announced that it would be carrying out a mid-life refurbishment of its Class 373 trains to allow the fleet to remain in service beyond 2020. This will include the 28 units making up the Eurostar fleet, but not the three Class 373/1 units used by SNCF or the seven Class 373/2 \"North of London\" sets. As part of the refurbishment, the Italian company Pininfarina was contracted to redesign the interiors, and The Yard Creative was selected to design the new buffet cars. On 11 May 2009 Eurostar revealed the new look for its first-class compartments. The first refurbished train was due in service in 2012, and Eurostar planned to complete the entire process by 2014. On 13 November 2014 Eurostar announced the first refurbished trains would not re-enter the fleet until the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2015 due to delays at the completion centre. The last refurbished e300 eventually re-entered service in April 2019.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "In addition to the announced mid-life update of the existing Class 373 fleet, Eurostar in 2009 began looking to purchase eight new trainsets. Any new trains would need to meet the same safety rules governing passage through the Channel Tunnel as the existing Class 373 fleet. The replacement to the Class 373 trains has been decided jointly between the French Transport Ministry and the UK Department for Transport. The new trains will be equipped to use the new ERTMS in-cab signalling system, due to be fitted to High Speed 1 around 2040.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "On 7 October 2010, it was reported that Eurostar had selected Siemens as preferred bidder to supply 10 Siemens Velaro trainsets at a cost of €600 million These would be sixteen-car, self-propelled, 400-metre-long (1,300 ft) trainsets built to meet Channel Tunnel requirements. The top speed of the e320 trainsets is 320 km/h (200 mph) with 902 seats, compared to the e300 fleet which has a top speed of 300 km/h (186 mph) and a seating capacity of 750. Total traction power will be rated at 16 MW (21,000 hp). The e320 trainsets would also be quadri-current, adding the ability to run on the 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC system used in Germany, allowing for an expanded route network, including services between London and Cologne.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The selection of Siemens would see it break into the French high-speed market for the first time, as all French high-speed operators use TGV derivatives produced by Alstom. Alstom attempted legal action to prevent Eurostar from acquiring the German-built trains, claiming that the Siemens sets would breach Channel Tunnel safety rules, but the case was thrown out by the High Court in London. On 4 November 2010, Alstom lodged a complaint with the European Commission over the tendering process. Alstom then started legal action claiming that the Eurostar tender process was \"ineffective\", the High Court rejected the second suit in July 2011. In April 2012, Alstom said it would call off court actions against Siemens.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "On 13 November 2014, Eurostar announced the purchase of an additional seven e320s for delivery in the second half of 2016. At the same time, Eurostar announced the first five e320s from the original order of ten would be available by December 2015, with the remaining five entering service by May 2016. Of the five sets ready by December 2015, three of them were planned to be used on London-Paris and London-Brussels routes.",
"title": "Fleet"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "A number of technical incidents have affected Eurostar services over the years, but up to the present there has only been one major accident involving a service operated by Eurostar, a derailment in June 2000. Other incidents in the Channel Tunnel – such as the 1996 and 2008 Channel Tunnel fires – have affected Eurostar services but were not directly related to Eurostar's operations. However, the breakdowns in the tunnel, which resulted in cessation of service and inconvenience to thousands of passengers, in the run-up to Christmas 2009, proved a public-relations disaster.",
"title": "Accidents and incidents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "On 5 June 2000, a Eurostar train travelling from Paris to London derailed on the LGV Nord high-speed line while traveling at 290 km/h (180 mph). Fourteen people were treated for light injuries or shock, with no fatalities or major injuries. The articulated nature of the trainset was credited with maintaining stability during the incident and all of the train stayed upright. The incident was caused by a traction link on the second bogie of the front power car coming loose, leading to components of the transmission system on that bogie impacting the track.",
"title": "Accidents and incidents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "During the December 2009 European snowfall, five Eurostar trains broke down inside the Channel Tunnel, after leaving France, and one in Kent on 18 December. Although the trains had been winterised, the systems had not coped with the conditions. Over 2,000 passengers were stuck inside failed trains inside the tunnel, and over 75,000 had their services disrupted. All Eurostar services were cancelled from Saturday 19 December to Monday 21 December 2009. An independent review, published on 12 February 2010, was critical of the contingency plans in place for assisting passengers stranded by the delays, calling them \"insufficient\".",
"title": "Accidents and incidents"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Eurostar and Thalys merged in 2023, with the intention to double combined passenger numbers from 14.8 million to 30 million.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In an interview with Eurostar's former Chief Executive Nicolas Petrovic in the Financial Times in May 2012, an intention for cross-Channel Eurostar to serve ten new destinations was expressed, including Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Cologne, Lyon, Marseille and Geneva, along with a likely second hub to be created in Brussels. London-Amsterdam services launched in 2018.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In March 2016, in an interview with Bloomberg, Eurostar's Chief Executive expressed interest in operating a direct train service between London and Bordeaux, but not before 2019. Journey time was said to be around 4.5 hours using the new LGV Sud Europe Atlantique.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "\"We know we can go to most places in France physically, because our trains are compatible with French infrastructure, but then you've got to look at impact on fleet utilisation, you've got to have a station that's got the spare capacity to have a train stood for a number of hours, for all the security, screening, passport control passes. So it's not possible to go just anywhere. And you've got to be able to get the control authorities to agree that there's a big enough market for it to be worthwhile for them to set up there.\"",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Richard Brown, former Chief Executive of Eurostar.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The e320 trains allow Eurostar for the possibility of London to Germany services in the future. Due to the UK's not having signed up to the Schengen Agreement, which allows unrestricted movement across borders of member countries, as well as different operational standards, expansion cross-Channel services is complex. For example, when the Amsterdam to London route began, it was direct in only one way, with people needing to get a train to Brussels to go through the juxtaposed controls; the direct connection was subject to talks between the UK and Dutch governments, and became completed in 2020 for services to start.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The difficulties that Eurostar faces in expanding its services would also be faced by any potential competitors to Eurostar. As the UK is outside the Schengen Agreement, London-bound trains must use platforms that are physically isolated, a constraint which other international operators such as Thalys do not face. In addition, the British authorities are required to make passenger security and passport checks before they board the train, which might deter domestic passengers. Compounding the difficulties in providing a similar service are the Channel Tunnel safety rules, the major ones being the \"half-train rule\" and the \"length rule\". The \"half-train rule\" stipulated that passenger trains had to be able to split in the case of emergency. Class 373 trains were designed as two half-sets, which when coupled form a complete train, enabling them to be split easily in the event of an emergency while in the tunnel, with the unaffected set able to be driven out. The half-train rule was finally abolished in May 2010. However, the \"length rule\", which states that passenger trains must be at least 375 m (1,230 ft) long with a through corridor (to match the distance between the safety doors in the tunnel), was retained, preventing any potential operators from applying to run services with existing fleets – the majority of both TGV and ICE trains are only 200 m (660 ft) long.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Following the liberalisation of international rail travel by European Union directives in 2010, various operators have announced proposals for competition with Eurostar.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Deutsche Bahn (DB) intended to run services between London to Frankfurt and Amsterdam (two of the biggest air travel markets in Europe), with trains 'splitting & joining' in Brussels. In July 2010, DB announced that it intended to make a test run with a high-speed ICE-3MF train through the Channel Tunnel in October 2010 in preparation for possible future operations. The trial ran on 19 October 2010 with a Class 406 ICE train specially liveried with a British \"Union flag\" decal. The train was then put on display for the press at London St Pancras International. However, this was not the class of train planned for the proposed service, instead proposing to use Class 407 ICE units, specially adapted for stronger Channel Tunnel safety standards.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "DB scrapped the plan, mainly due to advance passport check requirements. DB had hoped that immigration checks could be done on board, but British authorities required immigration and security checks to be done at Lille-Europe station, taking at least 30 minutes.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "In 2021, Renfe, the national operator of Spain announced it was proposing competing London to Paris services. In 2022, Getlink, the owner of the Channel Tunnel had reportedly considered purchasing trains suitable for competing services, leasing them to rival operations., while in 2023, Mobico Group, the owner of National Express has also been reported to be considering cross-Channel services named 'Evoyln'.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Eurostar trains do not currently call at Stratford International, which was intended to be a London stop for the regional Eurostars when the station was constructed. This was to be reviewed following the 2012 Olympics. However, in 2013, Eurostar claimed that its 'business would be hit' by stopping trains there.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Although the original plan for Regional Eurostar services to destinations north of London was abandoned, the significantly improved journey times available since the opening of High Speed 1 — which is physically connected to both the East Coast Main Line and the North London Line (for the West Coast Main Line) at London St Pancras International – and the increased maximum speeds on the West Coast Main Line since the 2000s may make potential Regional Eurostar services more commercially viable. This would be even more likely if proposals are adopted for a new high-speed line from London to the north of Britain. Simon Montague, Eurostar's Director of Communications, commented that: \"...International services to the regions are only likely once High Speed 2 is built.\" However, as of 2014 the current plans for High Speed 2 do not allow for a direct rail link between that new line, and High Speed 1, meaning passengers would still be required to change at London Euston and take some form of transportation to London St Pancras International.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Key pieces of infrastructure still belong to LCR via its subsidiary London & Continental Stations and Property, such as the Manchester International Depot, and Eurostar (UK) still owns several track access rights and the rights to paths on both the East Coast Main Line and the West Coast Main Line. While no announcement has been made of plans to start Regional Eurostar services, it remains a possibility for the future. In the meantime, the closest equivalent to Regional Eurostar services are same-station connections with East Midlands Railway and Thameslink, changing at London St Pancras International. The construction of a new concourse at adjacent London King's Cross improved interchange with St Pancras and provided London North Eastern Railway, Great Northern, Hull Trains and Grand Central services with easier connections to Eurostar.",
"title": "Future developments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "LGV Picardie is a proposed high-speed line between Paris and Calais via Amiens. By cutting off the corner of the LGV Nord at Lille, it would enable Eurostar trains to save 20 minutes on the journey between Paris and Calais, bringing the London–Paris journey time under 2 hours. In 2008 the French Government announced its future investment plans for new LGVs to be built up to 2020; LGV Picardie was not included but was listed as planned in the longer term.",
"title": "Future developments"
}
]
| Eurostar is an international high-speed rail service in Western Europe, connecting Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The service is operated by the Eurostar Group which was formed from the merger of Eurostar, which operated trains through the Channel Tunnel to the United Kingdom, and Thalys which operated in Western Europe. The operator is exploring future network expansions and aims to double passenger numbers by 2030. | 2001-11-18T20:40:38Z | 2023-12-31T17:48:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurostar |
10,100 | Equinox | A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise "due east" and set "due west". This occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September.
More precisely, an equinox is traditionally defined as the time when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun's disk. Equivalently, this is the moment when Earth's rotation axis is directly perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line, tilting neither toward nor away from the Sun. In modern times, since the Moon (and to a lesser extent the planets) causes Earth's orbit to vary slightly from a perfect ellipse, the equinox is officially defined by the Sun's more regular ecliptic longitude rather than by its declination. The instants of the equinoxes are currently defined to be when the apparent geocentric longitude of the Sun is 0° and 180°.
The word is derived from the Latin aequinoctium, from aequus (equal) and nox (night). On the day of an equinox, daytime and nighttime are of approximately equal duration all over the planet. They are not exactly equal, however, because of the angular size of the Sun, atmospheric refraction, and the rapidly changing duration of the length of day that occurs at most latitudes around the equinoxes. Long before conceiving this equality, primitive equatorial cultures noted the day when the Sun rises due east and sets due west, and indeed this happens on the day closest to the astronomically defined event. As a consequence, according to a properly constructed and aligned sundial, the daytime duration is 12 hours.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the March equinox is called the vernal or spring equinox while the September equinox is called the autumnal or fall equinox. In the Southern Hemisphere, the reverse is true. During the year, equinoxes alternate with solstices. Leap years and other factors cause the dates of both events to vary slightly.
Hemisphere-neutral names are northward equinox for the March equinox, indicating that at that moment the solar declination is crossing the celestial equator in a northward direction, and southward equinox for the September equinox, indicating that at that moment the solar declination is crossing the celestial equator in a southward direction.
Systematically observing the sunrise, people discovered that it occurs between two extreme locations at the horizon and eventually noted the midpoint between the two. Later it was realized that this happens on a day when the duration of the day and the night are practically equal and the word "equinox" comes from Latin aequus, meaning "equal", and nox, meaning "night".
In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox (March) conventionally marks the beginning of spring in most cultures and is considered the start of the New Year in the Assyrian calendar, Hindu, and the Persian or Iranian calendars, while the autumnal equinox (September) marks the beginning of autumn. Ancient Greek calendars too had the beginning of the year either at the autumnal or vernal equinox and some at solstices. The Antikythera mechanism predicts the equinoxes and solstices.
The equinoxes are the only times when the solar terminator (the "edge" between night and day) is perpendicular to the equator. As a result, the northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated.
For the same reason, this is also the time when the Sun rises for an observer at one of Earth's rotational poles and sets at the other. For a brief period lasting approximately four days, both North and South Poles are in daylight. For example, in 2021 sunrise on the North Pole is 18 March 07:09 UTC, and sunset on the South Pole is 22 March 13:08 UTC. Also in 2021, sunrise on the South Pole is 20 September 16:08 UTC, and sunset on the North Pole is 24 September 22:30 UTC.
In other words, the equinoxes are the only times when the subsolar point is on the equator, meaning that the Sun is exactly overhead at a point on the equatorial line. The subsolar point crosses the equator moving northward at the March equinox and southward at the September equinox.
When Julius Caesar established the Julian calendar in 45 BC, he set 25 March as the date of the spring equinox; this was already the starting day of the year in the Persian and Indian calendars. Because the Julian year is longer than the tropical year by about 11.3 minutes on average (or 1 day in 128 years), the calendar "drifted" with respect to the two equinoxes – so that in 300 AD the spring equinox occurred on about 21 March, and by the 1580s AD it had drifted backwards to 11 March.
This drift induced Pope Gregory XIII to establish the modern Gregorian calendar. The Pope wanted to continue to conform with the edicts of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD concerning the date of Easter, which means he wanted to move the vernal equinox to the date on which it fell at that time (21 March is the day allocated to it in the Easter table of the Julian calendar), and to maintain it at around that date in the future, which he achieved by reducing the number of leap years from 100 to 97 every 400 years. However, there remained a small residual variation in the date and time of the vernal equinox of about ±27 hours from its mean position, virtually all because the distribution of 24 hour centurial leap-days causes large jumps (see Gregorian calendar leap solstice).
The dates of the equinoxes change progressively during the leap-year cycle, because the Gregorian calendar year is not commensurate with the period of the Earth's revolution about the Sun. It is only after a complete Gregorian leap-year cycle of 400 years that the seasons commence at approximately the same time. In the 21st century the earliest March equinox will be 19 March 2096, while the latest was 21 March 2003. The earliest September equinox will be 21 September 2096 while the latest was 23 September 2003 (Universal Time).
Day is usually defined as the period of time between midnight of one period and midnight of the next, corresponding with the tilt of the Earth's axis. On the date of the equinox, the center of the Sun spends a roughly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on the Earth, so night and day are about the same length. Sunrise and sunset can be defined in several ways, but a widespread definition is the time that the top limb of the Sun is level with the horizon. With this definition, the day is longer than the night at the equinoxes:
In sunrise/sunset tables, the atmospheric refraction is assumed to be 34 arcminutes, and the assumed semidiameter (apparent radius) of the Sun is 16 arcminutes. (The apparent radius varies slightly depending on time of year, slightly larger at perihelion in January than aphelion in July, but the difference is comparatively small.) Their combination means that when the upper limb of the Sun is on the visible horizon, its centre is 50 arcminutes below the geometric horizon, which is the intersection with the celestial sphere of a horizontal plane through the eye of the observer.
These effects make the day about 14 minutes longer than the night at the equator and longer still towards the poles. The real equality of day and night only happens in places far enough from the equator to have a seasonal difference in day length of at least 7 minutes, actually occurring a few days towards the winter side of each equinox.
The times of sunset and sunrise vary with the observer's location (longitude and latitude), so the dates when day and night are equal also depend upon the observer's location.
A third correction for the visual observation of a sunrise (or sunset) is the angle between the apparent horizon as seen by an observer and the geometric (or sensible) horizon. This is known as the dip of the horizon and varies from 3 arcminutes for a viewer standing on the sea shore to 160 arcminutes for a mountaineer on Everest. The effect of a larger dip on taller objects (reaching over 2½° of arc on Everest) accounts for the phenomenon of snow on a mountain peak turning gold in the sunlight long before the lower slopes are illuminated.
The date on which the day and night are exactly the same is known as an equilux; the neologism, believed to have been coined in the 1980s, achieved more widespread recognition in the 21st century. At the most precise measurements, a true equilux is rare, because the lengths of day and night change more rapidly than any other time of the year around the equinoxes. In the mid-latitudes, daylight increases or decreases by about three minutes per day at the equinoxes, and thus adjacent days and nights only reach within one minute of each other. The date of the closest approximation of the equilux varies slightly by latitude; in the mid-latitudes, it occurs a few days before the spring equinox and after the fall equinox in each respective hemisphere.
In the half-year centered on the June solstice, the Sun rises north of east and sets north of west, which means longer days with shorter nights for the northern hemisphere and shorter days with longer nights for the southern hemisphere. In the half-year centered on the December solstice, the Sun rises south of east and sets south of west and the durations of day and night are reversed.
Also on the day of an equinox, the Sun rises everywhere on Earth (except at the poles) at about 06:00 and sets at about 18:00 (local solar time). These times are not exact for several reasons:
Some of the statements above can be made clearer by picturing the day arc (i.e., the path along which the Sun appears to move across the sky). The pictures show this for every hour on equinox day. In addition, some 'ghost' suns are also indicated below the horizon, up to 18° below it; the Sun in such areas still causes twilight. The depictions presented below can be used for both the northern and the southern hemispheres. The observer is understood to be sitting near the tree on the island depicted in the middle of the ocean; the green arrows give cardinal directions.
The following special cases are depicted:
The March equinox occurs about when the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator northward. In the Northern Hemisphere, the term vernal point is used for the time of this occurrence and for the precise direction in space where the Sun exists at that time. This point is the origin of some celestial coordinate systems, which are usually rooted to an astronomical epoch since it gradually varies (precesses) over time:
The modern definition of equinox is the instant when the Sun's apparent geocentric ecliptic longitude is 0° (northward equinox) or 180° (southward equinox). Note that at that moment, its latitude will not be exactly zero, since Earth is not exactly in the plane of the ecliptic. Its declination will also not be exactly zero, so the scientific definition is slightly different from the traditional one. The mean ecliptic is defined by the barycenter of Earth and the Moon combined, to minimize the fact that the orbital inclination of the Moon causes the Earth to wander slightly above and below the ecliptic. See the adjacent diagram.
Because of the precession of the Earth's axis, the position of the vernal point on the celestial sphere changes over time, and the equatorial and the ecliptic coordinate systems change accordingly. Thus when specifying celestial coordinates for an object, one has to specify at what time the vernal point and the celestial equator are taken. That reference time can either be a conventional time (like J2000), or an arbitrary point in time, as for the equinox of date.
The upper culmination of the vernal point is considered the start of the sidereal day for the observer. The hour angle of the vernal point is, by definition, the observer's sidereal time.
Using the current official IAU constellation boundaries – and taking into account the variable precession speed and the rotation of the celestial equator – the equinoxes shift through the constellations as follows (expressed in astronomical year numbering when the year 0 = 1 BC, −1 = 2 BC, etc.):
Mirror-image conjugate auroras have been observed during the equinoxes.
The equinoxes are sometimes regarded as the start of spring and autumn. A number of traditional harvest festivals are celebrated on the date of the equinoxes.
Religious architecture is often determined by the equinox; the Angkor Wat Equinox during which the sun rises in a perfect alignment over Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one such example.
Catholic churches, since the recommendations of Charles Borromeo, have often chosen the equinox as their reference point for the orientation of churches.
One effect of equinoctial periods is the temporary disruption of communications satellites. For all geostationary satellites, there are a few days around the equinox when the Sun goes directly behind the satellite relative to Earth (i.e. within the beam-width of the ground-station antenna) for a short period each day. The Sun's immense power and broad radiation spectrum overload the Earth station's reception circuits with noise and, depending on antenna size and other factors, temporarily disrupt or degrade the circuit. The duration of those effects varies but can range from a few minutes to an hour. (For a given frequency band, a larger antenna has a narrower beam-width and hence experiences shorter duration "Sun outage" windows.)
Satellites in geostationary orbit also experience difficulties maintaining power during the equinox because they have to travel through Earth's shadow and rely only on battery power. Usually, a satellite travels either north or south of the Earth's shadow because Earth's axis is not directly perpendicular to a line from the Earth to the Sun at other times. During the equinox, since geostationary satellites are situated above the Equator, they are in Earth's shadow for the longest duration all year.
Equinoxes are defined on any planet with a tilted rotational axis. A dramatic example is Saturn, where the equinox places its ring system edge-on facing the Sun. As a result, they are visible only as a thin line when seen from Earth. When seen from above – a view seen during an equinox for the first time from the Cassini space probe in 2009 – they receive very little sunshine; indeed, they receive more planetshine than light from the Sun. This phenomenon occurs once every 14.7 years on average, and can last a few weeks before and after the exact equinox. Saturn's most recent equinox was on 11 August 2009, and its next will take place on 6 May 2025.
Mars's most recent equinoxes were on 24 February 2022 (northern autumn), and on 26 December 2022 (northern spring). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise \"due east\" and set \"due west\". This occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "More precisely, an equinox is traditionally defined as the time when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun's disk. Equivalently, this is the moment when Earth's rotation axis is directly perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line, tilting neither toward nor away from the Sun. In modern times, since the Moon (and to a lesser extent the planets) causes Earth's orbit to vary slightly from a perfect ellipse, the equinox is officially defined by the Sun's more regular ecliptic longitude rather than by its declination. The instants of the equinoxes are currently defined to be when the apparent geocentric longitude of the Sun is 0° and 180°.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The word is derived from the Latin aequinoctium, from aequus (equal) and nox (night). On the day of an equinox, daytime and nighttime are of approximately equal duration all over the planet. They are not exactly equal, however, because of the angular size of the Sun, atmospheric refraction, and the rapidly changing duration of the length of day that occurs at most latitudes around the equinoxes. Long before conceiving this equality, primitive equatorial cultures noted the day when the Sun rises due east and sets due west, and indeed this happens on the day closest to the astronomically defined event. As a consequence, according to a properly constructed and aligned sundial, the daytime duration is 12 hours.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the Northern Hemisphere, the March equinox is called the vernal or spring equinox while the September equinox is called the autumnal or fall equinox. In the Southern Hemisphere, the reverse is true. During the year, equinoxes alternate with solstices. Leap years and other factors cause the dates of both events to vary slightly.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Hemisphere-neutral names are northward equinox for the March equinox, indicating that at that moment the solar declination is crossing the celestial equator in a northward direction, and southward equinox for the September equinox, indicating that at that moment the solar declination is crossing the celestial equator in a southward direction.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Systematically observing the sunrise, people discovered that it occurs between two extreme locations at the horizon and eventually noted the midpoint between the two. Later it was realized that this happens on a day when the duration of the day and the night are practically equal and the word \"equinox\" comes from Latin aequus, meaning \"equal\", and nox, meaning \"night\".",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox (March) conventionally marks the beginning of spring in most cultures and is considered the start of the New Year in the Assyrian calendar, Hindu, and the Persian or Iranian calendars, while the autumnal equinox (September) marks the beginning of autumn. Ancient Greek calendars too had the beginning of the year either at the autumnal or vernal equinox and some at solstices. The Antikythera mechanism predicts the equinoxes and solstices.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The equinoxes are the only times when the solar terminator (the \"edge\" between night and day) is perpendicular to the equator. As a result, the northern and southern hemispheres are equally illuminated.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "For the same reason, this is also the time when the Sun rises for an observer at one of Earth's rotational poles and sets at the other. For a brief period lasting approximately four days, both North and South Poles are in daylight. For example, in 2021 sunrise on the North Pole is 18 March 07:09 UTC, and sunset on the South Pole is 22 March 13:08 UTC. Also in 2021, sunrise on the South Pole is 20 September 16:08 UTC, and sunset on the North Pole is 24 September 22:30 UTC.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In other words, the equinoxes are the only times when the subsolar point is on the equator, meaning that the Sun is exactly overhead at a point on the equatorial line. The subsolar point crosses the equator moving northward at the March equinox and southward at the September equinox.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "When Julius Caesar established the Julian calendar in 45 BC, he set 25 March as the date of the spring equinox; this was already the starting day of the year in the Persian and Indian calendars. Because the Julian year is longer than the tropical year by about 11.3 minutes on average (or 1 day in 128 years), the calendar \"drifted\" with respect to the two equinoxes – so that in 300 AD the spring equinox occurred on about 21 March, and by the 1580s AD it had drifted backwards to 11 March.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "This drift induced Pope Gregory XIII to establish the modern Gregorian calendar. The Pope wanted to continue to conform with the edicts of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD concerning the date of Easter, which means he wanted to move the vernal equinox to the date on which it fell at that time (21 March is the day allocated to it in the Easter table of the Julian calendar), and to maintain it at around that date in the future, which he achieved by reducing the number of leap years from 100 to 97 every 400 years. However, there remained a small residual variation in the date and time of the vernal equinox of about ±27 hours from its mean position, virtually all because the distribution of 24 hour centurial leap-days causes large jumps (see Gregorian calendar leap solstice).",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The dates of the equinoxes change progressively during the leap-year cycle, because the Gregorian calendar year is not commensurate with the period of the Earth's revolution about the Sun. It is only after a complete Gregorian leap-year cycle of 400 years that the seasons commence at approximately the same time. In the 21st century the earliest March equinox will be 19 March 2096, while the latest was 21 March 2003. The earliest September equinox will be 21 September 2096 while the latest was 23 September 2003 (Universal Time).",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Day is usually defined as the period of time between midnight of one period and midnight of the next, corresponding with the tilt of the Earth's axis. On the date of the equinox, the center of the Sun spends a roughly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on the Earth, so night and day are about the same length. Sunrise and sunset can be defined in several ways, but a widespread definition is the time that the top limb of the Sun is level with the horizon. With this definition, the day is longer than the night at the equinoxes:",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In sunrise/sunset tables, the atmospheric refraction is assumed to be 34 arcminutes, and the assumed semidiameter (apparent radius) of the Sun is 16 arcminutes. (The apparent radius varies slightly depending on time of year, slightly larger at perihelion in January than aphelion in July, but the difference is comparatively small.) Their combination means that when the upper limb of the Sun is on the visible horizon, its centre is 50 arcminutes below the geometric horizon, which is the intersection with the celestial sphere of a horizontal plane through the eye of the observer.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "These effects make the day about 14 minutes longer than the night at the equator and longer still towards the poles. The real equality of day and night only happens in places far enough from the equator to have a seasonal difference in day length of at least 7 minutes, actually occurring a few days towards the winter side of each equinox.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The times of sunset and sunrise vary with the observer's location (longitude and latitude), so the dates when day and night are equal also depend upon the observer's location.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "A third correction for the visual observation of a sunrise (or sunset) is the angle between the apparent horizon as seen by an observer and the geometric (or sensible) horizon. This is known as the dip of the horizon and varies from 3 arcminutes for a viewer standing on the sea shore to 160 arcminutes for a mountaineer on Everest. The effect of a larger dip on taller objects (reaching over 2½° of arc on Everest) accounts for the phenomenon of snow on a mountain peak turning gold in the sunlight long before the lower slopes are illuminated.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The date on which the day and night are exactly the same is known as an equilux; the neologism, believed to have been coined in the 1980s, achieved more widespread recognition in the 21st century. At the most precise measurements, a true equilux is rare, because the lengths of day and night change more rapidly than any other time of the year around the equinoxes. In the mid-latitudes, daylight increases or decreases by about three minutes per day at the equinoxes, and thus adjacent days and nights only reach within one minute of each other. The date of the closest approximation of the equilux varies slightly by latitude; in the mid-latitudes, it occurs a few days before the spring equinox and after the fall equinox in each respective hemisphere.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In the half-year centered on the June solstice, the Sun rises north of east and sets north of west, which means longer days with shorter nights for the northern hemisphere and shorter days with longer nights for the southern hemisphere. In the half-year centered on the December solstice, the Sun rises south of east and sets south of west and the durations of day and night are reversed.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Also on the day of an equinox, the Sun rises everywhere on Earth (except at the poles) at about 06:00 and sets at about 18:00 (local solar time). These times are not exact for several reasons:",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Some of the statements above can be made clearer by picturing the day arc (i.e., the path along which the Sun appears to move across the sky). The pictures show this for every hour on equinox day. In addition, some 'ghost' suns are also indicated below the horizon, up to 18° below it; the Sun in such areas still causes twilight. The depictions presented below can be used for both the northern and the southern hemispheres. The observer is understood to be sitting near the tree on the island depicted in the middle of the ocean; the green arrows give cardinal directions.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The following special cases are depicted:",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The March equinox occurs about when the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator northward. In the Northern Hemisphere, the term vernal point is used for the time of this occurrence and for the precise direction in space where the Sun exists at that time. This point is the origin of some celestial coordinate systems, which are usually rooted to an astronomical epoch since it gradually varies (precesses) over time:",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The modern definition of equinox is the instant when the Sun's apparent geocentric ecliptic longitude is 0° (northward equinox) or 180° (southward equinox). Note that at that moment, its latitude will not be exactly zero, since Earth is not exactly in the plane of the ecliptic. Its declination will also not be exactly zero, so the scientific definition is slightly different from the traditional one. The mean ecliptic is defined by the barycenter of Earth and the Moon combined, to minimize the fact that the orbital inclination of the Moon causes the Earth to wander slightly above and below the ecliptic. See the adjacent diagram.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Because of the precession of the Earth's axis, the position of the vernal point on the celestial sphere changes over time, and the equatorial and the ecliptic coordinate systems change accordingly. Thus when specifying celestial coordinates for an object, one has to specify at what time the vernal point and the celestial equator are taken. That reference time can either be a conventional time (like J2000), or an arbitrary point in time, as for the equinox of date.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The upper culmination of the vernal point is considered the start of the sidereal day for the observer. The hour angle of the vernal point is, by definition, the observer's sidereal time.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Using the current official IAU constellation boundaries – and taking into account the variable precession speed and the rotation of the celestial equator – the equinoxes shift through the constellations as follows (expressed in astronomical year numbering when the year 0 = 1 BC, −1 = 2 BC, etc.):",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Mirror-image conjugate auroras have been observed during the equinoxes.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The equinoxes are sometimes regarded as the start of spring and autumn. A number of traditional harvest festivals are celebrated on the date of the equinoxes.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Religious architecture is often determined by the equinox; the Angkor Wat Equinox during which the sun rises in a perfect alignment over Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one such example.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Catholic churches, since the recommendations of Charles Borromeo, have often chosen the equinox as their reference point for the orientation of churches.",
"title": "Equinoxes on Earth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "One effect of equinoctial periods is the temporary disruption of communications satellites. For all geostationary satellites, there are a few days around the equinox when the Sun goes directly behind the satellite relative to Earth (i.e. within the beam-width of the ground-station antenna) for a short period each day. The Sun's immense power and broad radiation spectrum overload the Earth station's reception circuits with noise and, depending on antenna size and other factors, temporarily disrupt or degrade the circuit. The duration of those effects varies but can range from a few minutes to an hour. (For a given frequency band, a larger antenna has a narrower beam-width and hence experiences shorter duration \"Sun outage\" windows.)",
"title": "Effects on satellites"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Satellites in geostationary orbit also experience difficulties maintaining power during the equinox because they have to travel through Earth's shadow and rely only on battery power. Usually, a satellite travels either north or south of the Earth's shadow because Earth's axis is not directly perpendicular to a line from the Earth to the Sun at other times. During the equinox, since geostationary satellites are situated above the Equator, they are in Earth's shadow for the longest duration all year.",
"title": "Effects on satellites"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Equinoxes are defined on any planet with a tilted rotational axis. A dramatic example is Saturn, where the equinox places its ring system edge-on facing the Sun. As a result, they are visible only as a thin line when seen from Earth. When seen from above – a view seen during an equinox for the first time from the Cassini space probe in 2009 – they receive very little sunshine; indeed, they receive more planetshine than light from the Sun. This phenomenon occurs once every 14.7 years on average, and can last a few weeks before and after the exact equinox. Saturn's most recent equinox was on 11 August 2009, and its next will take place on 6 May 2025.",
"title": "Equinoxes on other planets"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Mars's most recent equinoxes were on 24 February 2022 (northern autumn), and on 26 December 2022 (northern spring).",
"title": "Equinoxes on other planets"
}
]
| A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth's equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise "due east" and set "due west". This occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September. More precisely, an equinox is traditionally defined as the time when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun's disk. Equivalently, this is the moment when Earth's rotation axis is directly perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line, tilting neither toward nor away from the Sun. In modern times, since the Moon causes Earth's orbit to vary slightly from a perfect ellipse, the equinox is officially defined by the Sun's more regular ecliptic longitude rather than by its declination. The instants of the equinoxes are currently defined to be when the apparent geocentric longitude of the Sun is 0° and 180°. The word is derived from the Latin aequinoctium, from aequus (equal) and nox (night). On the day of an equinox, daytime and nighttime are of approximately equal duration all over the planet. They are not exactly equal, however, because of the angular size of the Sun, atmospheric refraction, and the rapidly changing duration of the length of day that occurs at most latitudes around the equinoxes. Long before conceiving this equality, primitive equatorial cultures noted the day when the Sun rises due east and sets due west, and indeed this happens on the day closest to the astronomically defined event. As a consequence, according to a properly constructed and aligned sundial, the daytime duration is 12 hours. In the Northern Hemisphere, the March equinox is called the vernal or spring equinox while the September equinox is called the autumnal or fall equinox. In the Southern Hemisphere, the reverse is true. During the year, equinoxes alternate with solstices. Leap years and other factors cause the dates of both events to vary slightly. Hemisphere-neutral names are northward equinox for the March equinox, indicating that at that moment the solar declination is crossing the celestial equator in a northward direction, and southward equinox for the September equinox, indicating that at that moment the solar declination is crossing the celestial equator in a southward direction. | 2001-11-19T14:03:14Z | 2023-12-22T08:48:50Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox |
10,101 | Eugene Wigner | Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner (Hungarian: Wigner Jenő Pál, pronounced [ˈviɡnɛr ˈjɛnøː ˈpaːl]; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles".
A graduate of the Technical University of Berlin, Wigner worked as an assistant to Karl Weissenberg and Richard Becker at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen. Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into physics, particularly the theory of symmetry in physics. Along the way he performed ground-breaking work in pure mathematics, in which he authored a number of mathematical theorems. In particular, Wigner's theorem is a cornerstone in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. He is also known for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus. In 1930, Princeton University recruited Wigner, along with John von Neumann, and he moved to the United States, where he obtained citizenship in 1937.
Wigner participated in a meeting with Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein that resulted in the Einstein–Szilard letter, which prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs. Wigner was afraid that the German nuclear weapon project would develop an atomic bomb first. During the Manhattan Project, he led a team whose task was to design nuclear reactors to convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium. At the time, reactors existed only on paper, and no reactor had yet gone critical. Wigner was disappointed that DuPont was given responsibility for the detailed design of the reactors, not just their construction. He became director of research and development at the Clinton Laboratory (now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) in early 1946, but became frustrated with bureaucratic interference by the Atomic Energy Commission, and returned to Princeton.
In the postwar period, he served on a number of government bodies, including the National Bureau of Standards from 1947 to 1951, the mathematics panel of the National Research Council from 1951 to 1954, the physics panel of the National Science Foundation, and the influential General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1952 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1964. In later life, he became more philosophical, and published The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, his best-known work outside technical mathematics and physics.
Wigner Jenő Pál was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary on November 17, 1902, to middle class Jewish parents, Elisabeth Elsa Einhorn and Antal Anton Wigner, a leather tanner. He had an older sister, Berta, known as Biri, and a younger sister Margit, known as Manci, who later married British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. He was home schooled by a professional teacher until the age of 9, when he started school at the third grade. During this period, Wigner developed an interest in mathematical problems. At the age of 11, Wigner contracted what his doctors believed to be tuberculosis. His parents sent him to live for six weeks in a sanatorium in the Austrian mountains, before the doctors concluded that the diagnosis was mistaken.
Wigner's family was Jewish, but not religiously observant, and his Bar Mitzvah was a secular one. From 1915 through 1919, he studied at the secondary grammar school called Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium, the school his father had attended. Religious education was compulsory, and he attended classes in Judaism taught by a rabbi. A fellow student was János von Neumann, who was a year behind Wigner. They both benefited from the instruction of the noted mathematics teacher László Rátz. In 1919, to escape the Béla Kun communist regime, the Wigner family briefly fled to Austria, returning to Hungary after Kun's downfall. Partly as a reaction to the prominence of Jews in the Kun regime, the family converted to Lutheranism. Wigner explained later in his life that his family decision to convert to Lutheranism "was not at heart a religious decision but an anti-communist one".
After graduating from the secondary school in 1920, Wigner enrolled at the Budapest University of Technical Sciences, known as the Műegyetem. He was not happy with the courses on offer, and in 1921 enrolled at the Technische Hochschule Berlin (now Technical University of Berlin), where he studied chemical engineering. He also attended the Wednesday afternoon colloquia of the German Physical Society. These colloquia featured leading researchers including Max Planck, Max von Laue, Rudolf Ladenburg, Werner Heisenberg, Walther Nernst, Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein. Wigner also met the physicist Leó Szilárd, who at once became Wigner's closest friend. A third experience in Berlin was formative. Wigner worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (now the Fritz Haber Institute), and there he met Michael Polanyi, who became, after László Rátz, Wigner's greatest teacher. Polanyi supervised Wigner's DSc thesis, Bildung und Zerfall von Molekülen ("Formation and Decay of Molecules").
Wigner returned to Budapest, where he went to work at his father's tannery, but in 1926, he accepted an offer from Karl Weissenberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. Weissenberg wanted someone to assist him with his work on x-ray crystallography, and Polanyi had recommended Wigner. After six months as Weissenberg's assistant, Wigner went to work for Richard Becker for two semesters. Wigner explored quantum mechanics, studying the work of Erwin Schrödinger. He also delved into the group theory of Ferdinand Frobenius and Eduard Ritter von Weber.
Wigner received a request from Arnold Sommerfeld to work at the University of Göttingen as an assistant to the great mathematician David Hilbert. This proved a disappointment, as the aged Hilbert's abilities were failing, and his interests had shifted to logic. Wigner nonetheless studied independently. He laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics and in 1927 introduced what is now known as the Wigner D-matrix. Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into quantum mechanics. The latter had written a standard text, Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics (1928), but it was not easy to understand, especially for younger physicists. Wigner's Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra (1931) made group theory accessible to a wider audience.
In these works, Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics. Wigner's theorem proved by Wigner in 1931, is a cornerstone of the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. The theorem specifies how physical symmetries such as rotations, translations, and CPT symmetry are represented on the Hilbert space of states. According to the theorem, any symmetry transformation is represented by a linear and unitary or antilinear and antiunitary transformation of Hilbert space. The representation of a symmetry group on a Hilbert space is either an ordinary representation or a projective representation.
In the late 1930s, Wigner extended his research into atomic nuclei. By 1929, his papers were drawing notice in the world of physics. In 1930, Princeton University recruited Wigner for a one-year lectureship, at 7 times the salary that he had been drawing in Europe. Princeton recruited von Neumann at the same time. Jenő Pál Wigner and János von Neumann had collaborated on three papers together in 1928 and two in 1929. They anglicized their first names to "Eugene" and "John", respectively. When their year was up, Princeton offered a five-year contract as visiting professors for half the year. The Technische Hochschule responded with a teaching assignment for the other half of the year. This was very timely, since the Nazis soon rose to power in Germany. At Princeton in 1934, Wigner introduced his sister Margit "Manci" Wigner to the physicist Paul Dirac, with whom she remarried.
Princeton did not rehire Wigner when his contract ran out in 1936. Through Gregory Breit, Wigner found new employment at the University of Wisconsin. There, he met his first wife, Amelia Frank, who was a physics student there. However, she died unexpectedly in 1937, leaving Wigner distraught. He therefore accepted a 1938 offer from Princeton to return there. Wigner became a naturalized citizen of the United States on January 8, 1937, and he brought his parents to the United States.
Although he was a professed political amateur, on August 2, 1939, he participated in a meeting with Leó Szilárd and Albert Einstein that resulted in the Einstein–Szilárd letter, which prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs. Wigner was afraid that the German nuclear weapon project would develop an atomic bomb first, and even refused to have his fingerprints taken because they could be used to track him down if Germany won. "Thoughts of being murdered," he later recalled, "focus your mind wonderfully."
On June 4, 1941, Wigner married his second wife, Mary Annette Wheeler, a professor of physics at Vassar College, who had completed her Ph.D. at Yale University in 1932. After the war she taught physics on the faculty of Rutgers University's Douglass College in New Jersey until her retirement in 1964. They remained married until her death in November 1977. They had two children, David Wigner and Martha Wigner Upton.
During the Manhattan Project, Wigner led a team that included J. Ernest Wilkins Jr., Alvin M. Weinberg, Katharine Way, Gale Young and Edward Creutz. The group's task was to design the production nuclear reactors that would convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium. At the time, reactors existed only on paper, and no reactor had yet gone critical. In July 1942, Wigner chose a conservative 100 MW design, with a graphite neutron moderator and water cooling. Wigner was present at a converted rackets court under the stands at the University of Chicago's abandoned Stagg Field on December 2, 1942, when the world's first atomic reactor, Chicago Pile One (CP-1) achieved a controlled nuclear chain reaction.
Wigner was disappointed that DuPont was given responsibility for the detailed design of the reactors, not just their construction. He threatened to resign in February 1943, but was talked out of it by the head of the Metallurgical Laboratory, Arthur Compton, who sent him on vacation instead. As it turned out, a design decision by DuPont to give the reactor additional load tubes for more uranium saved the project when neutron poisoning became a problem. Without the additional tubes, the reactor could have been run at 35% power until the boron impurities in the graphite were burned up and enough plutonium produced to run the reactor at full power; but this would have set the project back a year. During the 1950s, he would even work for DuPont on the Savannah River Site. Wigner did not regret working on the Manhattan Project, and sometimes wished the atomic bomb had been ready a year earlier.
An important discovery Wigner made during the project was the Wigner effect. This is a swelling of the graphite moderator caused by the displacement of atoms by neutron radiation. The Wigner effect was a serious problem for the reactors at the Hanford Site in the immediate post-war period, and resulted in production cutbacks and a reactor being shut down entirely. It was eventually discovered that it could be overcome by controlled heating and annealing.
Through Manhattan project funding, Wigner and Leonard Eisenbud also developed an important general approach to nuclear reactions, the Wigner–Eisenbud R-matrix theory, which was published in 1947.
Wigner was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1944 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1945. He accepted a position as the director of research and development at the Clinton Laboratory (now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in early 1946. Because he did not want to be involved in administrative duties, he became co-director of the laboratory, with James Lum handling the administrative chores as executive director. When the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) took charge of the laboratory's operations at the start of 1947, Wigner feared that many of the technical decisions would be made in Washington. He also saw the Army's continuation of wartime security policies at the laboratory as a "meddlesome oversight", interfering with research. One such incident occurred in March 1947, when the AEC discovered that Wigner's scientists were conducting experiments with a critical mass of uranium-235 when the director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., had forbidden such experiments in August 1946 after the death of Louis Slotin at the Los Alamos Laboratory. Wigner argued that Groves's order had been superseded, but was forced to terminate the experiments, which were completely different from the one that killed Slotin.
Feeling unsuited to a managerial role in such an environment, he left Oak Ridge in 1947 and returned to Princeton University, although he maintained a consulting role with the facility for many years. In the postwar period, he served on a number of government bodies, including the National Bureau of Standards from 1947 to 1951, the mathematics panel of the National Research Council from 1951 to 1954, the physics panel of the National Science Foundation, and the influential General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1952 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1964. He also contributed to civil defense.
Wigner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950.
Near the end of his life, Wigner's thoughts turned more philosophical. In 1960, he published a now classic article on the philosophy of mathematics and of physics, which has become his best-known work outside technical mathematics and physics, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences". He argued that biology and cognition could be the origin of physical concepts, as we humans perceive them, and that the happy coincidence that mathematics and physics were so well matched, seemed to be "unreasonable" and hard to explain. His original paper has provoked and inspired many responses across a wide range of disciplines. These included Richard Hamming in Computer Science, Arthur Lesk in Molecular Biology, Peter Norvig in data mining, Max Tegmark in Physics, Ivor Grattan-Guinness in Mathematics, and Vela Velupillai in Economics.
Turning to philosophical questions about the theory of quantum mechanics, Wigner developed a thought experiment (later called Wigner's Friend paradox) to illustrate his belief that consciousness is foundational to the quantum mechanical measurement process. He thereby followed an ontological approach that sets human's consciousness at the center: "All that quantum mechanics purports to provide are probability connections between subsequent impressions (also called 'apperceptions') of the consciousness".
Measurements are understood as the interactions which create the impressions in our consciousness (and as a result modify the wave function of the "measured" physical system), an idea which has been called the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation.
Interestingly, Hugh Everett III (a student of Wigner) discussed Wigner's thought experiment in the introductory part of his 1957 dissertation as an "amusing, but extremely hypothetical drama". In an early draft of Everett's work, one also finds a drawing of the Wigner's Friend situation, which must be seen as the first evidence on paper of the thought experiment that was later assigned to be Wigner's. This suggests that Everett must at least have discussed the problem together with Wigner.
In November 1963, Wigner called for the allocation of 10% of the national defense budget to be spent on nuclear blast shelters and survival resources, arguing that such an expenditure would be less costly than disarmament. Wigner considered a recent Woods Hole study's conclusion that a nuclear strike would kill 20% of Americans to be a very modest projection and that the country could recover from such an attack more quickly than Germany had recovered from the devastation of World War II.
Wigner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles". The prize was shared that year, with the other half of the award divided between Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. Wigner professed that he had never considered the possibility that this might occur, and added: "I never expected to get my name in the newspapers without doing something wicked." He also won the Franklin Medal in 1950, the Enrico Fermi award in 1958, the Atoms for Peace Award in 1959, the Max Planck Medal in 1961, the National Medal of Science in 1969, the Albert Einstein Award in 1972, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1974, the eponymous Wigner Medal in 1978, and the Herzl Prize in 1982. In 1968 he gave the Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture.
After his retirement from Princeton in 1971, Wigner prepared the first edition of Symmetries and Reflections, a collection of philosophical essays, and became more involved in international and political meetings; around this time he became a leader and vocal defender of the Unification Church's annual International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences.
Mary died in November 1977. In 1979, Wigner married his third wife, Eileen Clare-Patton (Pat) Hamilton, the widow of physicist Donald Ross Hamilton, the dean of the graduate school at Princeton University, who had died in 1972. In 1992, at the age of 90, he published his memoirs, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner with Andrew Szanton. In it, Wigner said: "The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery." In his collection of essays 'Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses' (1995), he commented: "It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness."
Wigner was credited as a member of the advisory board for the Western Goals Foundation, a private domestic intelligence agency created in the US in 1979 to "fill the critical gap caused by the crippling of the FBI, the disabling of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the destruction of crucial government files".
Wigner died of pneumonia at the University Medical Center in Princeton, New Jersey on 1 January 1995. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eugene Paul \"E. P.\" Wigner (Hungarian: Wigner Jenő Pál, pronounced [ˈviɡnɛr ˈjɛnøː ˈpaːl]; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 \"for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "A graduate of the Technical University of Berlin, Wigner worked as an assistant to Karl Weissenberg and Richard Becker at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen. Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into physics, particularly the theory of symmetry in physics. Along the way he performed ground-breaking work in pure mathematics, in which he authored a number of mathematical theorems. In particular, Wigner's theorem is a cornerstone in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. He is also known for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus. In 1930, Princeton University recruited Wigner, along with John von Neumann, and he moved to the United States, where he obtained citizenship in 1937.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Wigner participated in a meeting with Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein that resulted in the Einstein–Szilard letter, which prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs. Wigner was afraid that the German nuclear weapon project would develop an atomic bomb first. During the Manhattan Project, he led a team whose task was to design nuclear reactors to convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium. At the time, reactors existed only on paper, and no reactor had yet gone critical. Wigner was disappointed that DuPont was given responsibility for the detailed design of the reactors, not just their construction. He became director of research and development at the Clinton Laboratory (now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) in early 1946, but became frustrated with bureaucratic interference by the Atomic Energy Commission, and returned to Princeton.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the postwar period, he served on a number of government bodies, including the National Bureau of Standards from 1947 to 1951, the mathematics panel of the National Research Council from 1951 to 1954, the physics panel of the National Science Foundation, and the influential General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1952 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1964. In later life, he became more philosophical, and published The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, his best-known work outside technical mathematics and physics.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Wigner Jenő Pál was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary on November 17, 1902, to middle class Jewish parents, Elisabeth Elsa Einhorn and Antal Anton Wigner, a leather tanner. He had an older sister, Berta, known as Biri, and a younger sister Margit, known as Manci, who later married British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. He was home schooled by a professional teacher until the age of 9, when he started school at the third grade. During this period, Wigner developed an interest in mathematical problems. At the age of 11, Wigner contracted what his doctors believed to be tuberculosis. His parents sent him to live for six weeks in a sanatorium in the Austrian mountains, before the doctors concluded that the diagnosis was mistaken.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Wigner's family was Jewish, but not religiously observant, and his Bar Mitzvah was a secular one. From 1915 through 1919, he studied at the secondary grammar school called Fasori Evangélikus Gimnázium, the school his father had attended. Religious education was compulsory, and he attended classes in Judaism taught by a rabbi. A fellow student was János von Neumann, who was a year behind Wigner. They both benefited from the instruction of the noted mathematics teacher László Rátz. In 1919, to escape the Béla Kun communist regime, the Wigner family briefly fled to Austria, returning to Hungary after Kun's downfall. Partly as a reaction to the prominence of Jews in the Kun regime, the family converted to Lutheranism. Wigner explained later in his life that his family decision to convert to Lutheranism \"was not at heart a religious decision but an anti-communist one\".",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After graduating from the secondary school in 1920, Wigner enrolled at the Budapest University of Technical Sciences, known as the Műegyetem. He was not happy with the courses on offer, and in 1921 enrolled at the Technische Hochschule Berlin (now Technical University of Berlin), where he studied chemical engineering. He also attended the Wednesday afternoon colloquia of the German Physical Society. These colloquia featured leading researchers including Max Planck, Max von Laue, Rudolf Ladenburg, Werner Heisenberg, Walther Nernst, Wolfgang Pauli, and Albert Einstein. Wigner also met the physicist Leó Szilárd, who at once became Wigner's closest friend. A third experience in Berlin was formative. Wigner worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry (now the Fritz Haber Institute), and there he met Michael Polanyi, who became, after László Rátz, Wigner's greatest teacher. Polanyi supervised Wigner's DSc thesis, Bildung und Zerfall von Molekülen (\"Formation and Decay of Molecules\").",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Wigner returned to Budapest, where he went to work at his father's tannery, but in 1926, he accepted an offer from Karl Weissenberg at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. Weissenberg wanted someone to assist him with his work on x-ray crystallography, and Polanyi had recommended Wigner. After six months as Weissenberg's assistant, Wigner went to work for Richard Becker for two semesters. Wigner explored quantum mechanics, studying the work of Erwin Schrödinger. He also delved into the group theory of Ferdinand Frobenius and Eduard Ritter von Weber.",
"title": "Middle years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Wigner received a request from Arnold Sommerfeld to work at the University of Göttingen as an assistant to the great mathematician David Hilbert. This proved a disappointment, as the aged Hilbert's abilities were failing, and his interests had shifted to logic. Wigner nonetheless studied independently. He laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics and in 1927 introduced what is now known as the Wigner D-matrix. Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into quantum mechanics. The latter had written a standard text, Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics (1928), but it was not easy to understand, especially for younger physicists. Wigner's Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra (1931) made group theory accessible to a wider audience.",
"title": "Middle years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In these works, Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics. Wigner's theorem proved by Wigner in 1931, is a cornerstone of the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. The theorem specifies how physical symmetries such as rotations, translations, and CPT symmetry are represented on the Hilbert space of states. According to the theorem, any symmetry transformation is represented by a linear and unitary or antilinear and antiunitary transformation of Hilbert space. The representation of a symmetry group on a Hilbert space is either an ordinary representation or a projective representation.",
"title": "Middle years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the late 1930s, Wigner extended his research into atomic nuclei. By 1929, his papers were drawing notice in the world of physics. In 1930, Princeton University recruited Wigner for a one-year lectureship, at 7 times the salary that he had been drawing in Europe. Princeton recruited von Neumann at the same time. Jenő Pál Wigner and János von Neumann had collaborated on three papers together in 1928 and two in 1929. They anglicized their first names to \"Eugene\" and \"John\", respectively. When their year was up, Princeton offered a five-year contract as visiting professors for half the year. The Technische Hochschule responded with a teaching assignment for the other half of the year. This was very timely, since the Nazis soon rose to power in Germany. At Princeton in 1934, Wigner introduced his sister Margit \"Manci\" Wigner to the physicist Paul Dirac, with whom she remarried.",
"title": "Middle years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Princeton did not rehire Wigner when his contract ran out in 1936. Through Gregory Breit, Wigner found new employment at the University of Wisconsin. There, he met his first wife, Amelia Frank, who was a physics student there. However, she died unexpectedly in 1937, leaving Wigner distraught. He therefore accepted a 1938 offer from Princeton to return there. Wigner became a naturalized citizen of the United States on January 8, 1937, and he brought his parents to the United States.",
"title": "Middle years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Although he was a professed political amateur, on August 2, 1939, he participated in a meeting with Leó Szilárd and Albert Einstein that resulted in the Einstein–Szilárd letter, which prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs. Wigner was afraid that the German nuclear weapon project would develop an atomic bomb first, and even refused to have his fingerprints taken because they could be used to track him down if Germany won. \"Thoughts of being murdered,\" he later recalled, \"focus your mind wonderfully.\"",
"title": "Manhattan Project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On June 4, 1941, Wigner married his second wife, Mary Annette Wheeler, a professor of physics at Vassar College, who had completed her Ph.D. at Yale University in 1932. After the war she taught physics on the faculty of Rutgers University's Douglass College in New Jersey until her retirement in 1964. They remained married until her death in November 1977. They had two children, David Wigner and Martha Wigner Upton.",
"title": "Manhattan Project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During the Manhattan Project, Wigner led a team that included J. Ernest Wilkins Jr., Alvin M. Weinberg, Katharine Way, Gale Young and Edward Creutz. The group's task was to design the production nuclear reactors that would convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium. At the time, reactors existed only on paper, and no reactor had yet gone critical. In July 1942, Wigner chose a conservative 100 MW design, with a graphite neutron moderator and water cooling. Wigner was present at a converted rackets court under the stands at the University of Chicago's abandoned Stagg Field on December 2, 1942, when the world's first atomic reactor, Chicago Pile One (CP-1) achieved a controlled nuclear chain reaction.",
"title": "Manhattan Project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Wigner was disappointed that DuPont was given responsibility for the detailed design of the reactors, not just their construction. He threatened to resign in February 1943, but was talked out of it by the head of the Metallurgical Laboratory, Arthur Compton, who sent him on vacation instead. As it turned out, a design decision by DuPont to give the reactor additional load tubes for more uranium saved the project when neutron poisoning became a problem. Without the additional tubes, the reactor could have been run at 35% power until the boron impurities in the graphite were burned up and enough plutonium produced to run the reactor at full power; but this would have set the project back a year. During the 1950s, he would even work for DuPont on the Savannah River Site. Wigner did not regret working on the Manhattan Project, and sometimes wished the atomic bomb had been ready a year earlier.",
"title": "Manhattan Project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "An important discovery Wigner made during the project was the Wigner effect. This is a swelling of the graphite moderator caused by the displacement of atoms by neutron radiation. The Wigner effect was a serious problem for the reactors at the Hanford Site in the immediate post-war period, and resulted in production cutbacks and a reactor being shut down entirely. It was eventually discovered that it could be overcome by controlled heating and annealing.",
"title": "Manhattan Project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Through Manhattan project funding, Wigner and Leonard Eisenbud also developed an important general approach to nuclear reactions, the Wigner–Eisenbud R-matrix theory, which was published in 1947.",
"title": "Manhattan Project"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Wigner was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1944 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1945. He accepted a position as the director of research and development at the Clinton Laboratory (now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in early 1946. Because he did not want to be involved in administrative duties, he became co-director of the laboratory, with James Lum handling the administrative chores as executive director. When the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) took charge of the laboratory's operations at the start of 1947, Wigner feared that many of the technical decisions would be made in Washington. He also saw the Army's continuation of wartime security policies at the laboratory as a \"meddlesome oversight\", interfering with research. One such incident occurred in March 1947, when the AEC discovered that Wigner's scientists were conducting experiments with a critical mass of uranium-235 when the director of the Manhattan Project, Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., had forbidden such experiments in August 1946 after the death of Louis Slotin at the Los Alamos Laboratory. Wigner argued that Groves's order had been superseded, but was forced to terminate the experiments, which were completely different from the one that killed Slotin.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Feeling unsuited to a managerial role in such an environment, he left Oak Ridge in 1947 and returned to Princeton University, although he maintained a consulting role with the facility for many years. In the postwar period, he served on a number of government bodies, including the National Bureau of Standards from 1947 to 1951, the mathematics panel of the National Research Council from 1951 to 1954, the physics panel of the National Science Foundation, and the influential General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1952 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1964. He also contributed to civil defense.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Wigner was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1950.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Near the end of his life, Wigner's thoughts turned more philosophical. In 1960, he published a now classic article on the philosophy of mathematics and of physics, which has become his best-known work outside technical mathematics and physics, \"The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences\". He argued that biology and cognition could be the origin of physical concepts, as we humans perceive them, and that the happy coincidence that mathematics and physics were so well matched, seemed to be \"unreasonable\" and hard to explain. His original paper has provoked and inspired many responses across a wide range of disciplines. These included Richard Hamming in Computer Science, Arthur Lesk in Molecular Biology, Peter Norvig in data mining, Max Tegmark in Physics, Ivor Grattan-Guinness in Mathematics, and Vela Velupillai in Economics.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Turning to philosophical questions about the theory of quantum mechanics, Wigner developed a thought experiment (later called Wigner's Friend paradox) to illustrate his belief that consciousness is foundational to the quantum mechanical measurement process. He thereby followed an ontological approach that sets human's consciousness at the center: \"All that quantum mechanics purports to provide are probability connections between subsequent impressions (also called 'apperceptions') of the consciousness\".",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Measurements are understood as the interactions which create the impressions in our consciousness (and as a result modify the wave function of the \"measured\" physical system), an idea which has been called the \"consciousness causes collapse\" interpretation.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Interestingly, Hugh Everett III (a student of Wigner) discussed Wigner's thought experiment in the introductory part of his 1957 dissertation as an \"amusing, but extremely hypothetical drama\". In an early draft of Everett's work, one also finds a drawing of the Wigner's Friend situation, which must be seen as the first evidence on paper of the thought experiment that was later assigned to be Wigner's. This suggests that Everett must at least have discussed the problem together with Wigner.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In November 1963, Wigner called for the allocation of 10% of the national defense budget to be spent on nuclear blast shelters and survival resources, arguing that such an expenditure would be less costly than disarmament. Wigner considered a recent Woods Hole study's conclusion that a nuclear strike would kill 20% of Americans to be a very modest projection and that the country could recover from such an attack more quickly than Germany had recovered from the devastation of World War II.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Wigner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 \"for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles\". The prize was shared that year, with the other half of the award divided between Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. Wigner professed that he had never considered the possibility that this might occur, and added: \"I never expected to get my name in the newspapers without doing something wicked.\" He also won the Franklin Medal in 1950, the Enrico Fermi award in 1958, the Atoms for Peace Award in 1959, the Max Planck Medal in 1961, the National Medal of Science in 1969, the Albert Einstein Award in 1972, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1974, the eponymous Wigner Medal in 1978, and the Herzl Prize in 1982. In 1968 he gave the Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "After his retirement from Princeton in 1971, Wigner prepared the first edition of Symmetries and Reflections, a collection of philosophical essays, and became more involved in international and political meetings; around this time he became a leader and vocal defender of the Unification Church's annual International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Mary died in November 1977. In 1979, Wigner married his third wife, Eileen Clare-Patton (Pat) Hamilton, the widow of physicist Donald Ross Hamilton, the dean of the graduate school at Princeton University, who had died in 1972. In 1992, at the age of 90, he published his memoirs, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner with Andrew Szanton. In it, Wigner said: \"The full meaning of life, the collective meaning of all human desires, is fundamentally a mystery beyond our grasp. As a young man, I chafed at this state of affairs. But by now I have made peace with it. I even feel a certain honor to be associated with such a mystery.\" In his collection of essays 'Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses' (1995), he commented: \"It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.\"",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Wigner was credited as a member of the advisory board for the Western Goals Foundation, a private domestic intelligence agency created in the US in 1979 to \"fill the critical gap caused by the crippling of the FBI, the disabling of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the destruction of crucial government files\".",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Wigner died of pneumonia at the University Medical Center in Princeton, New Jersey on 1 January 1995.",
"title": "Later years"
}
]
| Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles". A graduate of the Technical University of Berlin, Wigner worked as an assistant to Karl Weissenberg and Richard Becker at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, and David Hilbert at the University of Göttingen. Wigner and Hermann Weyl were responsible for introducing group theory into physics, particularly the theory of symmetry in physics. Along the way he performed ground-breaking work in pure mathematics, in which he authored a number of mathematical theorems. In particular, Wigner's theorem is a cornerstone in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics. He is also known for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus. In 1930, Princeton University recruited Wigner, along with John von Neumann, and he moved to the United States, where he obtained citizenship in 1937. Wigner participated in a meeting with Leo Szilard and Albert Einstein that resulted in the Einstein–Szilard letter, which prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project to develop atomic bombs. Wigner was afraid that the German nuclear weapon project would develop an atomic bomb first. During the Manhattan Project, he led a team whose task was to design nuclear reactors to convert uranium into weapons grade plutonium. At the time, reactors existed only on paper, and no reactor had yet gone critical. Wigner was disappointed that DuPont was given responsibility for the detailed design of the reactors, not just their construction. He became director of research and development at the Clinton Laboratory in early 1946, but became frustrated with bureaucratic interference by the Atomic Energy Commission, and returned to Princeton. In the postwar period, he served on a number of government bodies, including the National Bureau of Standards from 1947 to 1951, the mathematics panel of the National Research Council from 1951 to 1954, the physics panel of the National Science Foundation, and the influential General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission from 1952 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1964. In later life, he became more philosophical, and published The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, his best-known work outside technical mathematics and physics. | 2001-11-20T01:44:29Z | 2023-12-14T19:29:37Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Wigner |
10,103 | Electroweak interaction | In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism (electromagnetic interaction) and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 246 GeV, they would merge into a single force. Thus, if the temperature is high enough – approximately 10 K – then the electromagnetic force and weak force merge into a combined electroweak force. During the quark epoch (shortly after the Big Bang), the electroweak force split into the electromagnetic and weak force. It is thought that the required temperature of 10 K has not been seen widely throughout the universe since before the quark epoch, and currently the highest human-made temperature in thermal equilibrium is around 5.5x10 K (from the Large Hadron Collider).
Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, known as the Weinberg–Salam theory. The existence of the electroweak interactions was experimentally established in two stages, the first being the discovery of neutral currents in neutrino scattering by the Gargamelle collaboration in 1973, and the second in 1983 by the UA1 and the UA2 collaborations that involved the discovery of the W and Z gauge bosons in proton–antiproton collisions at the converted Super Proton Synchrotron. In 1999, Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman were awarded the Nobel prize for showing that the electroweak theory is renormalizable.
After the Wu experiment in 1956 discovered parity violation in the weak interaction, a search began for a way to relate the weak and electromagnetic interactions. Extending his doctoral advisor Julian Schwinger's work, Sheldon Glashow first experimented with introducing two different symmetries, one chiral and one achiral, and combined them such that their overall symmetry was unbroken. This did not yield a renormalizable theory, and its gauge symmetry had to be broken by hand as no spontaneous mechanism was known, but it predicted a new particle, the Z boson. This received little notice, as it matched no experimental finding.
In 1964, Salam and Ward had the same idea, but predicted a massless photon and three massive gauge bosons with a manually broken symmetry. Later around 1967, while investigating spontaneous symmetry breaking, Weinberg found a set of symmetries predicting a massless, neutral gauge boson. Initially rejecting such a particle as useless, he later realized his symmetries produced the electroweak force, and he proceeded to predict rough masses for the W and Z bosons. Significantly, he suggested this new theory was renormalizable. In 1971, Gerard 't Hooft proved that spontaneously broken gauge symmetries are renormalizable even with massive gauge bosons.
Mathematically, electromagnetism is unified with the weak interactions as a Yang–Mills field with an SU(2) × U(1) gauge group, which describes the formal operations that can be applied to the electroweak gauge fields without changing the dynamics of the system. These fields are the weak isospin fields W1, W2, and W3, and the weak hypercharge field B. This invariance is known as electroweak symmetry.
The generators of SU(2) and U(1) are given the name weak isospin (labeled T ) and weak hypercharge (labeled Y ) respectively. These then give rise to the gauge bosons which mediate the electroweak interactions – the three W bosons of weak isospin (W1, W2, and W3), and the B boson of weak hypercharge, respectively, all of which are "initially" massless. These are not physical fields yet, before spontaneous symmetry breaking and the associated Higgs mechanism.
In the Standard Model, the observed physical particles, the W and Z bosons, and the photon, are produced through the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak symmetry SU(2) × U(1)Y to U(1)em, effected by the Higgs mechanism (see also Higgs boson), an elaborate quantum-field-theoretic phenomenon that "spontaneously" alters the realization of the symmetry and rearranges degrees of freedom.
The electric charge arises as the particular linear combination (nontrivial) of YW (weak hypercharge) and the T3 component of weak isospin ( Q = T 3 + 1 2 Y W ) {\displaystyle ~\left(\,Q=T_{3}+{\tfrac {1}{2}}\,Y_{\mathrm {W} }\,\right)~} that does not couple to the Higgs boson. That is to say: The Higgs and the electromagnetic field have no effect on each other, at the level of the fundamental forces ("tree level"), while any other combination of the hypercharge and the weak isospin must interact with the Higgs. This causes an apparent separation between the weak force, which interacts with the Higgs, and electromagnetism, which does not. Mathematically, the electric charge is a specific combination of the hypercharge and T3 outlined in the figure.
U(1)em (the symmetry group of electromagnetism only) is defined to be the group generated by this special linear combination, and the symmetry described by the U(1)em group is unbroken, since it does not directly interact with the Higgs.
The above spontaneous symmetry breaking makes the W3 and B bosons coalesce into two different physical bosons with different masses – the Z boson, and the photon (γ),
where θW is the weak mixing angle. The axes representing the particles have essentially just been rotated, in the (W3, B) plane, by the angle θW. This also introduces a mismatch between the mass of the Z and the mass of the W particles (denoted as mZ and mW, respectively),
The W1 and W2 bosons, in turn, combine to produce the charged massive bosons W:
The Lagrangian for the electroweak interactions is divided into four parts before electroweak symmetry breaking becomes manifest,
The L g {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}_{g}} term describes the interaction between the three W vector bosons and the B vector boson,
where W a μ ν {\displaystyle W^{a\mu \nu }} ( a = 1 , 2 , 3 {\displaystyle a=1,2,3} ) and B μ ν {\displaystyle B^{\mu \nu }} are the field strength tensors for the weak isospin and weak hypercharge gauge fields.
L f {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}_{f}} is the kinetic term for the Standard Model fermions. The interaction of the gauge bosons and the fermions are through the gauge covariant derivative,
where the subscript j sums over the three generations of fermions; Q, u, and d are the left-handed doublet, right-handed singlet up, and right handed singlet down quark fields; and L and e are the left-handed doublet and right-handed singlet electron fields. The Feynman slash D / {\displaystyle D\!\!\!\!/} means the contraction of the 4-gradient with the Dirac matrices, defined as
and the covariant derivative (excluding the gluon gauge field for the strong interaction) is defined as
Here Y {\displaystyle \ Y\ } is the weak hypercharge and the T j {\displaystyle \ T_{j}\ } are the components of the weak isospin.
The L h {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}_{h}} term describes the Higgs field h {\displaystyle h} and its interactions with itself and the gauge bosons,
where v {\displaystyle v} is the vacuum expectation value.
The L y {\displaystyle \ {\mathcal {L}}_{y}\ } term describes the Yukawa interaction with the fermions,
and generates their masses, manifest when the Higgs field acquires a nonzero vacuum expectation value, discussed next. The y k i j , {\displaystyle \ y_{k}^{ij}\ ,} for k ∈ { u , d , e } , {\displaystyle \ k\in \{\mathrm {u,d,e} \}\ ,} are matrices of Yukawa couplings.
The Lagrangian reorganizes itself as the Higgs boson acquires a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value dictated by the potential of the previous section. As a result of this rewriting, the symmetry breaking becomes manifest. In the history of the universe, this is believed to have happened shortly after the hot big bang, when the universe was at a temperature 159.5±1.5 GeV (assuming the Standard Model of particle physics).
Due to its complexity, this Lagrangian is best described by breaking it up into several parts as follows.
The kinetic term L K {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}_{K}} contains all the quadratic terms of the Lagrangian, which include the dynamic terms (the partial derivatives) and the mass terms (conspicuously absent from the Lagrangian before symmetry breaking)
where the sum runs over all the fermions of the theory (quarks and leptons), and the fields A μ ν , {\displaystyle \ A_{\mu \nu }\ ,} Z μ ν , {\displaystyle \ Z_{\mu \nu }\ ,} W μ ν − , {\displaystyle \ W_{\mu \nu }^{-}\ ,} and W μ ν + ≡ ( W μ ν − ) † {\displaystyle \ W_{\mu \nu }^{+}\equiv (W_{\mu \nu }^{-})^{\dagger }\ } are given as
with ' X {\displaystyle X} ' to be replaced by the relevant field ( A {\displaystyle A} , Z {\displaystyle Z} , W ± {\displaystyle W^{\pm }} ), and f by the structure constants of the appropriate gauge group.
The neutral current L N {\displaystyle \ {\mathcal {L}}_{\mathrm {N} }\ } and charged current L C {\displaystyle \ {\mathcal {L}}_{\mathrm {C} }\ } components of the Lagrangian contain the interactions between the fermions and gauge bosons,
where e = g sin θ W = g ′ cos θ W . {\displaystyle ~e=g\ \sin \theta _{\mathrm {W} }=g'\ \cos \theta _{\mathrm {W} }~.} The electromagnetic current J μ e m {\displaystyle \;J_{\mu }^{\mathrm {em} }\;} is
where q f {\displaystyle \ q_{f}\ } is the fermions' electric charges. The neutral weak current J μ 3 {\displaystyle \ J_{\mu }^{3}\ } is
where T f 3 {\displaystyle T_{f}^{3}} is the fermions' weak isospin.
The charged current part of the Lagrangian is given by
where ν {\displaystyle \ \nu \ } is the right-handed singlet neutrino field, and the CKM matrix M i j C K M {\displaystyle \ M_{ij}^{\mathrm {CKM} }\ } determines the mixing between mass and weak eigenstates of the quarks.
L H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}_{\mathrm {H} }} contains the Higgs three-point and four-point self interaction terms,
L H V {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}_{\mathrm {HV} }} contains the Higgs interactions with gauge vector bosons,
L W W V {\displaystyle \ {\mathcal {L}}_{\mathrm {WWV} }\ } contains the gauge three-point self interactions,
L W W V V {\displaystyle \ {\mathcal {L}}_{\mathrm {WWVV} }\ } contains the gauge four-point self interactions,
L Y {\displaystyle \ {\mathcal {L}}_{\mathrm {Y} }\ } contains the Yukawa interactions between the fermions and the Higgs field, | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism (electromagnetic interaction) and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 246 GeV, they would merge into a single force. Thus, if the temperature is high enough – approximately 10 K – then the electromagnetic force and weak force merge into a combined electroweak force. During the quark epoch (shortly after the Big Bang), the electroweak force split into the electromagnetic and weak force. It is thought that the required temperature of 10 K has not been seen widely throughout the universe since before the quark epoch, and currently the highest human-made temperature in thermal equilibrium is around 5.5x10 K (from the Large Hadron Collider).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, known as the Weinberg–Salam theory. The existence of the electroweak interactions was experimentally established in two stages, the first being the discovery of neutral currents in neutrino scattering by the Gargamelle collaboration in 1973, and the second in 1983 by the UA1 and the UA2 collaborations that involved the discovery of the W and Z gauge bosons in proton–antiproton collisions at the converted Super Proton Synchrotron. In 1999, Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman were awarded the Nobel prize for showing that the electroweak theory is renormalizable.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "After the Wu experiment in 1956 discovered parity violation in the weak interaction, a search began for a way to relate the weak and electromagnetic interactions. Extending his doctoral advisor Julian Schwinger's work, Sheldon Glashow first experimented with introducing two different symmetries, one chiral and one achiral, and combined them such that their overall symmetry was unbroken. This did not yield a renormalizable theory, and its gauge symmetry had to be broken by hand as no spontaneous mechanism was known, but it predicted a new particle, the Z boson. This received little notice, as it matched no experimental finding.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1964, Salam and Ward had the same idea, but predicted a massless photon and three massive gauge bosons with a manually broken symmetry. Later around 1967, while investigating spontaneous symmetry breaking, Weinberg found a set of symmetries predicting a massless, neutral gauge boson. Initially rejecting such a particle as useless, he later realized his symmetries produced the electroweak force, and he proceeded to predict rough masses for the W and Z bosons. Significantly, he suggested this new theory was renormalizable. In 1971, Gerard 't Hooft proved that spontaneously broken gauge symmetries are renormalizable even with massive gauge bosons.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Mathematically, electromagnetism is unified with the weak interactions as a Yang–Mills field with an SU(2) × U(1) gauge group, which describes the formal operations that can be applied to the electroweak gauge fields without changing the dynamics of the system. These fields are the weak isospin fields W1, W2, and W3, and the weak hypercharge field B. This invariance is known as electroweak symmetry.",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The generators of SU(2) and U(1) are given the name weak isospin (labeled T ) and weak hypercharge (labeled Y ) respectively. These then give rise to the gauge bosons which mediate the electroweak interactions – the three W bosons of weak isospin (W1, W2, and W3), and the B boson of weak hypercharge, respectively, all of which are \"initially\" massless. These are not physical fields yet, before spontaneous symmetry breaking and the associated Higgs mechanism.",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the Standard Model, the observed physical particles, the W and Z bosons, and the photon, are produced through the spontaneous symmetry breaking of the electroweak symmetry SU(2) × U(1)Y to U(1)em, effected by the Higgs mechanism (see also Higgs boson), an elaborate quantum-field-theoretic phenomenon that \"spontaneously\" alters the realization of the symmetry and rearranges degrees of freedom.",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The electric charge arises as the particular linear combination (nontrivial) of YW (weak hypercharge) and the T3 component of weak isospin ( Q = T 3 + 1 2 Y W ) {\\displaystyle ~\\left(\\,Q=T_{3}+{\\tfrac {1}{2}}\\,Y_{\\mathrm {W} }\\,\\right)~} that does not couple to the Higgs boson. That is to say: The Higgs and the electromagnetic field have no effect on each other, at the level of the fundamental forces (\"tree level\"), while any other combination of the hypercharge and the weak isospin must interact with the Higgs. This causes an apparent separation between the weak force, which interacts with the Higgs, and electromagnetism, which does not. Mathematically, the electric charge is a specific combination of the hypercharge and T3 outlined in the figure.",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "U(1)em (the symmetry group of electromagnetism only) is defined to be the group generated by this special linear combination, and the symmetry described by the U(1)em group is unbroken, since it does not directly interact with the Higgs.",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The above spontaneous symmetry breaking makes the W3 and B bosons coalesce into two different physical bosons with different masses – the Z boson, and the photon (γ),",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "where θW is the weak mixing angle. The axes representing the particles have essentially just been rotated, in the (W3, B) plane, by the angle θW. This also introduces a mismatch between the mass of the Z and the mass of the W particles (denoted as mZ and mW, respectively),",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The W1 and W2 bosons, in turn, combine to produce the charged massive bosons W:",
"title": "Formulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Lagrangian for the electroweak interactions is divided into four parts before electroweak symmetry breaking becomes manifest,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The L g {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {L}}_{g}} term describes the interaction between the three W vector bosons and the B vector boson,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "where W a μ ν {\\displaystyle W^{a\\mu \\nu }} ( a = 1 , 2 , 3 {\\displaystyle a=1,2,3} ) and B μ ν {\\displaystyle B^{\\mu \\nu }} are the field strength tensors for the weak isospin and weak hypercharge gauge fields.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "L f {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {L}}_{f}} is the kinetic term for the Standard Model fermions. The interaction of the gauge bosons and the fermions are through the gauge covariant derivative,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "where the subscript j sums over the three generations of fermions; Q, u, and d are the left-handed doublet, right-handed singlet up, and right handed singlet down quark fields; and L and e are the left-handed doublet and right-handed singlet electron fields. The Feynman slash D / {\\displaystyle D\\!\\!\\!\\!/} means the contraction of the 4-gradient with the Dirac matrices, defined as",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "and the covariant derivative (excluding the gluon gauge field for the strong interaction) is defined as",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Here Y {\\displaystyle \\ Y\\ } is the weak hypercharge and the T j {\\displaystyle \\ T_{j}\\ } are the components of the weak isospin.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The L h {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {L}}_{h}} term describes the Higgs field h {\\displaystyle h} and its interactions with itself and the gauge bosons,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "where v {\\displaystyle v} is the vacuum expectation value.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The L y {\\displaystyle \\ {\\mathcal {L}}_{y}\\ } term describes the Yukawa interaction with the fermions,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "and generates their masses, manifest when the Higgs field acquires a nonzero vacuum expectation value, discussed next. The y k i j , {\\displaystyle \\ y_{k}^{ij}\\ ,} for k ∈ { u , d , e } , {\\displaystyle \\ k\\in \\{\\mathrm {u,d,e} \\}\\ ,} are matrices of Yukawa couplings.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The Lagrangian reorganizes itself as the Higgs boson acquires a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value dictated by the potential of the previous section. As a result of this rewriting, the symmetry breaking becomes manifest. In the history of the universe, this is believed to have happened shortly after the hot big bang, when the universe was at a temperature 159.5±1.5 GeV (assuming the Standard Model of particle physics).",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Due to its complexity, this Lagrangian is best described by breaking it up into several parts as follows.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The kinetic term L K {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {L}}_{K}} contains all the quadratic terms of the Lagrangian, which include the dynamic terms (the partial derivatives) and the mass terms (conspicuously absent from the Lagrangian before symmetry breaking)",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "where the sum runs over all the fermions of the theory (quarks and leptons), and the fields A μ ν , {\\displaystyle \\ A_{\\mu \\nu }\\ ,} Z μ ν , {\\displaystyle \\ Z_{\\mu \\nu }\\ ,} W μ ν − , {\\displaystyle \\ W_{\\mu \\nu }^{-}\\ ,} and W μ ν + ≡ ( W μ ν − ) † {\\displaystyle \\ W_{\\mu \\nu }^{+}\\equiv (W_{\\mu \\nu }^{-})^{\\dagger }\\ } are given as",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "with ' X {\\displaystyle X} ' to be replaced by the relevant field ( A {\\displaystyle A} , Z {\\displaystyle Z} , W ± {\\displaystyle W^{\\pm }} ), and f by the structure constants of the appropriate gauge group.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The neutral current L N {\\displaystyle \\ {\\mathcal {L}}_{\\mathrm {N} }\\ } and charged current L C {\\displaystyle \\ {\\mathcal {L}}_{\\mathrm {C} }\\ } components of the Lagrangian contain the interactions between the fermions and gauge bosons,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "where e = g sin θ W = g ′ cos θ W . {\\displaystyle ~e=g\\ \\sin \\theta _{\\mathrm {W} }=g'\\ \\cos \\theta _{\\mathrm {W} }~.} The electromagnetic current J μ e m {\\displaystyle \\;J_{\\mu }^{\\mathrm {em} }\\;} is",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "where q f {\\displaystyle \\ q_{f}\\ } is the fermions' electric charges. The neutral weak current J μ 3 {\\displaystyle \\ J_{\\mu }^{3}\\ } is",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "where T f 3 {\\displaystyle T_{f}^{3}} is the fermions' weak isospin.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The charged current part of the Lagrangian is given by",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "where ν {\\displaystyle \\ \\nu \\ } is the right-handed singlet neutrino field, and the CKM matrix M i j C K M {\\displaystyle \\ M_{ij}^{\\mathrm {CKM} }\\ } determines the mixing between mass and weak eigenstates of the quarks.",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "L H {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {L}}_{\\mathrm {H} }} contains the Higgs three-point and four-point self interaction terms,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "L H V {\\displaystyle {\\mathcal {L}}_{\\mathrm {HV} }} contains the Higgs interactions with gauge vector bosons,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "L W W V {\\displaystyle \\ {\\mathcal {L}}_{\\mathrm {WWV} }\\ } contains the gauge three-point self interactions,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "L W W V V {\\displaystyle \\ {\\mathcal {L}}_{\\mathrm {WWVV} }\\ } contains the gauge four-point self interactions,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "L Y {\\displaystyle \\ {\\mathcal {L}}_{\\mathrm {Y} }\\ } contains the Yukawa interactions between the fermions and the Higgs field,",
"title": "Lagrangian"
}
]
| In particle physics, the electroweak interaction or electroweak force is the unified description of two of the four known fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism (electromagnetic interaction) and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 246 GeV, they would merge into a single force. Thus, if the temperature is high enough – approximately 1015 K – then the electromagnetic force and weak force merge into a combined electroweak force. During the quark epoch (shortly after the Big Bang), the electroweak force split into the electromagnetic and weak force. It is thought that the required temperature of 1015 K has not been seen widely throughout the universe since before the quark epoch, and currently the highest human-made temperature in thermal equilibrium is around 5.5x1012 K (from the Large Hadron Collider). Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to the unification of the weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, known as the Weinberg–Salam theory. The existence of the electroweak interactions was experimentally established in two stages, the first being the discovery of neutral currents in neutrino scattering by the Gargamelle collaboration in 1973, and the second in 1983 by the UA1 and the UA2 collaborations that involved the discovery of the W and Z gauge bosons in proton–antiproton collisions at the converted Super Proton Synchrotron. In 1999, Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman were awarded the Nobel prize for showing that the electroweak theory is renormalizable. | 2001-11-20T06:20:46Z | 2023-11-29T14:16:10Z | [
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10,104 | Elara | Elara may refer to: | [
{
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"text": "Elara may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| Elara may refer to: Elara (mythology), mother of the giant Tityos in Greek mythology
Elara (moon), a moon of Jupiter named after Elara
Elara (timeshare), a building on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S
Ellalan, or Eḷāra, a member of the Tamil Chola dynasty and monarch of the Anuradhapura Kingdom
"Elara", a song from the 2012 album Soundtrack for the Voices in My Head Vol. 02 by Celldweller
Elara Pictures, an American film production company
Chery A5, a Chinese compact sedan, sold in Ukraine as the Chery Elara | 2020-09-01T16:09:59Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elara |
|
10,105 | Erasmus Reinhold | Erasmus Reinhold (22 October 1511 – 19 February 1553) was a German astronomer and mathematician, considered to be the most influential astronomical pedagogue of his generation. He was born and died in Saalfeld, Saxony.
He was educated, under Jacob Milich, at the University of Wittenberg, where he was first elected dean and later became rector. In 1536 he was appointed professor of higher mathematics by Philipp Melanchthon. In contrast to the limited modern definition, "mathematics" at the time also included applied mathematics, especially astronomy. His colleague, Georg Joachim Rheticus, also studied at Wittenberg and was appointed professor of lower mathematics in 1536.
Reinhold catalogued a large number of stars. His publications on astronomy include a commentary (1542, 1553) on Georg Purbach's Theoricae novae planetarum. Reinhold knew about Copernicus and his heliocentric ideas prior to the publication of his De revolutionibus, and made a favourable reference to him in his commentary on Purbach. However, Reinhold (like other astronomers before Kepler and Galileo) translated Copernicus' mathematical methods back into a geocentric system, rejecting heliocentric cosmology on physical and theological grounds.
Duke Albert of Brandenburg Prussia supported Reinhold and financed the printing of Reinhold's Prutenicae Tabulae (1551, 1562, 1571 & 1585) or Prussian Tables. These astronomical tables helped to disseminate calculation methods of Copernicus throughout the Empire, however, Gingerich notes that they showed a "notable lack of commitment" to heliocentricity and were "carefully framed" to be independent of the movement of the Earth. Both Reinhold's Prutenic Tables and Copernicus' studies were the foundation for the Calendar Reform by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.
It was Reinhold's heavily annotated copy of De revolutionibus in the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, that started Owen Gingerich on his search for copies of the first and second editions which he describes in The Book Nobody Read. In Reinhold's unpublished commentary on De revolutionibus, he calculated the distance from the Earth to the sun. He "massaged" his calculation method in order to arrive at an answer close to that of Ptolemy.
His name has been given to a prominent lunar impact crater that lies to the south-southwest of the crater Copernicus, on the Mare Insularum. | [
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"text": "Erasmus Reinhold (22 October 1511 – 19 February 1553) was a German astronomer and mathematician, considered to be the most influential astronomical pedagogue of his generation. He was born and died in Saalfeld, Saxony.",
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},
{
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"text": "He was educated, under Jacob Milich, at the University of Wittenberg, where he was first elected dean and later became rector. In 1536 he was appointed professor of higher mathematics by Philipp Melanchthon. In contrast to the limited modern definition, \"mathematics\" at the time also included applied mathematics, especially astronomy. His colleague, Georg Joachim Rheticus, also studied at Wittenberg and was appointed professor of lower mathematics in 1536.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Reinhold catalogued a large number of stars. His publications on astronomy include a commentary (1542, 1553) on Georg Purbach's Theoricae novae planetarum. Reinhold knew about Copernicus and his heliocentric ideas prior to the publication of his De revolutionibus, and made a favourable reference to him in his commentary on Purbach. However, Reinhold (like other astronomers before Kepler and Galileo) translated Copernicus' mathematical methods back into a geocentric system, rejecting heliocentric cosmology on physical and theological grounds.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Duke Albert of Brandenburg Prussia supported Reinhold and financed the printing of Reinhold's Prutenicae Tabulae (1551, 1562, 1571 & 1585) or Prussian Tables. These astronomical tables helped to disseminate calculation methods of Copernicus throughout the Empire, however, Gingerich notes that they showed a \"notable lack of commitment\" to heliocentricity and were \"carefully framed\" to be independent of the movement of the Earth. Both Reinhold's Prutenic Tables and Copernicus' studies were the foundation for the Calendar Reform by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "It was Reinhold's heavily annotated copy of De revolutionibus in the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, that started Owen Gingerich on his search for copies of the first and second editions which he describes in The Book Nobody Read. In Reinhold's unpublished commentary on De revolutionibus, he calculated the distance from the Earth to the sun. He \"massaged\" his calculation method in order to arrive at an answer close to that of Ptolemy.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "His name has been given to a prominent lunar impact crater that lies to the south-southwest of the crater Copernicus, on the Mare Insularum.",
"title": ""
}
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| Erasmus Reinhold was a German astronomer and mathematician, considered to be the most influential astronomical pedagogue of his generation. He was born and died in Saalfeld, Saxony. He was educated, under Jacob Milich, at the University of Wittenberg, where he was first elected dean and later became rector. In 1536 he was appointed professor of higher mathematics by Philipp Melanchthon. In contrast to the limited modern definition, "mathematics" at the time also included applied mathematics, especially astronomy. His colleague, Georg Joachim Rheticus, also studied at Wittenberg and was appointed professor of lower mathematics in 1536. Reinhold catalogued a large number of stars. His publications on astronomy include a commentary on Georg Purbach's Theoricae novae planetarum. Reinhold knew about Copernicus and his heliocentric ideas prior to the publication of his De revolutionibus, and made a favourable reference to him in his commentary on Purbach. However, Reinhold translated Copernicus' mathematical methods back into a geocentric system, rejecting heliocentric cosmology on physical and theological grounds. Duke Albert of Brandenburg Prussia supported Reinhold and financed the printing of Reinhold's Prutenicae Tabulae or Prussian Tables. These astronomical tables helped to disseminate calculation methods of Copernicus throughout the Empire, however, Gingerich notes that they showed a "notable lack of commitment" to heliocentricity and were "carefully framed" to be independent of the movement of the Earth. Both Reinhold's Prutenic Tables and Copernicus' studies were the foundation for the Calendar Reform by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It was Reinhold's heavily annotated copy of De revolutionibus in the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, that started Owen Gingerich on his search for copies of the first and second editions which he describes in The Book Nobody Read. In Reinhold's unpublished commentary on De revolutionibus, he calculated the distance from the Earth to the sun. He "massaged" his calculation method in order to arrive at an answer close to that of Ptolemy. His name has been given to a prominent lunar impact crater that lies to the south-southwest of the crater Copernicus, on the Mare Insularum. | 2001-11-20T16:39:48Z | 2023-08-08T11:52:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Reinhold |
10,106 | Earthquake | An earthquake – also called a quake, tremor, or temblor – is the shaking of the surface of Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, damage critical infrastructure, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismic activity of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a particular time. The seismicity at a particular location in the Earth is the average rate of seismic energy release per unit volume. The word tremor is also used for non-earthquake seismic rumbling.
At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and displacing or disrupting the ground. When the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides.
In its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event—whether natural or caused by humans—that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by the rupture of geological faults but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, fracking and nuclear tests. An earthquake's point of initial rupture is called its hypocenter or focus. The epicenter is the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter.
One of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, which occurred on 23 January 1556 in Shaanxi, China. More than 830,000 people died. Most houses in the area were yaodongs—dwellings carved out of loess hillsides—and many victims were killed when these structures collapsed. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed between 240,000 and 655,000 people, was the deadliest of the 20th century.
The 1960 Chilean earthquake is the largest earthquake that has been measured on a seismograph, reaching 9.5 magnitude on 22 May 1960. Its epicenter was near Cañete, Chile. The energy released was approximately twice that of the next most powerful earthquake, the Good Friday earthquake (27 March 1964), which was centered in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The ten largest recorded earthquakes have all been megathrust earthquakes; however, of these ten, only the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is simultaneously one of the deadliest earthquakes in history.
Earthquakes that caused the greatest loss of life, while powerful, were deadly because of their proximity to either heavily populated areas or the ocean, where earthquakes often create tsunamis that can devastate communities thousands of kilometers away. Regions most at risk for great loss of life include those where earthquakes are relatively rare but powerful, and poor regions with lax, unenforced, or nonexistent seismic building codes.
Tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere on the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the fault surface that increases the frictional resistance. Most fault surfaces do have such asperities, which leads to a form of stick-slip behavior. Once the fault has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and, therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy. This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves, frictional heating of the fault surface, and cracking of the rock, thus causing an earthquake. This process of gradual build-up of strain and stress punctuated by occasional sudden earthquake failure is referred to as the elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of an earthquake's total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the earthquake's energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth or is converted into heat generated by friction. Therefore, earthquakes lower the Earth's available elastic potential energy and raise its temperature, though these changes are negligible compared to the conductive and convective flow of heat out from the Earth's deep interior.
There are three main types of fault, all of which may cause an interplate earthquake: normal, reverse (thrust), and strike-slip. Normal and reverse faulting are examples of dip-slip, where the displacement along the fault is in the direction of dip and where movement on them involves a vertical component. Many earthquakes are caused by movement on faults that have components of both dip-slip and strike-slip; this is known as oblique slip. The topmost, brittle part of the Earth's crust, and the cool slabs of the tectonic plates that are descending into the hot mantle, are the only parts of our planet that can store elastic energy and release it in fault ruptures. Rocks hotter than about 300 °C (572 °F) flow in response to stress; they do not rupture in earthquakes. The maximum observed lengths of ruptures and mapped faults (which may break in a single rupture) are approximately 1,000 km (620 mi). Examples are the earthquakes in Alaska (1957), Chile (1960), and Sumatra (2004), all in subduction zones. The longest earthquake ruptures on strike-slip faults, like the San Andreas Fault (1857, 1906), the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey (1939), and the Denali Fault in Alaska (2002), are about half to one third as long as the lengths along subducting plate margins, and those along normal faults are even shorter.
Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is being extended such as a divergent boundary. Earthquakes associated with normal faults are generally less than magnitude 7. Maximum magnitudes along many normal faults are even more limited because many of them are located along spreading centers, as in Iceland, where the thickness of the brittle layer is only about six kilometres (3.7 mi).
Reverse faults occur in areas where the crust is being shortened such as at a convergent boundary. Reverse faults, particularly those along convergent plate boundaries, are associated with the most powerful earthquakes, megathrust earthquakes, including almost all of those of magnitude 8 or more. Megathrust earthquakes are responsible for about 90% of the total seismic moment released worldwide.
Strike-slip faults are steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip horizontally past each other; transform boundaries are a particular type of strike-slip fault. Strike-slip faults, particularly continental transforms, can produce major earthquakes up to about magnitude 8. Strike-slip faults tend to be oriented near vertically, resulting in an approximate width of 10 km (6.2 mi) within the brittle crust. Thus, earthquakes with magnitudes much larger than 8 are not possible.
In addition, there exists a hierarchy of stress levels in the three fault types. Thrust faults are generated by the highest, strike-slip by intermediate, and normal faults by the lowest stress levels. This can easily be understood by considering the direction of the greatest principal stress, the direction of the force that "pushes" the rock mass during the faulting. In the case of normal faults, the rock mass is pushed down in a vertical direction, thus the pushing force (greatest principal stress) equals the weight of the rock mass itself. In the case of thrusting, the rock mass "escapes" in the direction of the least principal stress, namely upward, lifting the rock mass, and thus, the overburden equals the least principal stress. Strike-slip faulting is intermediate between the other two types described above. This difference in stress regime in the three faulting environments can contribute to differences in stress drop during faulting, which contributes to differences in the radiated energy, regardless of fault dimensions.
For every unit increase in magnitude, there is a roughly thirtyfold increase in the energy released. For instance, an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 releases approximately 32 times more energy than a 5.0 magnitude earthquake and a 7.0 magnitude earthquake releases 1,000 times more energy than a 5.0 magnitude earthquake. An 8.6 magnitude earthquake releases the same amount of energy as 10,000 atomic bombs of the size used in World War II.
This is so because the energy released in an earthquake, and thus its magnitude, is proportional to the area of the fault that ruptures and the stress drop. Therefore, the longer the length and the wider the width of the faulted area, the larger the resulting magnitude. The most important parameter controlling the maximum earthquake magnitude on a fault, however, is not the maximum available length, but the available width because the latter varies by a factor of 20. Along converging plate margins, the dip angle of the rupture plane is very shallow, typically about 10 degrees. Thus, the width of the plane within the top brittle crust of the Earth can become 50–100 km (31–62 mi) (Japan, 2011; Alaska, 1964), making the most powerful earthquakes possible.
The majority of tectonic earthquakes originate in the Ring of Fire at depths not exceeding tens of kilometers. Earthquakes occurring at a depth of less than 70 km (43 mi) are classified as "shallow-focus" earthquakes, while those with a focal depth between 70 and 300 km (43 and 186 mi) are commonly termed "mid-focus" or "intermediate-depth" earthquakes. In subduction zones, where older and colder oceanic crust descends beneath another tectonic plate, deep-focus earthquakes may occur at much greater depths (ranging from 300 to 700 km (190 to 430 mi)). These seismically active areas of subduction are known as Wadati–Benioff zones. Deep-focus earthquakes occur at a depth where the subducted lithosphere should no longer be brittle, due to the high temperature and pressure. A possible mechanism for the generation of deep-focus earthquakes is faulting caused by olivine undergoing a phase transition into a spinel structure.
Earthquakes often occur in volcanic regions and are caused there, both by tectonic faults and the movement of magma in volcanoes. Such earthquakes can serve as an early warning of volcanic eruptions, as during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Earthquake swarms can serve as markers for the location of the flowing magma throughout the volcanoes. These swarms can be recorded by seismometers and tiltmeters (a device that measures ground slope) and used as sensors to predict imminent or upcoming eruptions.
A tectonic earthquake begins as an area of initial slip on the fault surface that forms the focus. Once the rupture has been initiated, it begins to propagate away from the focus, spreading out along the fault surface. Lateral propagation will continue until either the rupture reaches a barrier, such as the end of a fault segment, or a region on the fault where there is insufficient stress to allow continued rupture. For larger earthquakes, the depth extent of rupture will be constrained downwards by the brittle-ductile transition zone and upwards by the ground surface. The mechanics of this process are poorly understood because it is difficult either to recreate such rapid movements in a laboratory or to record seismic waves close to a nucleation zone due to strong ground motion.
In most cases, the rupture speed approaches, but does not exceed, the shear wave (S-wave) velocity of the surrounding rock. There are a few exceptions to this:
Supershear earthquake ruptures are known to have propagated at speeds greater than the S-wave velocity. These have so far all been observed during large strike-slip events. The unusually wide zone of damage caused by the 2001 Kunlun earthquake has been attributed to the effects of the sonic boom developed in such earthquakes.
Slow earthquake ruptures travel at unusually low velocities. A particularly dangerous form of slow earthquake is the tsunami earthquake, observed where the relatively low felt intensities, caused by the slow propagation speed of some great earthquakes, fail to alert the population of the neighboring coast, as in the 1896 Sanriku earthquake.
During an earthquake, high temperatures can develop at the fault plane, increasing pore pressure and consequently vaporization of the groundwater already contained within the rock. In the coseismic phase, such an increase can significantly affect slip evolution and speed, in the post-seismic phase it can control the Aftershock sequence because, after the main event, pore pressure increase slowly propagates into the surrounding fracture network. From the point of view of the Mohr-Coulomb strength theory, an increase in fluid pressure reduces the normal stress acting on the fault plane that holds it in place, and fluids can exert a lubricating effect. As thermal overpressurization may provide positive feedback between slip and strength fall at the fault plane, a common opinion is that it may enhance the faulting process instability. After the mainshock, the pressure gradient between the fault plane and the neighboring rock causes a fluid flow that increases pore pressure in the surrounding fracture networks; such an increase may trigger new faulting processes by reactivating adjacent faults, giving rise to aftershocks. Analogously, artificial pore pressure increase, by fluid injection in Earth's crust, may induce seismicity.
Tides may induce some seismicity.
Most earthquakes form part of a sequence, related to each other in terms of location and time. Most earthquake clusters consist of small tremors that cause little to no damage, but there is a theory that earthquakes can recur in a regular pattern. Earthquake clustering has been observed, for example, in Parkfield, California where a long-term research study is being conducted around the Parkfield earthquake cluster.
An aftershock is an earthquake that occurs after a previous earthquake, the mainshock. Rapid changes of stress between rocks, and the stress from the original earthquake are the main causes of these aftershocks, along with the crust around the ruptured fault plane as it adjusts to the effects of the mainshock. An aftershock is in the same region as the main shock but always of a smaller magnitude, however, they can still be powerful enough to cause even more damage to buildings that were already previously damaged from the mainshock. If an aftershock is larger than the mainshock, the aftershock is redesignated as the mainshock and the original main shock is redesignated as a foreshock. Aftershocks are formed as the crust around the displaced fault plane adjusts to the effects of the mainshock.
Earthquake swarms are sequences of earthquakes striking in a specific area within a short period. They are different from earthquakes followed by a series of aftershocks by the fact that no single earthquake in the sequence is the main shock, so none has a notably higher magnitude than another. An example of an earthquake swarm is the 2004 activity at Yellowstone National Park. In August 2012, a swarm of earthquakes shook Southern California's Imperial Valley, showing the most recorded activity in the area since the 1970s.
Sometimes a series of earthquakes occur in what has been called an earthquake storm, where the earthquakes strike a fault in clusters, each triggered by the shaking or stress redistribution of the previous earthquakes. Similar to aftershocks but on adjacent segments of fault, these storms occur over the course of years, with some of the later earthquakes as damaging as the early ones. Such a pattern was observed in the sequence of about a dozen earthquakes that struck the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey in the 20th century and has been inferred for older anomalous clusters of large earthquakes in the Middle East.
It is estimated that around 500,000 earthquakes occur each year, detectable with current instrumentation. About 100,000 of these can be felt. Minor earthquakes occur very frequently around the world in places like California and Alaska in the U.S., as well as in El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, the Azores in Portugal, Turkey, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, India, Nepal, and Japan. Larger earthquakes occur less frequently, the relationship being exponential; for example, roughly ten times as many earthquakes larger than magnitude 4 occur than earthquakes larger than magnitude 5. In the (low seismicity) United Kingdom, for example, it has been calculated that the average recurrences are: an earthquake of 3.7–4.6 every year, an earthquake of 4.7–5.5 every 10 years, and an earthquake of 5.6 or larger every 100 years. This is an example of the Gutenberg–Richter law.
The number of seismic stations has increased from about 350 in 1931 to many thousands today. As a result, many more earthquakes are reported than in the past, but this is because of the vast improvement in instrumentation, rather than an increase in the number of earthquakes. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that, since 1900, there have been an average of 18 major earthquakes (magnitude 7.0–7.9) and one great earthquake (magnitude 8.0 or greater) per year, and that this average has been relatively stable. In recent years, the number of major earthquakes per year has decreased, though this is probably a statistical fluctuation rather than a systematic trend. More detailed statistics on the size and frequency of earthquakes is available from the United States Geological Survey. A recent increase in the number of major earthquakes has been noted, which could be explained by a cyclical pattern of periods of intense tectonic activity, interspersed with longer periods of low intensity. However, accurate recordings of earthquakes only began in the early 1900s, so it is too early to categorically state that this is the case.
Most of the world's earthquakes (90%, and 81% of the largest) take place in the 40,000-kilometre-long (25,000 mi), horseshoe-shaped zone called the circum-Pacific seismic belt, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, which for the most part bounds the Pacific Plate. Massive earthquakes tend to occur along other plate boundaries too, such as along the Himalayan Mountains.
With the rapid growth of mega-cities such as Mexico City, Tokyo, and Tehran in areas of high seismic risk, some seismologists are warning that a single earthquake may claim the lives of up to three million people.
While most earthquakes are caused by the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, human activity can also produce earthquakes. Activities both above ground and below may change the stresses and strains on the crust, including building reservoirs, extracting resources such as coal or oil, and injecting fluids underground for waste disposal or fracking. Most of these earthquakes have small magnitudes. The 5.7 magnitude 2011 Oklahoma earthquake is thought to have been caused by disposing wastewater from oil production into injection wells, and studies point to the state's oil industry as the cause of other earthquakes in the past century. A Columbia University paper suggested that the 8.0 magnitude 2008 Sichuan earthquake was induced by loading from the Zipingpu Dam, though the link has not been conclusively proved.
The instrumental scales used to describe the size of an earthquake began with the Richter magnitude scale in the 1930s. It is a relatively simple measurement of an event's amplitude, and its use has become minimal in the 21st century. Seismic waves travel through the Earth's interior and can be recorded by seismometers at great distances. The surface wave magnitude was developed in the 1950s as a means to measure remote earthquakes and to improve the accuracy for larger events. The moment magnitude scale not only measures the amplitude of the shock but also takes into account the seismic moment (total rupture area, average slip of the fault, and rigidity of the rock). The Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale, the Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale, and the Mercalli intensity scale are based on the observed effects and are related to the intensity of shaking.
The shaking of the earth is a common phenomenon that has been experienced by humans from the earliest of times. Before the development of strong-motion accelerometers, the intensity of a seismic event was estimated based on the observed effects. Magnitude and intensity are not directly related and calculated using different methods. The magnitude of an earthquake is a single value that describes the size of the earthquake at its source. Intensity is the measure of shaking at different locations around the earthquake. Intensity values vary from place to place, depending on the distance from the earthquake and the underlying rock or soil makeup.
The first scale for measuring earthquake magnitudes was developed by Charles Francis Richter in 1935. Subsequent scales (see seismic magnitude scales) have retained a key feature, where each unit represents a ten-fold difference in the amplitude of the ground shaking and a 32-fold difference in energy. Subsequent scales are also adjusted to have approximately the same numeric value within the limits of the scale.
Although the mass media commonly reports earthquake magnitudes as "Richter magnitude" or "Richter scale", standard practice by most seismological authorities is to express an earthquake's strength on the moment magnitude scale, which is based on the actual energy released by an earthquake.
Every earthquake produces different types of seismic waves, which travel through rock with different velocities:
Propagation velocity of the seismic waves through solid rock ranges from approx. 3 km/s (1.9 mi/s) up to 13 km/s (8.1 mi/s), depending on the density and elasticity of the medium. In the Earth's interior, the shock- or P-waves travel much faster than the S-waves (approx. relation 1.7:1). The differences in travel time from the epicenter to the observatory are a measure of the distance and can be used to image both sources of earthquakes and structures within the Earth. Also, the depth of the hypocenter can be computed roughly.
As a consequence, the first waves of a distant earthquake arrive at an observatory via the Earth's mantle.
On average, the kilometer distance to the earthquake is the number of seconds between the P- and S-wave times 8. Slight deviations are caused by inhomogeneities of subsurface structure. By such analysis of seismograms, the Earth's core was located in 1913 by Beno Gutenberg.
S-waves and later arriving surface waves do most of the damage compared to P-waves. P-waves squeeze and expand the material in the same direction they are traveling, whereas S-waves shake the ground up and down and back and forth.
Earthquakes are not only categorized by their magnitude but also by the place where they occur. The world is divided into 754 Flinn–Engdahl regions (F-E regions), which are based on political and geographical boundaries as well as seismic activity. More active zones are divided into smaller F-E regions whereas less active zones belong to larger F-E regions.
Standard reporting of earthquakes includes its magnitude, date and time of occurrence, geographic coordinates of its epicenter, depth of the epicenter, geographical region, distances to population centers, location uncertainty, several parameters that are included in USGS earthquake reports (number of stations reporting, number of observations, etc.), and a unique event ID.
Although relatively slow seismic waves have traditionally been used to detect earthquakes, scientists realized in 2016 that gravitational measurement could provide instantaneous detection of earthquakes, and confirmed this by analyzing gravitational records associated with the 2011 Tohoku-Oki ("Fukushima") earthquake.
The effects of earthquakes include, but are not limited to, the following:
Shaking and ground rupture are the main effects created by earthquakes, principally resulting in more or less severe damage to buildings and other rigid structures. The severity of the local effects depends on the complex combination of the earthquake magnitude, the distance from the epicenter, and the local geological and geomorphological conditions, which may amplify or reduce wave propagation. The ground-shaking is measured by ground acceleration.
Specific local geological, geomorphological, and geostructural features can induce high levels of shaking on the ground surface even from low-intensity earthquakes. This effect is called site or local amplification. It is principally due to the transfer of the seismic motion from hard deep soils to soft superficial soils and the effects of seismic energy focalization owing to the typical geometrical setting of such deposits.
Ground rupture is a visible breaking and displacement of the Earth's surface along the trace of the fault, which may be of the order of several meters in the case of major earthquakes. Ground rupture is a major risk for large engineering structures such as dams, bridges, and nuclear power stations and requires careful mapping of existing faults to identify any that are likely to break the ground surface within the life of the structure.
Soil liquefaction occurs when, because of the shaking, water-saturated granular material (such as sand) temporarily loses its strength and transforms from a solid to a liquid. Soil liquefaction may cause rigid structures, like buildings and bridges, to tilt or sink into the liquefied deposits. For example, in the 1964 Alaska earthquake, soil liquefaction caused many buildings to sink into the ground, eventually collapsing upon themselves.
Physical damage from an earthquake will vary depending on the intensity of shaking in a given area and the type of population. Undeserved and developing communities frequently experience more severe impacts (and longer lasting) from a seismic event compared to well-developed communities. Impacts may include:
With these impacts and others, the aftermath may bring disease, lack of basic necessities, mental consequences such as panic attacks, and depression to survivors, and higher insurance premiums. Recovery times will vary based on the level of damage along with the socioeconomic status of the impacted community.
Earthquakes can produce slope instability leading to landslides, a major geological hazard. Landslide danger may persist while emergency personnel is attempting rescue work.
Earthquakes can cause fires by damaging electrical power or gas lines. In the event of water mains rupturing and a loss of pressure, it may also become difficult to stop the spread of a fire once it has started. For example, more deaths in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were caused by fire than by the earthquake itself.
Tsunamis are long-wavelength, long-period sea waves produced by the sudden or abrupt movement of large volumes of water—including when an earthquake occurs at sea. In the open ocean, the distance between wave crests can surpass 100 kilometres (62 mi), and the wave periods can vary from five minutes to one hour. Such tsunamis travel 600–800 kilometers per hour (373–497 miles per hour), depending on water depth. Large waves produced by an earthquake or a submarine landslide can overrun nearby coastal areas in a matter of minutes. Tsunamis can also travel thousands of kilometers across open ocean and wreak destruction on far shores hours after the earthquake that generated them.
Ordinarily, subduction earthquakes under magnitude 7.5 do not cause tsunamis, although some instances of this have been recorded. Most destructive tsunamis are caused by earthquakes of magnitude 7.5 or more.
Floods may be secondary effects of earthquakes if dams are damaged. Earthquakes may cause landslips to dam rivers, which collapse and cause floods.
The terrain below the Sarez Lake in Tajikistan is in danger of catastrophic flooding if the landslide dam formed by the earthquake, known as the Usoi Dam, were to fail during a future earthquake. Impact projections suggest the flood could affect roughly five million people.
Earthquake prediction is a branch of the science of seismology concerned with the specification of the time, location, and magnitude of future earthquakes within stated limits. Many methods have been developed for predicting the time and place in which earthquakes will occur. Despite considerable research efforts by seismologists, scientifically reproducible predictions cannot yet be made to a specific day or month.
While forecasting is usually considered to be a type of prediction, earthquake forecasting is often differentiated from earthquake prediction. Earthquake forecasting is concerned with the probabilistic assessment of general earthquake hazards, including the frequency and magnitude of damaging earthquakes in a given area over years or decades. For well-understood faults the probability that a segment may rupture during the next few decades can be estimated.
Earthquake warning systems have been developed that can provide regional notification of an earthquake in progress, but before the ground surface has begun to move, potentially allowing people within the system's range to seek shelter before the earthquake's impact is felt.
The objective of earthquake engineering is to foresee the impact of earthquakes on buildings and other structures and to design such structures to minimize the risk of damage. Existing structures can be modified by seismic retrofitting to improve their resistance to earthquakes. Earthquake insurance can provide building owners with financial protection against losses resulting from earthquakes. Emergency management strategies can be employed by a government or organization to mitigate risks and prepare for consequences.
Artificial intelligence may help to assess buildings and plan precautionary operations: the Igor expert system is part of a mobile laboratory that supports the procedures leading to the seismic assessment of masonry buildings and the planning of retrofitting operations on them. It has been successfully applied to assess buildings in Lisbon, Rhodes, Naples.
Individuals can also take preparedness steps like securing water heaters and heavy items that could injure someone, locating shutoffs for utilities, and being educated about what to do when the shaking starts. For areas near large bodies of water, earthquake preparedness encompasses the possibility of a tsunami caused by a large earthquake.
From the lifetime of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in the 5th century BCE to the 14th century CE, earthquakes were usually attributed to "air (vapors) in the cavities of the Earth." Thales of Miletus (625–547 BCE) was the only documented person who believed that earthquakes were caused by tension between the earth and water. Other theories existed, including the Greek philosopher Anaxamines' (585–526 BCE) beliefs that short incline episodes of dryness and wetness caused seismic activity. The Greek philosopher Democritus (460–371 BCE) blamed water in general for earthquakes. Pliny the Elder called earthquakes "underground thunderstorms".
In Norse mythology, earthquakes were explained as the violent struggle of the god Loki. When Loki, god of mischief and strife, murdered Baldr, god of beauty and light, he was punished by being bound in a cave with a poisonous serpent placed above his head dripping venom. Loki's wife Sigyn stood by him with a bowl to catch the poison, but whenever she had to empty the bowl the poison dripped on Loki's face, forcing him to jerk his head away and thrash against his bonds, which caused the earth to tremble.
In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the cause and god of earthquakes. When he was in a bad mood, he struck the ground with a trident, causing earthquakes and other calamities. He also used earthquakes to punish and inflict fear upon people as revenge.
In Japanese mythology, Namazu (鯰) is a giant catfish who causes earthquakes. Namazu lives in the mud beneath the earth and is guarded by the god Kashima who restrains the fish with a stone. When Kashima lets his guard fall, Namazu thrashes about, causing violent earthquakes.
In modern popular culture, the portrayal of earthquakes is shaped by the memory of great cities laid waste, such as Kobe in 1995 or San Francisco in 1906. Fictional earthquakes tend to strike suddenly and without warning. For this reason, stories about earthquakes generally begin with the disaster and focus on its immediate aftermath, as in Short Walk to Daylight (1972), The Ragged Edge (1968) or Aftershock: Earthquake in New York (1999). A notable example is Heinrich von Kleist's classic novella, The Earthquake in Chile, which describes the destruction of Santiago in 1647. Haruki Murakami's short fiction collection After the Quake depicts the consequences of the Kobe earthquake of 1995.
The most popular single earthquake in fiction is the hypothetical "Big One" expected of California's San Andreas Fault someday, as depicted in the novels Richter 10 (1996), Goodbye California (1977), 2012 (2009) and San Andreas (2015) among other works. Jacob M. Appel's widely anthologized short story, A Comparative Seismology, features a con artist who convinces an elderly woman that an apocalyptic earthquake is imminent.
Contemporary depictions of earthquakes in film are variable in the manner in which they reflect human psychological reactions to the actual trauma that can be caused to directly afflicted families and their loved ones. Disaster mental health response research emphasizes the need to be aware of the different roles of loss of family and key community members, loss of home and familiar surroundings, and loss of essential supplies and services to maintain survival. Particularly for children, the clear availability of caregiving adults who can protect, nourish, and clothe them in the aftermath of the earthquake, and to help them make sense of what has befallen them has been shown even more important to their emotional and physical health than the simple giving of provisions. As was observed after other disasters involving destruction and loss of life and their media depictions, recently observed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, it is also important not to pathologize the reactions to loss and displacement or disruption of governmental administration and services, but rather to validate these reactions, to support constructive problem-solving and reflection as to how one might improve the conditions of those affected.
Phenomena similar to earthquakes have been observed in other planets (e.g., marsquakes on Mars) and on the Moon (see moonquakes). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An earthquake – also called a quake, tremor, or temblor – is the shaking of the surface of Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, damage critical infrastructure, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismic activity of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a particular time. The seismicity at a particular location in the Earth is the average rate of seismic energy release per unit volume. The word tremor is also used for non-earthquake seismic rumbling.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and displacing or disrupting the ground. When the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event—whether natural or caused by humans—that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by the rupture of geological faults but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, fracking and nuclear tests. An earthquake's point of initial rupture is called its hypocenter or focus. The epicenter is the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "One of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, which occurred on 23 January 1556 in Shaanxi, China. More than 830,000 people died. Most houses in the area were yaodongs—dwellings carved out of loess hillsides—and many victims were killed when these structures collapsed. The 1976 Tangshan earthquake, which killed between 240,000 and 655,000 people, was the deadliest of the 20th century.",
"title": "Major examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The 1960 Chilean earthquake is the largest earthquake that has been measured on a seismograph, reaching 9.5 magnitude on 22 May 1960. Its epicenter was near Cañete, Chile. The energy released was approximately twice that of the next most powerful earthquake, the Good Friday earthquake (27 March 1964), which was centered in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The ten largest recorded earthquakes have all been megathrust earthquakes; however, of these ten, only the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is simultaneously one of the deadliest earthquakes in history.",
"title": "Major examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Earthquakes that caused the greatest loss of life, while powerful, were deadly because of their proximity to either heavily populated areas or the ocean, where earthquakes often create tsunamis that can devastate communities thousands of kilometers away. Regions most at risk for great loss of life include those where earthquakes are relatively rare but powerful, and poor regions with lax, unenforced, or nonexistent seismic building codes.",
"title": "Major examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Tectonic earthquakes occur anywhere on the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. The sides of a fault move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the fault surface that increases the frictional resistance. Most fault surfaces do have such asperities, which leads to a form of stick-slip behavior. Once the fault has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and, therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy. This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves, frictional heating of the fault surface, and cracking of the rock, thus causing an earthquake. This process of gradual build-up of strain and stress punctuated by occasional sudden earthquake failure is referred to as the elastic-rebound theory. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of an earthquake's total energy is radiated as seismic energy. Most of the earthquake's energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth or is converted into heat generated by friction. Therefore, earthquakes lower the Earth's available elastic potential energy and raise its temperature, though these changes are negligible compared to the conductive and convective flow of heat out from the Earth's deep interior.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "There are three main types of fault, all of which may cause an interplate earthquake: normal, reverse (thrust), and strike-slip. Normal and reverse faulting are examples of dip-slip, where the displacement along the fault is in the direction of dip and where movement on them involves a vertical component. Many earthquakes are caused by movement on faults that have components of both dip-slip and strike-slip; this is known as oblique slip. The topmost, brittle part of the Earth's crust, and the cool slabs of the tectonic plates that are descending into the hot mantle, are the only parts of our planet that can store elastic energy and release it in fault ruptures. Rocks hotter than about 300 °C (572 °F) flow in response to stress; they do not rupture in earthquakes. The maximum observed lengths of ruptures and mapped faults (which may break in a single rupture) are approximately 1,000 km (620 mi). Examples are the earthquakes in Alaska (1957), Chile (1960), and Sumatra (2004), all in subduction zones. The longest earthquake ruptures on strike-slip faults, like the San Andreas Fault (1857, 1906), the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey (1939), and the Denali Fault in Alaska (2002), are about half to one third as long as the lengths along subducting plate margins, and those along normal faults are even shorter.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Normal faults occur mainly in areas where the crust is being extended such as a divergent boundary. Earthquakes associated with normal faults are generally less than magnitude 7. Maximum magnitudes along many normal faults are even more limited because many of them are located along spreading centers, as in Iceland, where the thickness of the brittle layer is only about six kilometres (3.7 mi).",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Reverse faults occur in areas where the crust is being shortened such as at a convergent boundary. Reverse faults, particularly those along convergent plate boundaries, are associated with the most powerful earthquakes, megathrust earthquakes, including almost all of those of magnitude 8 or more. Megathrust earthquakes are responsible for about 90% of the total seismic moment released worldwide.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Strike-slip faults are steep structures where the two sides of the fault slip horizontally past each other; transform boundaries are a particular type of strike-slip fault. Strike-slip faults, particularly continental transforms, can produce major earthquakes up to about magnitude 8. Strike-slip faults tend to be oriented near vertically, resulting in an approximate width of 10 km (6.2 mi) within the brittle crust. Thus, earthquakes with magnitudes much larger than 8 are not possible.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In addition, there exists a hierarchy of stress levels in the three fault types. Thrust faults are generated by the highest, strike-slip by intermediate, and normal faults by the lowest stress levels. This can easily be understood by considering the direction of the greatest principal stress, the direction of the force that \"pushes\" the rock mass during the faulting. In the case of normal faults, the rock mass is pushed down in a vertical direction, thus the pushing force (greatest principal stress) equals the weight of the rock mass itself. In the case of thrusting, the rock mass \"escapes\" in the direction of the least principal stress, namely upward, lifting the rock mass, and thus, the overburden equals the least principal stress. Strike-slip faulting is intermediate between the other two types described above. This difference in stress regime in the three faulting environments can contribute to differences in stress drop during faulting, which contributes to differences in the radiated energy, regardless of fault dimensions.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "For every unit increase in magnitude, there is a roughly thirtyfold increase in the energy released. For instance, an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 releases approximately 32 times more energy than a 5.0 magnitude earthquake and a 7.0 magnitude earthquake releases 1,000 times more energy than a 5.0 magnitude earthquake. An 8.6 magnitude earthquake releases the same amount of energy as 10,000 atomic bombs of the size used in World War II.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "This is so because the energy released in an earthquake, and thus its magnitude, is proportional to the area of the fault that ruptures and the stress drop. Therefore, the longer the length and the wider the width of the faulted area, the larger the resulting magnitude. The most important parameter controlling the maximum earthquake magnitude on a fault, however, is not the maximum available length, but the available width because the latter varies by a factor of 20. Along converging plate margins, the dip angle of the rupture plane is very shallow, typically about 10 degrees. Thus, the width of the plane within the top brittle crust of the Earth can become 50–100 km (31–62 mi) (Japan, 2011; Alaska, 1964), making the most powerful earthquakes possible.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The majority of tectonic earthquakes originate in the Ring of Fire at depths not exceeding tens of kilometers. Earthquakes occurring at a depth of less than 70 km (43 mi) are classified as \"shallow-focus\" earthquakes, while those with a focal depth between 70 and 300 km (43 and 186 mi) are commonly termed \"mid-focus\" or \"intermediate-depth\" earthquakes. In subduction zones, where older and colder oceanic crust descends beneath another tectonic plate, deep-focus earthquakes may occur at much greater depths (ranging from 300 to 700 km (190 to 430 mi)). These seismically active areas of subduction are known as Wadati–Benioff zones. Deep-focus earthquakes occur at a depth where the subducted lithosphere should no longer be brittle, due to the high temperature and pressure. A possible mechanism for the generation of deep-focus earthquakes is faulting caused by olivine undergoing a phase transition into a spinel structure.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Earthquakes often occur in volcanic regions and are caused there, both by tectonic faults and the movement of magma in volcanoes. Such earthquakes can serve as an early warning of volcanic eruptions, as during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Earthquake swarms can serve as markers for the location of the flowing magma throughout the volcanoes. These swarms can be recorded by seismometers and tiltmeters (a device that measures ground slope) and used as sensors to predict imminent or upcoming eruptions.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A tectonic earthquake begins as an area of initial slip on the fault surface that forms the focus. Once the rupture has been initiated, it begins to propagate away from the focus, spreading out along the fault surface. Lateral propagation will continue until either the rupture reaches a barrier, such as the end of a fault segment, or a region on the fault where there is insufficient stress to allow continued rupture. For larger earthquakes, the depth extent of rupture will be constrained downwards by the brittle-ductile transition zone and upwards by the ground surface. The mechanics of this process are poorly understood because it is difficult either to recreate such rapid movements in a laboratory or to record seismic waves close to a nucleation zone due to strong ground motion.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In most cases, the rupture speed approaches, but does not exceed, the shear wave (S-wave) velocity of the surrounding rock. There are a few exceptions to this:",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Supershear earthquake ruptures are known to have propagated at speeds greater than the S-wave velocity. These have so far all been observed during large strike-slip events. The unusually wide zone of damage caused by the 2001 Kunlun earthquake has been attributed to the effects of the sonic boom developed in such earthquakes.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Slow earthquake ruptures travel at unusually low velocities. A particularly dangerous form of slow earthquake is the tsunami earthquake, observed where the relatively low felt intensities, caused by the slow propagation speed of some great earthquakes, fail to alert the population of the neighboring coast, as in the 1896 Sanriku earthquake.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During an earthquake, high temperatures can develop at the fault plane, increasing pore pressure and consequently vaporization of the groundwater already contained within the rock. In the coseismic phase, such an increase can significantly affect slip evolution and speed, in the post-seismic phase it can control the Aftershock sequence because, after the main event, pore pressure increase slowly propagates into the surrounding fracture network. From the point of view of the Mohr-Coulomb strength theory, an increase in fluid pressure reduces the normal stress acting on the fault plane that holds it in place, and fluids can exert a lubricating effect. As thermal overpressurization may provide positive feedback between slip and strength fall at the fault plane, a common opinion is that it may enhance the faulting process instability. After the mainshock, the pressure gradient between the fault plane and the neighboring rock causes a fluid flow that increases pore pressure in the surrounding fracture networks; such an increase may trigger new faulting processes by reactivating adjacent faults, giving rise to aftershocks. Analogously, artificial pore pressure increase, by fluid injection in Earth's crust, may induce seismicity.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Tides may induce some seismicity.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Most earthquakes form part of a sequence, related to each other in terms of location and time. Most earthquake clusters consist of small tremors that cause little to no damage, but there is a theory that earthquakes can recur in a regular pattern. Earthquake clustering has been observed, for example, in Parkfield, California where a long-term research study is being conducted around the Parkfield earthquake cluster.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "An aftershock is an earthquake that occurs after a previous earthquake, the mainshock. Rapid changes of stress between rocks, and the stress from the original earthquake are the main causes of these aftershocks, along with the crust around the ruptured fault plane as it adjusts to the effects of the mainshock. An aftershock is in the same region as the main shock but always of a smaller magnitude, however, they can still be powerful enough to cause even more damage to buildings that were already previously damaged from the mainshock. If an aftershock is larger than the mainshock, the aftershock is redesignated as the mainshock and the original main shock is redesignated as a foreshock. Aftershocks are formed as the crust around the displaced fault plane adjusts to the effects of the mainshock.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Earthquake swarms are sequences of earthquakes striking in a specific area within a short period. They are different from earthquakes followed by a series of aftershocks by the fact that no single earthquake in the sequence is the main shock, so none has a notably higher magnitude than another. An example of an earthquake swarm is the 2004 activity at Yellowstone National Park. In August 2012, a swarm of earthquakes shook Southern California's Imperial Valley, showing the most recorded activity in the area since the 1970s.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Sometimes a series of earthquakes occur in what has been called an earthquake storm, where the earthquakes strike a fault in clusters, each triggered by the shaking or stress redistribution of the previous earthquakes. Similar to aftershocks but on adjacent segments of fault, these storms occur over the course of years, with some of the later earthquakes as damaging as the early ones. Such a pattern was observed in the sequence of about a dozen earthquakes that struck the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey in the 20th century and has been inferred for older anomalous clusters of large earthquakes in the Middle East.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "It is estimated that around 500,000 earthquakes occur each year, detectable with current instrumentation. About 100,000 of these can be felt. Minor earthquakes occur very frequently around the world in places like California and Alaska in the U.S., as well as in El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, the Azores in Portugal, Turkey, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, India, Nepal, and Japan. Larger earthquakes occur less frequently, the relationship being exponential; for example, roughly ten times as many earthquakes larger than magnitude 4 occur than earthquakes larger than magnitude 5. In the (low seismicity) United Kingdom, for example, it has been calculated that the average recurrences are: an earthquake of 3.7–4.6 every year, an earthquake of 4.7–5.5 every 10 years, and an earthquake of 5.6 or larger every 100 years. This is an example of the Gutenberg–Richter law.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The number of seismic stations has increased from about 350 in 1931 to many thousands today. As a result, many more earthquakes are reported than in the past, but this is because of the vast improvement in instrumentation, rather than an increase in the number of earthquakes. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that, since 1900, there have been an average of 18 major earthquakes (magnitude 7.0–7.9) and one great earthquake (magnitude 8.0 or greater) per year, and that this average has been relatively stable. In recent years, the number of major earthquakes per year has decreased, though this is probably a statistical fluctuation rather than a systematic trend. More detailed statistics on the size and frequency of earthquakes is available from the United States Geological Survey. A recent increase in the number of major earthquakes has been noted, which could be explained by a cyclical pattern of periods of intense tectonic activity, interspersed with longer periods of low intensity. However, accurate recordings of earthquakes only began in the early 1900s, so it is too early to categorically state that this is the case.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Most of the world's earthquakes (90%, and 81% of the largest) take place in the 40,000-kilometre-long (25,000 mi), horseshoe-shaped zone called the circum-Pacific seismic belt, known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, which for the most part bounds the Pacific Plate. Massive earthquakes tend to occur along other plate boundaries too, such as along the Himalayan Mountains.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "With the rapid growth of mega-cities such as Mexico City, Tokyo, and Tehran in areas of high seismic risk, some seismologists are warning that a single earthquake may claim the lives of up to three million people.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "While most earthquakes are caused by the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, human activity can also produce earthquakes. Activities both above ground and below may change the stresses and strains on the crust, including building reservoirs, extracting resources such as coal or oil, and injecting fluids underground for waste disposal or fracking. Most of these earthquakes have small magnitudes. The 5.7 magnitude 2011 Oklahoma earthquake is thought to have been caused by disposing wastewater from oil production into injection wells, and studies point to the state's oil industry as the cause of other earthquakes in the past century. A Columbia University paper suggested that the 8.0 magnitude 2008 Sichuan earthquake was induced by loading from the Zipingpu Dam, though the link has not been conclusively proved.",
"title": "Occurrence"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The instrumental scales used to describe the size of an earthquake began with the Richter magnitude scale in the 1930s. It is a relatively simple measurement of an event's amplitude, and its use has become minimal in the 21st century. Seismic waves travel through the Earth's interior and can be recorded by seismometers at great distances. The surface wave magnitude was developed in the 1950s as a means to measure remote earthquakes and to improve the accuracy for larger events. The moment magnitude scale not only measures the amplitude of the shock but also takes into account the seismic moment (total rupture area, average slip of the fault, and rigidity of the rock). The Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale, the Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale, and the Mercalli intensity scale are based on the observed effects and are related to the intensity of shaking.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The shaking of the earth is a common phenomenon that has been experienced by humans from the earliest of times. Before the development of strong-motion accelerometers, the intensity of a seismic event was estimated based on the observed effects. Magnitude and intensity are not directly related and calculated using different methods. The magnitude of an earthquake is a single value that describes the size of the earthquake at its source. Intensity is the measure of shaking at different locations around the earthquake. Intensity values vary from place to place, depending on the distance from the earthquake and the underlying rock or soil makeup.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The first scale for measuring earthquake magnitudes was developed by Charles Francis Richter in 1935. Subsequent scales (see seismic magnitude scales) have retained a key feature, where each unit represents a ten-fold difference in the amplitude of the ground shaking and a 32-fold difference in energy. Subsequent scales are also adjusted to have approximately the same numeric value within the limits of the scale.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Although the mass media commonly reports earthquake magnitudes as \"Richter magnitude\" or \"Richter scale\", standard practice by most seismological authorities is to express an earthquake's strength on the moment magnitude scale, which is based on the actual energy released by an earthquake.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Every earthquake produces different types of seismic waves, which travel through rock with different velocities:",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Propagation velocity of the seismic waves through solid rock ranges from approx. 3 km/s (1.9 mi/s) up to 13 km/s (8.1 mi/s), depending on the density and elasticity of the medium. In the Earth's interior, the shock- or P-waves travel much faster than the S-waves (approx. relation 1.7:1). The differences in travel time from the epicenter to the observatory are a measure of the distance and can be used to image both sources of earthquakes and structures within the Earth. Also, the depth of the hypocenter can be computed roughly.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "As a consequence, the first waves of a distant earthquake arrive at an observatory via the Earth's mantle.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "On average, the kilometer distance to the earthquake is the number of seconds between the P- and S-wave times 8. Slight deviations are caused by inhomogeneities of subsurface structure. By such analysis of seismograms, the Earth's core was located in 1913 by Beno Gutenberg.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "S-waves and later arriving surface waves do most of the damage compared to P-waves. P-waves squeeze and expand the material in the same direction they are traveling, whereas S-waves shake the ground up and down and back and forth.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Earthquakes are not only categorized by their magnitude but also by the place where they occur. The world is divided into 754 Flinn–Engdahl regions (F-E regions), which are based on political and geographical boundaries as well as seismic activity. More active zones are divided into smaller F-E regions whereas less active zones belong to larger F-E regions.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Standard reporting of earthquakes includes its magnitude, date and time of occurrence, geographic coordinates of its epicenter, depth of the epicenter, geographical region, distances to population centers, location uncertainty, several parameters that are included in USGS earthquake reports (number of stations reporting, number of observations, etc.), and a unique event ID.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Although relatively slow seismic waves have traditionally been used to detect earthquakes, scientists realized in 2016 that gravitational measurement could provide instantaneous detection of earthquakes, and confirmed this by analyzing gravitational records associated with the 2011 Tohoku-Oki (\"Fukushima\") earthquake.",
"title": "Measurement and location"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The effects of earthquakes include, but are not limited to, the following:",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Shaking and ground rupture are the main effects created by earthquakes, principally resulting in more or less severe damage to buildings and other rigid structures. The severity of the local effects depends on the complex combination of the earthquake magnitude, the distance from the epicenter, and the local geological and geomorphological conditions, which may amplify or reduce wave propagation. The ground-shaking is measured by ground acceleration.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Specific local geological, geomorphological, and geostructural features can induce high levels of shaking on the ground surface even from low-intensity earthquakes. This effect is called site or local amplification. It is principally due to the transfer of the seismic motion from hard deep soils to soft superficial soils and the effects of seismic energy focalization owing to the typical geometrical setting of such deposits.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Ground rupture is a visible breaking and displacement of the Earth's surface along the trace of the fault, which may be of the order of several meters in the case of major earthquakes. Ground rupture is a major risk for large engineering structures such as dams, bridges, and nuclear power stations and requires careful mapping of existing faults to identify any that are likely to break the ground surface within the life of the structure.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Soil liquefaction occurs when, because of the shaking, water-saturated granular material (such as sand) temporarily loses its strength and transforms from a solid to a liquid. Soil liquefaction may cause rigid structures, like buildings and bridges, to tilt or sink into the liquefied deposits. For example, in the 1964 Alaska earthquake, soil liquefaction caused many buildings to sink into the ground, eventually collapsing upon themselves.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Physical damage from an earthquake will vary depending on the intensity of shaking in a given area and the type of population. Undeserved and developing communities frequently experience more severe impacts (and longer lasting) from a seismic event compared to well-developed communities. Impacts may include:",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "With these impacts and others, the aftermath may bring disease, lack of basic necessities, mental consequences such as panic attacks, and depression to survivors, and higher insurance premiums. Recovery times will vary based on the level of damage along with the socioeconomic status of the impacted community.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Earthquakes can produce slope instability leading to landslides, a major geological hazard. Landslide danger may persist while emergency personnel is attempting rescue work.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Earthquakes can cause fires by damaging electrical power or gas lines. In the event of water mains rupturing and a loss of pressure, it may also become difficult to stop the spread of a fire once it has started. For example, more deaths in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were caused by fire than by the earthquake itself.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Tsunamis are long-wavelength, long-period sea waves produced by the sudden or abrupt movement of large volumes of water—including when an earthquake occurs at sea. In the open ocean, the distance between wave crests can surpass 100 kilometres (62 mi), and the wave periods can vary from five minutes to one hour. Such tsunamis travel 600–800 kilometers per hour (373–497 miles per hour), depending on water depth. Large waves produced by an earthquake or a submarine landslide can overrun nearby coastal areas in a matter of minutes. Tsunamis can also travel thousands of kilometers across open ocean and wreak destruction on far shores hours after the earthquake that generated them.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Ordinarily, subduction earthquakes under magnitude 7.5 do not cause tsunamis, although some instances of this have been recorded. Most destructive tsunamis are caused by earthquakes of magnitude 7.5 or more.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Floods may be secondary effects of earthquakes if dams are damaged. Earthquakes may cause landslips to dam rivers, which collapse and cause floods.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The terrain below the Sarez Lake in Tajikistan is in danger of catastrophic flooding if the landslide dam formed by the earthquake, known as the Usoi Dam, were to fail during a future earthquake. Impact projections suggest the flood could affect roughly five million people.",
"title": "Effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Earthquake prediction is a branch of the science of seismology concerned with the specification of the time, location, and magnitude of future earthquakes within stated limits. Many methods have been developed for predicting the time and place in which earthquakes will occur. Despite considerable research efforts by seismologists, scientifically reproducible predictions cannot yet be made to a specific day or month.",
"title": "Management"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "While forecasting is usually considered to be a type of prediction, earthquake forecasting is often differentiated from earthquake prediction. Earthquake forecasting is concerned with the probabilistic assessment of general earthquake hazards, including the frequency and magnitude of damaging earthquakes in a given area over years or decades. For well-understood faults the probability that a segment may rupture during the next few decades can be estimated.",
"title": "Management"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Earthquake warning systems have been developed that can provide regional notification of an earthquake in progress, but before the ground surface has begun to move, potentially allowing people within the system's range to seek shelter before the earthquake's impact is felt.",
"title": "Management"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The objective of earthquake engineering is to foresee the impact of earthquakes on buildings and other structures and to design such structures to minimize the risk of damage. Existing structures can be modified by seismic retrofitting to improve their resistance to earthquakes. Earthquake insurance can provide building owners with financial protection against losses resulting from earthquakes. Emergency management strategies can be employed by a government or organization to mitigate risks and prepare for consequences.",
"title": "Management"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Artificial intelligence may help to assess buildings and plan precautionary operations: the Igor expert system is part of a mobile laboratory that supports the procedures leading to the seismic assessment of masonry buildings and the planning of retrofitting operations on them. It has been successfully applied to assess buildings in Lisbon, Rhodes, Naples.",
"title": "Management"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Individuals can also take preparedness steps like securing water heaters and heavy items that could injure someone, locating shutoffs for utilities, and being educated about what to do when the shaking starts. For areas near large bodies of water, earthquake preparedness encompasses the possibility of a tsunami caused by a large earthquake.",
"title": "Management"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "From the lifetime of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras in the 5th century BCE to the 14th century CE, earthquakes were usually attributed to \"air (vapors) in the cavities of the Earth.\" Thales of Miletus (625–547 BCE) was the only documented person who believed that earthquakes were caused by tension between the earth and water. Other theories existed, including the Greek philosopher Anaxamines' (585–526 BCE) beliefs that short incline episodes of dryness and wetness caused seismic activity. The Greek philosopher Democritus (460–371 BCE) blamed water in general for earthquakes. Pliny the Elder called earthquakes \"underground thunderstorms\".",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "In Norse mythology, earthquakes were explained as the violent struggle of the god Loki. When Loki, god of mischief and strife, murdered Baldr, god of beauty and light, he was punished by being bound in a cave with a poisonous serpent placed above his head dripping venom. Loki's wife Sigyn stood by him with a bowl to catch the poison, but whenever she had to empty the bowl the poison dripped on Loki's face, forcing him to jerk his head away and thrash against his bonds, which caused the earth to tremble.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the cause and god of earthquakes. When he was in a bad mood, he struck the ground with a trident, causing earthquakes and other calamities. He also used earthquakes to punish and inflict fear upon people as revenge.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In Japanese mythology, Namazu (鯰) is a giant catfish who causes earthquakes. Namazu lives in the mud beneath the earth and is guarded by the god Kashima who restrains the fish with a stone. When Kashima lets his guard fall, Namazu thrashes about, causing violent earthquakes.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "In modern popular culture, the portrayal of earthquakes is shaped by the memory of great cities laid waste, such as Kobe in 1995 or San Francisco in 1906. Fictional earthquakes tend to strike suddenly and without warning. For this reason, stories about earthquakes generally begin with the disaster and focus on its immediate aftermath, as in Short Walk to Daylight (1972), The Ragged Edge (1968) or Aftershock: Earthquake in New York (1999). A notable example is Heinrich von Kleist's classic novella, The Earthquake in Chile, which describes the destruction of Santiago in 1647. Haruki Murakami's short fiction collection After the Quake depicts the consequences of the Kobe earthquake of 1995.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The most popular single earthquake in fiction is the hypothetical \"Big One\" expected of California's San Andreas Fault someday, as depicted in the novels Richter 10 (1996), Goodbye California (1977), 2012 (2009) and San Andreas (2015) among other works. Jacob M. Appel's widely anthologized short story, A Comparative Seismology, features a con artist who convinces an elderly woman that an apocalyptic earthquake is imminent.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Contemporary depictions of earthquakes in film are variable in the manner in which they reflect human psychological reactions to the actual trauma that can be caused to directly afflicted families and their loved ones. Disaster mental health response research emphasizes the need to be aware of the different roles of loss of family and key community members, loss of home and familiar surroundings, and loss of essential supplies and services to maintain survival. Particularly for children, the clear availability of caregiving adults who can protect, nourish, and clothe them in the aftermath of the earthquake, and to help them make sense of what has befallen them has been shown even more important to their emotional and physical health than the simple giving of provisions. As was observed after other disasters involving destruction and loss of life and their media depictions, recently observed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake, it is also important not to pathologize the reactions to loss and displacement or disruption of governmental administration and services, but rather to validate these reactions, to support constructive problem-solving and reflection as to how one might improve the conditions of those affected.",
"title": "In culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Phenomena similar to earthquakes have been observed in other planets (e.g., marsquakes on Mars) and on the Moon (see moonquakes).",
"title": "Outside of earth"
}
]
| An earthquake – also called a quake, tremor, or temblor – is the shaking of the surface of Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those that are so weak that they cannot be felt, to those violent enough to propel objects and people into the air, damage critical infrastructure, and wreak destruction across entire cities. The seismic activity of an area is the frequency, type, and size of earthquakes experienced over a particular time. The seismicity at a particular location in the Earth is the average rate of seismic energy release per unit volume. The word tremor is also used for non-earthquake seismic rumbling. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and displacing or disrupting the ground. When the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides. In its most general sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event—whether natural or caused by humans—that generates seismic waves. Earthquakes are caused mostly by the rupture of geological faults but also by other events such as volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, fracking and nuclear tests. An earthquake's point of initial rupture is called its hypocenter or focus. The epicenter is the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter. | 2001-11-21T10:07:34Z | 2023-12-29T18:49:19Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake |
10,110 | Emperor of Japan | The Emperor of Japan or Tennō (天皇, pronounced [tennoꜜː]), literally "ruler of heaven" or "heavenly sovereign", is the hereditary monarch and head of state of Japan. The emperor is defined by the Constitution of Japan as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, his position deriving from "the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power". The Imperial Household Law governs the line of imperial succession. Pursuant to his constitutional role as a national symbol, and in accordance with rulings by the Supreme Court of Japan, the emperor is personally immune from prosecution. By virtue of his position as the head of the Imperial House, the emperor is also recognized as the head of the Shinto religion, which holds him to be the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. According to tradition, the office of emperor was created in the 7th century BC, but modern scholars believe that the first emperors did not appear until the 5th or 6th centuries AD.
The role of the emperor of Japan has historically alternated between a largely ceremonial symbolic role and that of an actual imperial ruler. Since the establishment of the first shogunate in 1192, the emperors of Japan have rarely taken on a role as supreme battlefield commander, unlike many Western monarchs. Japanese emperors have nearly always been controlled by external political forces, to varying degrees. For example, between 1192 and 1867, the shōguns, or their shikken regents in Kamakura (1203–1333), were the de facto rulers of Japan, although they were nominally appointed by the emperor. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the emperor was the embodiment of all sovereign power in the realm, as enshrined in the Meiji Constitution of 1889. Since the enactment of the 1947 constitution, the role of emperor has been relegated to that of a ceremonial head of state without even nominal political powers. For example, the emperor is the head of the Japanese honors system, conferring orders, decorations, medals, and awards in the name of the state and on behalf of its people in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, the emperor and other members of the imperial family have resided at the Imperial Palace, located on the former site of Edo Castle in the heart of Tokyo, the current capital of Japan. Earlier, emperors resided in Kyoto, the ancient capital, for nearly eleven centuries. The Emperor's Birthday (currently 23 February) is a national holiday.
Naruhito is the current emperor of Japan. He acceded to the Chrysanthemum Throne upon the abdication of his father, Emperor Akihito, on 1 May 2019. He is the only remaining monarch and head of state in the world who holds the title of Emperor.
Most constitutional monarchies formally vest executive power in the reigning monarch in their capacity as the head of state, who in turn is bound by either convention or statute to act on the advice of ministers responsible to the duly elected parliament. Some monarchies, such as those in Belgium, Denmark, Spain and Thailand, codify this principle by requiring royal acts to be countersigned by a minister in order to take effect, thus passing political responsibility to the minister. By contrast, Japan is one of only two such sovereign states where the monarch is not even the nominal chief executive; the other is Sweden. Rather, Article 65 of the Constitution of Japan explicitly vests executive authority in the Cabinet, of which the prime minister is the leader. The emperor is also not the commander-in-chief of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Instead, the Japan Self-Defense Forces Act of 1954 explicitly vests supreme command and control in the prime minister. Nevertheless, the emperor remains Japan’s internationally recognized head of state.
The emperor’s fundamental role within the machinery of the Japanese constitution is to perform important representational functions as “…the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power.” He is limited to performing "acts in matters of state" as delineated by the Constitution, without even nominal powers related to government. Moreover, said acts are only exercised in accordance with the binding advice and consent of the Cabinet, which is collectively responsible to the Diet and thence to the electorate. In these respects, the emperor personifies the democratic state, sanctions legitimate authority, guarantees the execution of the public will, and fosters a shared national identity and cultural heritage that transcends party politics. In order to maintain his institutional neutrality as Japan's national symbol, he is barred from making political statements.
It is the emperor’s preeminent constitutional duty to appoint the prime minister as designated by the Diet and the chief justice as designated by the Cabinet. However, the emperor does not have the authority to decline the nominations. The emperor's other responsibilities, laid down in Article 7 of the Constitution, concern the basic functioning of the state. To this end, the emperor, on behalf of the Japanese people:
Regular ceremonies of the emperor with a constitutional basis are the Imperial Investitures (Shinninshiki) in the Tokyo Imperial Palace and the Speech from the Throne ceremony in the House of Councillors in the National Diet Building. The latter ceremony opens ordinary and extra sessions of the Diet. Ordinary sessions are opened each January and also after new elections to the House of Representatives. Extra sessions usually convene in the autumn and are opened then.
The Tennō is regarded as the foremost Shintō priest in terms of religion. This sacred duty dates back to the Niiname-sai (新嘗祭, "tasting of new rice") imperial harvest festival. In this ritual, the emperor presents newly gathered rice to the gods. The celebration is known as Daijōsai (大嘗祭, "Great Tasting") and takes place in the first year after the emperor's accession to the throne. The historical text Nihonshoki, written in the year 720, has the first mention of this ceremony, whose beginnings are believed to date back even further. The event evolved through time to become the Day of Thanksgiving for Labour, a recognized official holiday today.
The office of the emperor is also cultural bearer and steward of tradition and culture. For example the Utakai Hajime is the annual poetry reading competition convened by the emperor. The emperor is supported in this function by the empress and other members of the imperial family, who have honorary patronages of many associations and organisations. They travel extensively throughout the year within the country to uphold these roles.
In sports, the Emperor's Cup (天皇賜杯, Tennō shihai) is given to a number of competitions such as football, judo, volleyball, and the top division yūshō winner of a sumo tournament.
Although the emperor has been a symbol of continuity with the past, the degree of power exercised by the emperor has varied considerably throughout Japanese history.
In the early 7th century, the emperor had begun to be called the "Son of Heaven" (天子, tenshi, or 天子様 tenshi-sama). The title of emperor was borrowed from China, being derived from Chinese characters, and was retroactively applied to the legendary Japanese rulers who reigned before the 7th–8th centuries AD.
According to the traditional account of the Nihon Shoki, Japan was founded by Emperor Jimmu 2682 years ago. However most modern scholars agree to regard Jimmu and the nine first emperors as mythical.
Modern historians generally believe that most early emperors are largely legendary as there is insufficient material available for verification and study of their lives. Emperor Sujin, the 10th emperor, may have been a real historical figure, but his dates vary by hundreds of years. The emperors from Emperor Keikō to Emperor Ingyō (25–453 AD) are considered as perhaps factual. As one strong argument, the reign of Emperor Kinmei (c. 509–571 AD), the 29th emperor, is the first for whom contemporary historiography is able to assign verifiable dates.
Archaeological information about the earliest historical rulers of Japan may be contained in the ancient tombs known as kofun, constructed between the early 3rd century and the early 7th century AD. However, since the Meiji period, the Imperial Household Agency has refused to open the kofun to the public or to archaeologists, citing their desire not to disturb the spirits of the past emperors. Kofun period artefacts were also increasingly crucial in Japan as the Meiji government used them to reinforce their authority. In 2016, the Imperial Household Agency reversed its position and decided to allow researchers to enter some of the kofun with limited time and way.
The growth of the samurai class from the 10th century gradually weakened the power of the imperial family over the realm, leading to a time of instability. Emperors are known to have come into conflict with the reigning shogun from time to time. Some instances, such as Emperor Go-Toba's 1221 rebellion against the Kamakura shogunate and the 1336 Kenmu Restoration under Emperor Go-Daigo, show the power struggle between the Imperial Court in Kyoto and the military governments of Japan.
There have been six non-imperial families who have controlled Japanese emperors: the Soga (530s–645), the Fujiwara (850s–1070), the Taira (1159–1180s), the Minamoto and Kamakura Bakufu (1192–1333), the Ashikaga (1336–1565), and the Tokugawa (1603–1867). However, every shogun from the Minamoto, Ashikaga, and Tokugawa families had to be officially recognized by the emperors, who were still the source of sovereignty, although they could not exercise their powers independently from the shogunate.
During the major part of 1192 to 1867, political sovereignty of the state was exercised by the shōguns or their shikken regents (1203–1333), whose authority was conferred by Imperial warrant. When Portuguese explorers first came into contact with the Japanese (see Nanban period), they described Japanese conditions in analogy, likening the emperor with great symbolic authority, but little political power, to the pope, and the shōgun to secular European rulers (e.g., the Holy Roman emperor). In keeping with the analogy, they even used the term "emperor" in reference to the shōguns and their regents, e.g. in the case of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, whom missionaries called "Emperor Taico-sama" (from Taikō and the honorific sama). A Dutch embassy report used similar terminology in 1691. Empress Go-Sakuramachi was the last ruling empress of Japan and reigned from 1762 to 1771. During the Sakoku period of 1603 to 1868, there was very limited trade between Japan and foreigners. The Dutch were the only westerners who had limited access to Japan.
Emperor Go-Daigo succeeded in 1333 to get back the direct authority directly to the emperor after overthrowing the Kamakura shogunate, with the help of Ashikaga Takauji, a defected Kamakura general. The short three-year period during which the power was directly in the hand of the emperor is called the Kenmu Restoration. The direct ruling of the emperor proved however inefficient and ultimately failed, with Takauji grabbing political power for himself.
In July 1853, Commodore Perry's Black Ships of the US Navy made their first visit to Edo Bay. Japan lacked the military and industrial power to prevent it. Unequal treaties coerced and took advantage of Japan. Consequently, Japan was forcibly opened to foreign trade and the shogunate proved incapable of hindering the "barbarian" interlopers, Emperor Kōmei began to assert himself politically. By the early 1860s, the relationship between the Imperial Court and the shogunate was changing radically. Disaffected domains and rōnin began to rally to the call of sonnō jōi ("revere the emperor, expel the barbarians"). The domains of Satsuma and Chōshū, historic enemies of the Tokugawa, used this turmoil to unite their forces and won an important military victory outside of Kyoto against Tokugawa forces.
On 9 November 1867, the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu formally stepped down to restore Emperor Meiji to nominal full power. The Meiji Constitution was adopted on 11 February 1889. The emperor of Japan became an active ruler with considerable political power over foreign policy and diplomacy which was shared with an elected Imperial Diet. The Japanese subjects gained many rights and duties.
The constitution described the emperor (in Article 4) as: "the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty", and he “exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution". His rights included to sanction and promulgate laws, to execute them and to exercise "supreme command of the Army and the Navy". The liaison conference created in 1893 also made the emperor the leader of the Imperial General Headquarters. On Meiji's death in 1912 and the accession of his son Taishō, who suffered from ill-health and various disabilities, many of these powers were assumed by the Imperial Diet in an era known as the Taishō Democracy.
Emperor Shōwa, known by his personal name as Hirohito in the West, was in power during the Pacific War; he controlled both the sovereign of the state and the imperial forces. The role of the emperor as head of the State Shinto religion was exploited during the war, creating an Imperial cult that led to kamikaze bombers and other manifestations of fanaticism. This in turn led to the requirement in the Potsdam Declaration for the elimination "for all time of the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest".
In State Shinto, the emperor was believed to be an arahitogami (現人神) (manifest kami or incarnation of a deity). Following Japan's surrender, the Allies issued the Shinto Directive separating church and state within Japan. In 1946, Hirohito was forced to proclaim the Humanity Declaration, but the declaration excludes the word arahitogami (現人神), including the unusual word akitsumikami (現御神, living god) instead. As such, some experts doubt whether his divinity was renounced. Jean Herbert said it would be inadmissible to deny his divine origin.
Hirohito was excluded from the postwar Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Scholars dispute the power he had and the role he played during WWII. Hirohito's reign from 1926 until his death in 1989 makes him the longest-lived and longest-reigning historical Japanese emperor, and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in the world.
The Emperor of Japan has never visited Yasukuni Shrine since 1978. Hirohito maintained an official boycott of Yasukuni Shrine after it was revealed to him that Class-A war criminals had secretly been enshrined. The boycott was continued by his successors, Akihito and Naruhito.
By 1979, Emperor Shōwa was the only monarch in the world with the monarchical title "emperor." Emperor Shōwa was the longest-reigning historical monarch in Japanese's history and the world's longest reigning monarch until surpassed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in July 2008.
According to journalist Makoto Inoue of The Nikkei, Emperor Emeritus Akihito wanted to be closer to the people, rather than be treated like a god or robot. Inoue believes that during his reign, he transformed the symbolic role of emperor into a human being. In March 2019, the Mainichi reported 87% thought Akihito fulfilled his role as symbol of the state.
On April 30, 2019, Emperor Akihito abdicated due to health issues. The previous time abdication occurred was Emperor Kōkaku in 1817. Naruhito ascended on May 1, 2019, referred to as Kinjō Tennō.
In 1947 the post-war Constitution of Japan (日本国憲法, Nihonkoku-Kenpō) became law when it received the emperor's assent on 3 November 1946. It provides for a parliamentary system of government and guarantees certain fundamental rights. Under its terms, the emperor of Japan is "the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people" and exercises a purely ceremonial role without the possession of sovereignty. It was drawn up under the Allied occupation that followed World War II and changed Japan's previous Prussian-style Meiji Constitution that granted the emperor theoretically unlimited powers. The liberal constitution was inspired by several European states. Currently, it is a rigid document and the oldest unamended constitution.
Historically, territorial designations are not a requirement for the position of Tennō (emperor). Rather it is the emperor's symbolic and religious power of authority. Since the Kamakura shogunate, the emperor held de jure ownership of the realm. Throughout most of medieval Japan, the shogun's legitimate authority was based on being appointed and receiving the power from the emperor even though the shogun was the de-facto ruler. The emperor was considered a direct descendant of Amaterasu and of utmost importance in the Shinto religion and sentimental traditions. Thus no shogun tried to usurp the emperor, instead they tried to keep the emperor under control and away from politics. However, the emperor still had the power to "control time" via the Japanese Nengō which names eras on calendars after emperors.
During the Kofun period the first central government of the unified state was Yamato in the Kinai region of central Japan. The territory of Japan has changed throughout history. Its largest extent was the Empire of Japan. In 1938 it was 1,984,000 km (800,000 sq mi).
The maximum extent including the home islands and the Japanese colonial empire was 8,510,000 km (3,300,000 sq mi) in 1942. After its defeat in World War II the empire was dismantled. The contemporary territories include the Japanese archipelago and these areas. Regardless of territorial changes the emperor remains the formal head of state of Japan. During most of history, de facto power was with shoguns or prime ministers. The emperor was more like a revered embodiment of divine harmony than the head of an actual governing administration. In Japan, it was more effective for ambitious daimyo (feudal lords) to hold actual power, as such positions were not inherently contradictory to the emperor's position. The shoguns and prime ministers derived their legitimacy from the emperor. The parliamentary government continues a similar coexistence with the emperor.
The first recorded instance of the name Nihon 日本 was between 665 and 703 during the Asuka period. This was several centuries after the start of the current imperial line. The various names of Japan do not affect the status of the emperor as head of state.
The emperors traditionally had an education officer. In recent times, Emperor Taishō had Count Nogi Maresuke, Emperor Shōwa had Marshal-Admiral Marquis Tōgō Heihachirō, and Emperor Akihito had Elizabeth Gray Vining as well as Shinzō Koizumi as their tutors.
Emperors, including his family, had to get an education at Gakushuin University by the Meiji Constitution.
The Japanese language has two words equivalent to the English word "emperor": tennō (天皇, "heavenly sovereign"), which refers exclusively to the emperor of Japan, and kōtei (皇帝), which primarily identifies non-Japanese emperors. Sumeramikoto ("the imperial person") was also used in Old Japanese. Emperors used the term tennō up until the Middle Ages; then, following a period of disuse, again from the 19th century. The weakened power of the emperors led to the title tennō not being used from 1200 to 1840; during this time, living emperors were called shujō (主上) and deceased ones were called in (院). Other titles that were recorded to be in use were kō (皇), tei (帝), ō (王), all meaning "prince" or "emperor", and tenshi (天子), or "child of heaven".
In English, the term mikado (御門 or 帝), literally meaning "the honorable gate" (i.e. the gate of the imperial palace, which indicates the person who lives in and possesses the palace; compare Sublime Porte, an old term for the Ottoman government), was once used (as in The Mikado, a 19th-century operetta), but this term is now obsolete.
Japanese emperors take on a regnal name, which is the common and polite way to refer to the emperor as a person during their reign. Japanese regnal names are more precisely names for a period of time that begins with a historical event, such as the enthronement of an emperor. Since Emperor Meiji, it has been customary to have one era per emperor and to rename each emperor after his death using the name of the era over which he presided. Before Emperor Meiji, the names of the eras were changed more frequently, and the posthumous names of the emperors were chosen differently.
Hirohito was never referred to by his name in Japan. He was given the posthumous name Shōwa Tennō after his death, which is the only name that Japanese speakers currently use when referring to him.
The current emperor on the throne is typically referred to as Tennō Heika (天皇陛下, "His [Imperial] Majesty the Emperor"), Kinjō Heika (今上陛下, "His Current Majesty") or simply Tennō, when speaking Japanese. Emperor Akihito received the title Daijō Tennō (太上天皇, Emperor Emeritus), often shortened to Jōkō (上皇), upon his abdication on 30 April 2019, and is expected to be renamed Heisei Tennō (平成天皇) after his death and will then be referred to exclusively by that name in Japanese.
Originally, the ruler of Japan was known as either 大和大王/大君 (Yamato-ōkimi, "Grand King of Yamato"), 倭王/倭国王 (Wa-ō/Wakoku-ō, "King of Wa", used externally) or 治天下大王 (Ame-no-shita shiroshimesu ōkimi or Sumera no mikoto, "Grand King who rules all under heaven", used internally) in Japanese and Chinese sources before the 7th century. The oldest diplomatic reference to the title 天子 (Tenshi, Emperor or Son of Heaven) can be found in a diplomatic document sent from Empress Suiko to the Sui Dynasty of China in 607. In this document, Empress Suiko introduced herself to Emperor Yang of Sui as 日出處天子 (Hi izurutokoro no tenshi) meaning "Heavenly son of the land where the sun rises". The oldest documented use of the title 天皇 (Tennō, heavenly emperor) appears on a wooden slat, or mokkan, that was unearthed in Asuka-mura, Nara Prefecture in 1998 and dated back to the reign of Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jitō in the 7th century.
Throughout history, Japanese emperors and noblemen appointed a spouse to the position of chief wife, rather than just keeping a harem or an assortment of female attendants.
The Japanese imperial dynasty consistently practiced official polygamy until the Taishō period (1912–1926). Besides his empress, the emperor could take, and nearly always took, several secondary consorts ("concubines") of various hierarchical degrees. Concubines were allowed also to other dynasts (Shinnōke, Ōke). After a decree by Emperor Ichijō (r. 986–1011), some emperors even had two empresses simultaneously (identified by the separate titles kōgō and chūgū). With the help of all this polygamy, the imperial clan could produce more offspring. (Sons by secondary consorts were usually recognized as imperial princes, too, and such a son could be recognized as heir to the throne if the empress did not give birth to an heir.)
Of the eight reigning empresses of Japan, none married or gave birth after ascending the throne. Some of them, being widows, had produced children before their reigns. In the succession, children of the empress were preferred over sons of secondary consorts. Thus it was significant which quarters had preferential opportunities in providing chief wives to imperial princes, i.e. supplying future empresses.
Apparently, the oldest tradition of official marriages within the imperial dynasty involved marriages between dynasty members, even between half-siblings or between uncle and niece. Such marriages were deemed to preserve better the imperial blood; or they aimed at producing children symbolic of a reconciliation between two branches of the imperial dynasty. Daughters of other families remained concubines until Emperor Shōmu (701–706)—in what was specifically reported as the first elevation of its kind—elevated his Fujiwara consort Empress Kōmyō to chief wife.
Japanese monarchs have been, as much as others elsewhere, dependent on making alliances with powerful chiefs and with other monarchs. Many such alliances were sealed by marriages. However, in Japan such marriages soon became incorporated as elements of tradition which controlled the marriages of later generations, though the original practical alliance had lost its real meaning. A repeated pattern saw an imperial son-in-law under the influence of his powerful non-imperial father-in-law.
Beginning from the 7th and 8th centuries, emperors primarily took women of the Fujiwara clan as their highest-ranking wives – the most probable mothers of future monarchs. This was cloaked as a tradition of marriage between heirs of two kami (Shinto deities): descendants of Amaterasu with descendants of the family kami of the Fujiwara. (Originally, the Fujiwara descended from relatively minor nobility, thus their kami is an unremarkable one in the Japanese myth world.) To produce imperial children, heirs of the nation, with two-side descent from the two kami, was regarded as desirable – or at least it suited powerful Fujiwara lords, who thus received preference in the imperial marriage-market. The reality behind such marriages was an alliance between an imperial prince and a Fujiwara lord (his father-in-law or grandfather), the latter with his resources supporting the prince to the throne and most often controlling the government. These arrangements established the tradition of regents (Sesshō and Kampaku), with these positions held only by a Fujiwara sekke lord.
Earlier, the emperors had married women from families of the government-holding Soga lords, and women of the imperial clan, i.e. various-degree cousins and often even their own half-sisters. Several imperial figures of the 5th and 6th centuries such as Prince Shōtoku (574–622) were children of half-sibling couples. Such marriages often served as alliance or succession devices: the Soga lord ensured his domination of a prince who would be put on the throne as a puppet; or a prince ensured the combination of two imperial descents, to strengthen his own and his children's claim to the throne. Marriages were also a means to seal a reconciliation between two imperial branches.
After a couple of centuries, emperors could no longer take anyone from outside such families as a primary wife, no matter what the potential expediency of such a marriage and the power or wealth offered by such a match. Only very rarely did a prince ascend the throne whose mother was not descended from the approved families. The earlier necessity and expediency had mutated into a strict tradition that did not allow for current expediency or necessity, but only prescribed the daughters of a restricted circle of families as eligible brides, because they had produced eligible brides for centuries. Tradition had become more forceful than law.
Fujiwara women often became empresses, while concubines came from less exalted noble families. In the last thousand years, sons of an imperial male and a Fujiwara woman have been preferred in the succession. The five Fujiwara families, Ichijō, Kujō, Nijō, Konoe, and Takatsukasa, functioned as the primary source of imperial brides from the 8th century to the 19th century, even more often than daughters of the imperial clan itself. Fujiwara daughters were thus the usual empresses and mothers of emperors. The Meiji-era Imperial House Law of 1889 made this restriction on brides for the emperor and crown prince explicit. A clause stipulated that daughters of Sekke (the five main branches of the higher Fujiwara) and daughters of the imperial clan itself were primarily acceptable brides. The law was repealed in the aftermath of World War II. In 1959 the future Emperor Akihito became the first crown-prince for over a thousand years to marry a consort from outside the previously eligible circle.
In Japanese mythology, the sacred treasures were bestowed on Ninigi-no-Mikoto, the grandson of the goddess Amaterasu, at the advent of Tenson kōrin. Amaterasu sent him to pacify Japan by bringing the three celestial gifts that are used by the emperor. The account of Ninigi being sent to earth appears in the Nihon Shoki. The Three Sacred Treasures were inherited by successive Japanese emperors, which are the same as or similar to the sacred treasures in mythology. These three gifts signify that the emperor is the descendant of Amaterasu. The three sacred treasures are:
During the succession rite (senso, 践祚), possessing the jewel Yasakani no Magatama, the sword Kusanagi and the mirror Yata no Kagami are a testament of the legitimate serving emperor.
The origins of the Japanese imperial dynasty are obscure, and it bases its position on the claim that it has "reigned since time immemorial". There are no records of any emperor who was not said to have been a descendant of other, yet earlier emperors (万世一系 bansei ikkei). There is suspicion that Emperor Keitai (c. AD 500) may have been an unrelated outsider, though the sources (Kojiki, Nihon-Shoki) state that he was a male-line descendant of Emperor Ōjin. However, his descendants, including his successors, were according to records descended from at least one and probably several imperial princesses of the older lineage.
Millennia ago, the Japanese imperial family developed its own peculiar system of hereditary succession. It has been non-primogenitural, more or less agnatic, based mostly on rotation. Today, Japan uses strict agnatic primogeniture, which was adopted from Prussia, by which Japan was greatly influenced in the 1870s.
The controlling principles and their interaction were apparently very complex and sophisticated, leading to even idiosyncratic outcomes. Some chief principles apparent in the succession have been:
Historically, the succession to the Chrysanthemum Throne has always passed to descendants in male line from the imperial lineage. Generally, they have been males, though over the reign of one hundred monarchs there have been nine women (one pre-historical and eight historical) as emperor on eleven occasions.
Over a thousand years ago, a tradition started that an emperor should ascend relatively young. A dynast who had passed his toddler years was regarded suitable and old enough. Reaching the age of legal majority was not a requirement. Thus, a multitude of Japanese emperors have ascended as children, as young as 6 or 8 years old. The high-priestly duties were deemed possible for a walking child. A reign of around 10 years was regarded a sufficient service. Being a child was apparently a fine property, to better endure tedious duties and to tolerate subjugation to political power-brokers, as well as sometimes to cloak the truly powerful members of the imperial dynasty. Almost all Japanese empresses and dozens of emperors abdicated and lived the rest of their lives in pampered retirement, wielding influence behind the scenes. Several emperors abdicated to their entitled retirement while still in their teens. These traditions show in Japanese folklore, theater, literature, and other forms of culture, where the emperor is usually described or depicted as an adolescent.
Before the Meiji Restoration, Japan had eleven reigns of reigning empresses, all of them daughters of the male line of the Imperial House. None ascended purely as a wife or as a widow of an emperor. Imperial daughters and granddaughters, however, usually ascended the throne as a sort of a "stop gap" measure – if a suitable male was not available or some imperial branches were in rivalry so that a compromise was needed. Over half of Japanese empresses and many emperors abdicated once a suitable male descendant was considered to be old enough to rule (just past toddlerhood, in some cases). Four empresses, Empress Suiko, Empress Kōgyoku (also Empress Saimei), and Empress Jitō, as well as the legendary Empress Jingū, were widows of deceased emperors and princesses of the blood imperial in their own right. One, Empress Genmei, was the widow of a crown prince and a princess of the blood imperial. The other four, Empress Genshō, Empress Kōken (also Empress Shōtoku), Empress Meishō, and Empress Go-Sakuramachi, were unwed daughters of previous emperors. None of these empresses married or gave birth after ascending the throne.
Article 2 of the Meiji Constitution (the Constitution of the Empire of Japan) stated, "The Imperial Throne shall be succeeded to by imperial male descendants, according to the provisions of the Imperial House Law." The 1889 Imperial Household Law fixed the succession on male descendants of the imperial line, and specifically excluded female descendants from the succession. In the event of a complete failure of the main line, the throne would pass to the nearest collateral branch, again in the male line. If the empress did not give birth to an heir, the emperor could take a concubine, and the son he had by that concubine would be recognized as heir to the throne. This law, which was promulgated on the same day as the Meiji Constitution, enjoyed co-equal status with that constitution.
Article 2 of the Constitution of Japan, promulgated in 1947 by influence of the U.S. occupation administration, provides that "The Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial Household Law passed by the Diet." The Imperial Household Law of 1947, enacted by the ninety-second and last session of the Imperial Diet, retained the exclusion on female dynasts found in the 1889 law. The government of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru hastily cobbled together the legislation to bring the Imperial Household in compliance with the American-written Constitution of Japan that went into effect in May 1947. In an effort to control the size of the imperial family, the law stipulates that only legitimate male descendants in the male line can be dynasts, that imperial princesses lose their status as imperial family members if they marry outside the imperial family, and that the emperor and other members of the Imperial Family may not adopt children. It also prevented branches, other than the branch descending from Taishō, from being imperial princes any longer.
Succession is now regulated by laws passed by the National Diet. The current law excludes women from the succession. A change to this law had been considered until Princess Kiko gave birth to Prince Hisahito.
Until the birth of Hisahito, son of Prince Akishino, on September 6, 2006, there was a potential succession problem, since Prince Akishino was the only male child to be born into the imperial family since 1965. Following the birth of Princess Aiko, there was public debate about amending the current Imperial Household Law to allow women to succeed to the throne. In January 2005, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appointed a special panel composed of judges, university professors, and civil servants to study changes to the Imperial Household Law and to make recommendations to the government.
The panel dealing with the succession issue recommended on October 25, 2005, amending the law to allow females of the male line of imperial descent to ascend the Japanese throne. On January 20, 2006, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi devoted part of his annual keynote speech to the controversy, pledging to submit a bill allowing women to ascend the throne to ensure that the succession continues in the future in a stable manner. Shortly after the announcement that Princess Kiko was pregnant with her third child, Koizumi suspended such plans. Her son, Prince Hisahito, is the third in line to the throne under the current law of succession. On January 3, 2007, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced that he would drop the proposal to alter the Imperial Household Law.
Another proposed plan is to allow unmarried men from the abolished collateral branches of the imperial family to rejoin through adoption or marriage. This would be an emergency measure to ensure stable succession. It does not revise the Imperial Household Law. This does not restore the royalty of the 11 collateral branches of the Imperial House that were abolished in October 1947.
Crown Prince Akishino was formally declared first in line to the chrysanthemum throne on November 8, 2020.
During the Kofun period, so-called "archaic funerals" were held for the dead emperors, but only the funerary rites from the end of the period, which the chronicles describe in more detail, are known. They were centered around the rite of the mogari (殯), a provisional depository between death and permanent burial.
Empress Jitō was the first Japanese imperial personage to be cremated (in 703). After that, with a few exceptions, all emperors were cremated up to the Edo period. For the next 350 years, in-ground burial became the favoured funeral custom. Until 1912, the emperors were usually buried in Kyoto. From Emperor Taishō onward, the emperors have been buried at the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in Tokyo.
In 2013, the Imperial Household Agency announced that Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko would be cremated after they die.
Until the end of World War II, the Japanese monarchy was thought to be among the wealthiest in the world. Before 1911, no distinction was made between the imperial crown estates and the emperor's personal properties, which were considerable. The Imperial Property Law, which came into effect in January 1911, established two categories of imperial properties: the hereditary or crown estates and the personal ("ordinary") properties of the imperial family. The Imperial Household Minister was given the responsibility for observing any judicial proceedings concerning imperial holdings. Under the terms of the law, imperial properties were only taxable in cases where no conflict with the Imperial House Law existed; however, crown estates could only be used for public or imperially-sanctioned undertakings. Personal properties of certain members of the imperial family, in addition to properties held for imperial family members who were minors, were exempted from taxation. Those family members included the Empress Dowager, the Empress, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the Imperial Grandson and the consort of the Imperial Grandson. As a result of the poor economic conditions in Japan, 289,259.25 acres of crown lands (about 26% of the total landholdings) were either sold or transferred to government and private-sector interests in 1921. In 1930, the Nagoya Detached Palace (Nagoya Castle) was donated to the city of Nagoya, with six other imperial villas being either sold or donated at the same time. In 1939, Nijō Castle, the former Kyoto residence of the Tokugawa shoguns and an imperial palace since the Meiji Restoration, was likewise donated to the city of Kyoto.
At the end of 1935, according to official government figures, the Imperial Court owned roughly 3,111,965 acres of landed estates, the bulk of which (2,599,548 acres) were the emperor's private lands, with the total acreage of the crown estates amounting to some 512,161 acres; those landholdings comprised palace complexes, forest and farm lands and other residential and commercial properties. The total value of the imperial properties was then estimated at ¥650 million, or roughly US$195 million at prevailing exchange rates. This was in addition to the emperor's personal fortune, which amounted to hundreds of millions of yen and included numerous family heirlooms and furnishings, purebred livestock and investments in major Japanese firms, such as the Bank of Japan, other major Japanese banks, the Imperial Hotel and Nippon Yusen.
Following Japan's defeat in the Second World War, all of the collateral branches of the imperial family were abolished under the Allied occupation of the country and the subsequent constitutional reforms, forcing those families to sell their assets to private or government owners. Staff numbers in the imperial households were slashed from a peak of roughly 6,000 to about 1,000. The imperial estates and the emperor's personal fortune (then estimated at US$17.15 million, or roughly US$625 million in 2017 terms) were transferred to either state or private ownership, excepting 6,810 acres of landholdings. Since the 1947 constitutional reforms, the imperial family has been supported by an official civil list sanctioned by the Japanese government. The largest imperial divestments were the former imperial Kiso and Amagi forest lands in Gifu and Shizuoka prefectures, grazing lands for livestock in Hokkaido and a stock farm in the Chiba region, all of which were transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Imperial property holdings have been further reduced since 1947 after several handovers to the government. Today, the primary imperial properties include the two imperial palaces at Tokyo and Kyoto, several imperial villas and a number of imperial farms and game preserves.
As of 2017, Akihito has an estimated net worth of US$40 million. The wealth and expenditures of the emperor and the imperial family have remained a subject of speculation and were largely withheld from the public until 2003, when Mori Yohei, a former royal correspondent for the Mainichi Shimbun, obtained access to 200 documents through a recently passed public information law. Mori's findings, which he published in a book, revealed details of the imperial family's US$240 million civil list (in 2003 values). Among other details, the book revealed the imperial family employed a staff of over 1,000 people. The total cost of events related to the enthronement of Emperor Naruhito was approximately 16.6 billion yen ($150 million) in 2019. This is 30% higher than Emperor Emeritus Akihito's accession (1990). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Emperor of Japan or Tennō (天皇, pronounced [tennoꜜː]), literally \"ruler of heaven\" or \"heavenly sovereign\", is the hereditary monarch and head of state of Japan. The emperor is defined by the Constitution of Japan as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, his position deriving from \"the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power\". The Imperial Household Law governs the line of imperial succession. Pursuant to his constitutional role as a national symbol, and in accordance with rulings by the Supreme Court of Japan, the emperor is personally immune from prosecution. By virtue of his position as the head of the Imperial House, the emperor is also recognized as the head of the Shinto religion, which holds him to be the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. According to tradition, the office of emperor was created in the 7th century BC, but modern scholars believe that the first emperors did not appear until the 5th or 6th centuries AD.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The role of the emperor of Japan has historically alternated between a largely ceremonial symbolic role and that of an actual imperial ruler. Since the establishment of the first shogunate in 1192, the emperors of Japan have rarely taken on a role as supreme battlefield commander, unlike many Western monarchs. Japanese emperors have nearly always been controlled by external political forces, to varying degrees. For example, between 1192 and 1867, the shōguns, or their shikken regents in Kamakura (1203–1333), were the de facto rulers of Japan, although they were nominally appointed by the emperor. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the emperor was the embodiment of all sovereign power in the realm, as enshrined in the Meiji Constitution of 1889. Since the enactment of the 1947 constitution, the role of emperor has been relegated to that of a ceremonial head of state without even nominal political powers. For example, the emperor is the head of the Japanese honors system, conferring orders, decorations, medals, and awards in the name of the state and on behalf of its people in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Since the mid-nineteenth century, the emperor and other members of the imperial family have resided at the Imperial Palace, located on the former site of Edo Castle in the heart of Tokyo, the current capital of Japan. Earlier, emperors resided in Kyoto, the ancient capital, for nearly eleven centuries. The Emperor's Birthday (currently 23 February) is a national holiday.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Naruhito is the current emperor of Japan. He acceded to the Chrysanthemum Throne upon the abdication of his father, Emperor Akihito, on 1 May 2019. He is the only remaining monarch and head of state in the world who holds the title of Emperor.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Most constitutional monarchies formally vest executive power in the reigning monarch in their capacity as the head of state, who in turn is bound by either convention or statute to act on the advice of ministers responsible to the duly elected parliament. Some monarchies, such as those in Belgium, Denmark, Spain and Thailand, codify this principle by requiring royal acts to be countersigned by a minister in order to take effect, thus passing political responsibility to the minister. By contrast, Japan is one of only two such sovereign states where the monarch is not even the nominal chief executive; the other is Sweden. Rather, Article 65 of the Constitution of Japan explicitly vests executive authority in the Cabinet, of which the prime minister is the leader. The emperor is also not the commander-in-chief of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Instead, the Japan Self-Defense Forces Act of 1954 explicitly vests supreme command and control in the prime minister. Nevertheless, the emperor remains Japan’s internationally recognized head of state.",
"title": "Constitutional role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The emperor’s fundamental role within the machinery of the Japanese constitution is to perform important representational functions as “…the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power.” He is limited to performing \"acts in matters of state\" as delineated by the Constitution, without even nominal powers related to government. Moreover, said acts are only exercised in accordance with the binding advice and consent of the Cabinet, which is collectively responsible to the Diet and thence to the electorate. In these respects, the emperor personifies the democratic state, sanctions legitimate authority, guarantees the execution of the public will, and fosters a shared national identity and cultural heritage that transcends party politics. In order to maintain his institutional neutrality as Japan's national symbol, he is barred from making political statements.",
"title": "Constitutional role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "It is the emperor’s preeminent constitutional duty to appoint the prime minister as designated by the Diet and the chief justice as designated by the Cabinet. However, the emperor does not have the authority to decline the nominations. The emperor's other responsibilities, laid down in Article 7 of the Constitution, concern the basic functioning of the state. To this end, the emperor, on behalf of the Japanese people:",
"title": "Constitutional role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Regular ceremonies of the emperor with a constitutional basis are the Imperial Investitures (Shinninshiki) in the Tokyo Imperial Palace and the Speech from the Throne ceremony in the House of Councillors in the National Diet Building. The latter ceremony opens ordinary and extra sessions of the Diet. Ordinary sessions are opened each January and also after new elections to the House of Representatives. Extra sessions usually convene in the autumn and are opened then.",
"title": "Constitutional role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Tennō is regarded as the foremost Shintō priest in terms of religion. This sacred duty dates back to the Niiname-sai (新嘗祭, \"tasting of new rice\") imperial harvest festival. In this ritual, the emperor presents newly gathered rice to the gods. The celebration is known as Daijōsai (大嘗祭, \"Great Tasting\") and takes place in the first year after the emperor's accession to the throne. The historical text Nihonshoki, written in the year 720, has the first mention of this ceremony, whose beginnings are believed to date back even further. The event evolved through time to become the Day of Thanksgiving for Labour, a recognized official holiday today.",
"title": "Cultural role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The office of the emperor is also cultural bearer and steward of tradition and culture. For example the Utakai Hajime is the annual poetry reading competition convened by the emperor. The emperor is supported in this function by the empress and other members of the imperial family, who have honorary patronages of many associations and organisations. They travel extensively throughout the year within the country to uphold these roles.",
"title": "Cultural role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In sports, the Emperor's Cup (天皇賜杯, Tennō shihai) is given to a number of competitions such as football, judo, volleyball, and the top division yūshō winner of a sumo tournament.",
"title": "Cultural role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Although the emperor has been a symbol of continuity with the past, the degree of power exercised by the emperor has varied considerably throughout Japanese history.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In the early 7th century, the emperor had begun to be called the \"Son of Heaven\" (天子, tenshi, or 天子様 tenshi-sama). The title of emperor was borrowed from China, being derived from Chinese characters, and was retroactively applied to the legendary Japanese rulers who reigned before the 7th–8th centuries AD.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "According to the traditional account of the Nihon Shoki, Japan was founded by Emperor Jimmu 2682 years ago. However most modern scholars agree to regard Jimmu and the nine first emperors as mythical.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Modern historians generally believe that most early emperors are largely legendary as there is insufficient material available for verification and study of their lives. Emperor Sujin, the 10th emperor, may have been a real historical figure, but his dates vary by hundreds of years. The emperors from Emperor Keikō to Emperor Ingyō (25–453 AD) are considered as perhaps factual. As one strong argument, the reign of Emperor Kinmei (c. 509–571 AD), the 29th emperor, is the first for whom contemporary historiography is able to assign verifiable dates.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Archaeological information about the earliest historical rulers of Japan may be contained in the ancient tombs known as kofun, constructed between the early 3rd century and the early 7th century AD. However, since the Meiji period, the Imperial Household Agency has refused to open the kofun to the public or to archaeologists, citing their desire not to disturb the spirits of the past emperors. Kofun period artefacts were also increasingly crucial in Japan as the Meiji government used them to reinforce their authority. In 2016, the Imperial Household Agency reversed its position and decided to allow researchers to enter some of the kofun with limited time and way.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The growth of the samurai class from the 10th century gradually weakened the power of the imperial family over the realm, leading to a time of instability. Emperors are known to have come into conflict with the reigning shogun from time to time. Some instances, such as Emperor Go-Toba's 1221 rebellion against the Kamakura shogunate and the 1336 Kenmu Restoration under Emperor Go-Daigo, show the power struggle between the Imperial Court in Kyoto and the military governments of Japan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There have been six non-imperial families who have controlled Japanese emperors: the Soga (530s–645), the Fujiwara (850s–1070), the Taira (1159–1180s), the Minamoto and Kamakura Bakufu (1192–1333), the Ashikaga (1336–1565), and the Tokugawa (1603–1867). However, every shogun from the Minamoto, Ashikaga, and Tokugawa families had to be officially recognized by the emperors, who were still the source of sovereignty, although they could not exercise their powers independently from the shogunate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "During the major part of 1192 to 1867, political sovereignty of the state was exercised by the shōguns or their shikken regents (1203–1333), whose authority was conferred by Imperial warrant. When Portuguese explorers first came into contact with the Japanese (see Nanban period), they described Japanese conditions in analogy, likening the emperor with great symbolic authority, but little political power, to the pope, and the shōgun to secular European rulers (e.g., the Holy Roman emperor). In keeping with the analogy, they even used the term \"emperor\" in reference to the shōguns and their regents, e.g. in the case of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, whom missionaries called \"Emperor Taico-sama\" (from Taikō and the honorific sama). A Dutch embassy report used similar terminology in 1691. Empress Go-Sakuramachi was the last ruling empress of Japan and reigned from 1762 to 1771. During the Sakoku period of 1603 to 1868, there was very limited trade between Japan and foreigners. The Dutch were the only westerners who had limited access to Japan.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Emperor Go-Daigo succeeded in 1333 to get back the direct authority directly to the emperor after overthrowing the Kamakura shogunate, with the help of Ashikaga Takauji, a defected Kamakura general. The short three-year period during which the power was directly in the hand of the emperor is called the Kenmu Restoration. The direct ruling of the emperor proved however inefficient and ultimately failed, with Takauji grabbing political power for himself.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In July 1853, Commodore Perry's Black Ships of the US Navy made their first visit to Edo Bay. Japan lacked the military and industrial power to prevent it. Unequal treaties coerced and took advantage of Japan. Consequently, Japan was forcibly opened to foreign trade and the shogunate proved incapable of hindering the \"barbarian\" interlopers, Emperor Kōmei began to assert himself politically. By the early 1860s, the relationship between the Imperial Court and the shogunate was changing radically. Disaffected domains and rōnin began to rally to the call of sonnō jōi (\"revere the emperor, expel the barbarians\"). The domains of Satsuma and Chōshū, historic enemies of the Tokugawa, used this turmoil to unite their forces and won an important military victory outside of Kyoto against Tokugawa forces.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On 9 November 1867, the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu formally stepped down to restore Emperor Meiji to nominal full power. The Meiji Constitution was adopted on 11 February 1889. The emperor of Japan became an active ruler with considerable political power over foreign policy and diplomacy which was shared with an elected Imperial Diet. The Japanese subjects gained many rights and duties.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The constitution described the emperor (in Article 4) as: \"the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty\", and he “exercises them, according to the provisions of the present Constitution\". His rights included to sanction and promulgate laws, to execute them and to exercise \"supreme command of the Army and the Navy\". The liaison conference created in 1893 also made the emperor the leader of the Imperial General Headquarters. On Meiji's death in 1912 and the accession of his son Taishō, who suffered from ill-health and various disabilities, many of these powers were assumed by the Imperial Diet in an era known as the Taishō Democracy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Emperor Shōwa, known by his personal name as Hirohito in the West, was in power during the Pacific War; he controlled both the sovereign of the state and the imperial forces. The role of the emperor as head of the State Shinto religion was exploited during the war, creating an Imperial cult that led to kamikaze bombers and other manifestations of fanaticism. This in turn led to the requirement in the Potsdam Declaration for the elimination \"for all time of the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In State Shinto, the emperor was believed to be an arahitogami (現人神) (manifest kami or incarnation of a deity). Following Japan's surrender, the Allies issued the Shinto Directive separating church and state within Japan. In 1946, Hirohito was forced to proclaim the Humanity Declaration, but the declaration excludes the word arahitogami (現人神), including the unusual word akitsumikami (現御神, living god) instead. As such, some experts doubt whether his divinity was renounced. Jean Herbert said it would be inadmissible to deny his divine origin.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Hirohito was excluded from the postwar Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Scholars dispute the power he had and the role he played during WWII. Hirohito's reign from 1926 until his death in 1989 makes him the longest-lived and longest-reigning historical Japanese emperor, and one of the longest-reigning monarchs in the world.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Emperor of Japan has never visited Yasukuni Shrine since 1978. Hirohito maintained an official boycott of Yasukuni Shrine after it was revealed to him that Class-A war criminals had secretly been enshrined. The boycott was continued by his successors, Akihito and Naruhito.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "By 1979, Emperor Shōwa was the only monarch in the world with the monarchical title \"emperor.\" Emperor Shōwa was the longest-reigning historical monarch in Japanese's history and the world's longest reigning monarch until surpassed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand in July 2008.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "According to journalist Makoto Inoue of The Nikkei, Emperor Emeritus Akihito wanted to be closer to the people, rather than be treated like a god or robot. Inoue believes that during his reign, he transformed the symbolic role of emperor into a human being. In March 2019, the Mainichi reported 87% thought Akihito fulfilled his role as symbol of the state.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "On April 30, 2019, Emperor Akihito abdicated due to health issues. The previous time abdication occurred was Emperor Kōkaku in 1817. Naruhito ascended on May 1, 2019, referred to as Kinjō Tennō.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1947 the post-war Constitution of Japan (日本国憲法, Nihonkoku-Kenpō) became law when it received the emperor's assent on 3 November 1946. It provides for a parliamentary system of government and guarantees certain fundamental rights. Under its terms, the emperor of Japan is \"the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people\" and exercises a purely ceremonial role without the possession of sovereignty. It was drawn up under the Allied occupation that followed World War II and changed Japan's previous Prussian-style Meiji Constitution that granted the emperor theoretically unlimited powers. The liberal constitution was inspired by several European states. Currently, it is a rigid document and the oldest unamended constitution.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Historically, territorial designations are not a requirement for the position of Tennō (emperor). Rather it is the emperor's symbolic and religious power of authority. Since the Kamakura shogunate, the emperor held de jure ownership of the realm. Throughout most of medieval Japan, the shogun's legitimate authority was based on being appointed and receiving the power from the emperor even though the shogun was the de-facto ruler. The emperor was considered a direct descendant of Amaterasu and of utmost importance in the Shinto religion and sentimental traditions. Thus no shogun tried to usurp the emperor, instead they tried to keep the emperor under control and away from politics. However, the emperor still had the power to \"control time\" via the Japanese Nengō which names eras on calendars after emperors.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "During the Kofun period the first central government of the unified state was Yamato in the Kinai region of central Japan. The territory of Japan has changed throughout history. Its largest extent was the Empire of Japan. In 1938 it was 1,984,000 km (800,000 sq mi).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The maximum extent including the home islands and the Japanese colonial empire was 8,510,000 km (3,300,000 sq mi) in 1942. After its defeat in World War II the empire was dismantled. The contemporary territories include the Japanese archipelago and these areas. Regardless of territorial changes the emperor remains the formal head of state of Japan. During most of history, de facto power was with shoguns or prime ministers. The emperor was more like a revered embodiment of divine harmony than the head of an actual governing administration. In Japan, it was more effective for ambitious daimyo (feudal lords) to hold actual power, as such positions were not inherently contradictory to the emperor's position. The shoguns and prime ministers derived their legitimacy from the emperor. The parliamentary government continues a similar coexistence with the emperor.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The first recorded instance of the name Nihon 日本 was between 665 and 703 during the Asuka period. This was several centuries after the start of the current imperial line. The various names of Japan do not affect the status of the emperor as head of state.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The emperors traditionally had an education officer. In recent times, Emperor Taishō had Count Nogi Maresuke, Emperor Shōwa had Marshal-Admiral Marquis Tōgō Heihachirō, and Emperor Akihito had Elizabeth Gray Vining as well as Shinzō Koizumi as their tutors.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Emperors, including his family, had to get an education at Gakushuin University by the Meiji Constitution.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The Japanese language has two words equivalent to the English word \"emperor\": tennō (天皇, \"heavenly sovereign\"), which refers exclusively to the emperor of Japan, and kōtei (皇帝), which primarily identifies non-Japanese emperors. Sumeramikoto (\"the imperial person\") was also used in Old Japanese. Emperors used the term tennō up until the Middle Ages; then, following a period of disuse, again from the 19th century. The weakened power of the emperors led to the title tennō not being used from 1200 to 1840; during this time, living emperors were called shujō (主上) and deceased ones were called in (院). Other titles that were recorded to be in use were kō (皇), tei (帝), ō (王), all meaning \"prince\" or \"emperor\", and tenshi (天子), or \"child of heaven\".",
"title": "Reference and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In English, the term mikado (御門 or 帝), literally meaning \"the honorable gate\" (i.e. the gate of the imperial palace, which indicates the person who lives in and possesses the palace; compare Sublime Porte, an old term for the Ottoman government), was once used (as in The Mikado, a 19th-century operetta), but this term is now obsolete.",
"title": "Reference and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Japanese emperors take on a regnal name, which is the common and polite way to refer to the emperor as a person during their reign. Japanese regnal names are more precisely names for a period of time that begins with a historical event, such as the enthronement of an emperor. Since Emperor Meiji, it has been customary to have one era per emperor and to rename each emperor after his death using the name of the era over which he presided. Before Emperor Meiji, the names of the eras were changed more frequently, and the posthumous names of the emperors were chosen differently.",
"title": "Reference and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Hirohito was never referred to by his name in Japan. He was given the posthumous name Shōwa Tennō after his death, which is the only name that Japanese speakers currently use when referring to him.",
"title": "Reference and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The current emperor on the throne is typically referred to as Tennō Heika (天皇陛下, \"His [Imperial] Majesty the Emperor\"), Kinjō Heika (今上陛下, \"His Current Majesty\") or simply Tennō, when speaking Japanese. Emperor Akihito received the title Daijō Tennō (太上天皇, Emperor Emeritus), often shortened to Jōkō (上皇), upon his abdication on 30 April 2019, and is expected to be renamed Heisei Tennō (平成天皇) after his death and will then be referred to exclusively by that name in Japanese.",
"title": "Reference and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Originally, the ruler of Japan was known as either 大和大王/大君 (Yamato-ōkimi, \"Grand King of Yamato\"), 倭王/倭国王 (Wa-ō/Wakoku-ō, \"King of Wa\", used externally) or 治天下大王 (Ame-no-shita shiroshimesu ōkimi or Sumera no mikoto, \"Grand King who rules all under heaven\", used internally) in Japanese and Chinese sources before the 7th century. The oldest diplomatic reference to the title 天子 (Tenshi, Emperor or Son of Heaven) can be found in a diplomatic document sent from Empress Suiko to the Sui Dynasty of China in 607. In this document, Empress Suiko introduced herself to Emperor Yang of Sui as 日出處天子 (Hi izurutokoro no tenshi) meaning \"Heavenly son of the land where the sun rises\". The oldest documented use of the title 天皇 (Tennō, heavenly emperor) appears on a wooden slat, or mokkan, that was unearthed in Asuka-mura, Nara Prefecture in 1998 and dated back to the reign of Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jitō in the 7th century.",
"title": "Reference and naming"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Throughout history, Japanese emperors and noblemen appointed a spouse to the position of chief wife, rather than just keeping a harem or an assortment of female attendants.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The Japanese imperial dynasty consistently practiced official polygamy until the Taishō period (1912–1926). Besides his empress, the emperor could take, and nearly always took, several secondary consorts (\"concubines\") of various hierarchical degrees. Concubines were allowed also to other dynasts (Shinnōke, Ōke). After a decree by Emperor Ichijō (r. 986–1011), some emperors even had two empresses simultaneously (identified by the separate titles kōgō and chūgū). With the help of all this polygamy, the imperial clan could produce more offspring. (Sons by secondary consorts were usually recognized as imperial princes, too, and such a son could be recognized as heir to the throne if the empress did not give birth to an heir.)",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Of the eight reigning empresses of Japan, none married or gave birth after ascending the throne. Some of them, being widows, had produced children before their reigns. In the succession, children of the empress were preferred over sons of secondary consorts. Thus it was significant which quarters had preferential opportunities in providing chief wives to imperial princes, i.e. supplying future empresses.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Apparently, the oldest tradition of official marriages within the imperial dynasty involved marriages between dynasty members, even between half-siblings or between uncle and niece. Such marriages were deemed to preserve better the imperial blood; or they aimed at producing children symbolic of a reconciliation between two branches of the imperial dynasty. Daughters of other families remained concubines until Emperor Shōmu (701–706)—in what was specifically reported as the first elevation of its kind—elevated his Fujiwara consort Empress Kōmyō to chief wife.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Japanese monarchs have been, as much as others elsewhere, dependent on making alliances with powerful chiefs and with other monarchs. Many such alliances were sealed by marriages. However, in Japan such marriages soon became incorporated as elements of tradition which controlled the marriages of later generations, though the original practical alliance had lost its real meaning. A repeated pattern saw an imperial son-in-law under the influence of his powerful non-imperial father-in-law.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Beginning from the 7th and 8th centuries, emperors primarily took women of the Fujiwara clan as their highest-ranking wives – the most probable mothers of future monarchs. This was cloaked as a tradition of marriage between heirs of two kami (Shinto deities): descendants of Amaterasu with descendants of the family kami of the Fujiwara. (Originally, the Fujiwara descended from relatively minor nobility, thus their kami is an unremarkable one in the Japanese myth world.) To produce imperial children, heirs of the nation, with two-side descent from the two kami, was regarded as desirable – or at least it suited powerful Fujiwara lords, who thus received preference in the imperial marriage-market. The reality behind such marriages was an alliance between an imperial prince and a Fujiwara lord (his father-in-law or grandfather), the latter with his resources supporting the prince to the throne and most often controlling the government. These arrangements established the tradition of regents (Sesshō and Kampaku), with these positions held only by a Fujiwara sekke lord.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Earlier, the emperors had married women from families of the government-holding Soga lords, and women of the imperial clan, i.e. various-degree cousins and often even their own half-sisters. Several imperial figures of the 5th and 6th centuries such as Prince Shōtoku (574–622) were children of half-sibling couples. Such marriages often served as alliance or succession devices: the Soga lord ensured his domination of a prince who would be put on the throne as a puppet; or a prince ensured the combination of two imperial descents, to strengthen his own and his children's claim to the throne. Marriages were also a means to seal a reconciliation between two imperial branches.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "After a couple of centuries, emperors could no longer take anyone from outside such families as a primary wife, no matter what the potential expediency of such a marriage and the power or wealth offered by such a match. Only very rarely did a prince ascend the throne whose mother was not descended from the approved families. The earlier necessity and expediency had mutated into a strict tradition that did not allow for current expediency or necessity, but only prescribed the daughters of a restricted circle of families as eligible brides, because they had produced eligible brides for centuries. Tradition had become more forceful than law.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Fujiwara women often became empresses, while concubines came from less exalted noble families. In the last thousand years, sons of an imperial male and a Fujiwara woman have been preferred in the succession. The five Fujiwara families, Ichijō, Kujō, Nijō, Konoe, and Takatsukasa, functioned as the primary source of imperial brides from the 8th century to the 19th century, even more often than daughters of the imperial clan itself. Fujiwara daughters were thus the usual empresses and mothers of emperors. The Meiji-era Imperial House Law of 1889 made this restriction on brides for the emperor and crown prince explicit. A clause stipulated that daughters of Sekke (the five main branches of the higher Fujiwara) and daughters of the imperial clan itself were primarily acceptable brides. The law was repealed in the aftermath of World War II. In 1959 the future Emperor Akihito became the first crown-prince for over a thousand years to marry a consort from outside the previously eligible circle.",
"title": "Marriage traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In Japanese mythology, the sacred treasures were bestowed on Ninigi-no-Mikoto, the grandson of the goddess Amaterasu, at the advent of Tenson kōrin. Amaterasu sent him to pacify Japan by bringing the three celestial gifts that are used by the emperor. The account of Ninigi being sent to earth appears in the Nihon Shoki. The Three Sacred Treasures were inherited by successive Japanese emperors, which are the same as or similar to the sacred treasures in mythology. These three gifts signify that the emperor is the descendant of Amaterasu. The three sacred treasures are:",
"title": "Three Sacred Treasures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "During the succession rite (senso, 践祚), possessing the jewel Yasakani no Magatama, the sword Kusanagi and the mirror Yata no Kagami are a testament of the legitimate serving emperor.",
"title": "Three Sacred Treasures"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The origins of the Japanese imperial dynasty are obscure, and it bases its position on the claim that it has \"reigned since time immemorial\". There are no records of any emperor who was not said to have been a descendant of other, yet earlier emperors (万世一系 bansei ikkei). There is suspicion that Emperor Keitai (c. AD 500) may have been an unrelated outsider, though the sources (Kojiki, Nihon-Shoki) state that he was a male-line descendant of Emperor Ōjin. However, his descendants, including his successors, were according to records descended from at least one and probably several imperial princesses of the older lineage.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Millennia ago, the Japanese imperial family developed its own peculiar system of hereditary succession. It has been non-primogenitural, more or less agnatic, based mostly on rotation. Today, Japan uses strict agnatic primogeniture, which was adopted from Prussia, by which Japan was greatly influenced in the 1870s.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The controlling principles and their interaction were apparently very complex and sophisticated, leading to even idiosyncratic outcomes. Some chief principles apparent in the succession have been:",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Historically, the succession to the Chrysanthemum Throne has always passed to descendants in male line from the imperial lineage. Generally, they have been males, though over the reign of one hundred monarchs there have been nine women (one pre-historical and eight historical) as emperor on eleven occasions.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Over a thousand years ago, a tradition started that an emperor should ascend relatively young. A dynast who had passed his toddler years was regarded suitable and old enough. Reaching the age of legal majority was not a requirement. Thus, a multitude of Japanese emperors have ascended as children, as young as 6 or 8 years old. The high-priestly duties were deemed possible for a walking child. A reign of around 10 years was regarded a sufficient service. Being a child was apparently a fine property, to better endure tedious duties and to tolerate subjugation to political power-brokers, as well as sometimes to cloak the truly powerful members of the imperial dynasty. Almost all Japanese empresses and dozens of emperors abdicated and lived the rest of their lives in pampered retirement, wielding influence behind the scenes. Several emperors abdicated to their entitled retirement while still in their teens. These traditions show in Japanese folklore, theater, literature, and other forms of culture, where the emperor is usually described or depicted as an adolescent.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Before the Meiji Restoration, Japan had eleven reigns of reigning empresses, all of them daughters of the male line of the Imperial House. None ascended purely as a wife or as a widow of an emperor. Imperial daughters and granddaughters, however, usually ascended the throne as a sort of a \"stop gap\" measure – if a suitable male was not available or some imperial branches were in rivalry so that a compromise was needed. Over half of Japanese empresses and many emperors abdicated once a suitable male descendant was considered to be old enough to rule (just past toddlerhood, in some cases). Four empresses, Empress Suiko, Empress Kōgyoku (also Empress Saimei), and Empress Jitō, as well as the legendary Empress Jingū, were widows of deceased emperors and princesses of the blood imperial in their own right. One, Empress Genmei, was the widow of a crown prince and a princess of the blood imperial. The other four, Empress Genshō, Empress Kōken (also Empress Shōtoku), Empress Meishō, and Empress Go-Sakuramachi, were unwed daughters of previous emperors. None of these empresses married or gave birth after ascending the throne.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Article 2 of the Meiji Constitution (the Constitution of the Empire of Japan) stated, \"The Imperial Throne shall be succeeded to by imperial male descendants, according to the provisions of the Imperial House Law.\" The 1889 Imperial Household Law fixed the succession on male descendants of the imperial line, and specifically excluded female descendants from the succession. In the event of a complete failure of the main line, the throne would pass to the nearest collateral branch, again in the male line. If the empress did not give birth to an heir, the emperor could take a concubine, and the son he had by that concubine would be recognized as heir to the throne. This law, which was promulgated on the same day as the Meiji Constitution, enjoyed co-equal status with that constitution.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Article 2 of the Constitution of Japan, promulgated in 1947 by influence of the U.S. occupation administration, provides that \"The Imperial Throne shall be dynastic and succeeded to in accordance with the Imperial Household Law passed by the Diet.\" The Imperial Household Law of 1947, enacted by the ninety-second and last session of the Imperial Diet, retained the exclusion on female dynasts found in the 1889 law. The government of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru hastily cobbled together the legislation to bring the Imperial Household in compliance with the American-written Constitution of Japan that went into effect in May 1947. In an effort to control the size of the imperial family, the law stipulates that only legitimate male descendants in the male line can be dynasts, that imperial princesses lose their status as imperial family members if they marry outside the imperial family, and that the emperor and other members of the Imperial Family may not adopt children. It also prevented branches, other than the branch descending from Taishō, from being imperial princes any longer.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Succession is now regulated by laws passed by the National Diet. The current law excludes women from the succession. A change to this law had been considered until Princess Kiko gave birth to Prince Hisahito.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Until the birth of Hisahito, son of Prince Akishino, on September 6, 2006, there was a potential succession problem, since Prince Akishino was the only male child to be born into the imperial family since 1965. Following the birth of Princess Aiko, there was public debate about amending the current Imperial Household Law to allow women to succeed to the throne. In January 2005, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appointed a special panel composed of judges, university professors, and civil servants to study changes to the Imperial Household Law and to make recommendations to the government.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The panel dealing with the succession issue recommended on October 25, 2005, amending the law to allow females of the male line of imperial descent to ascend the Japanese throne. On January 20, 2006, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi devoted part of his annual keynote speech to the controversy, pledging to submit a bill allowing women to ascend the throne to ensure that the succession continues in the future in a stable manner. Shortly after the announcement that Princess Kiko was pregnant with her third child, Koizumi suspended such plans. Her son, Prince Hisahito, is the third in line to the throne under the current law of succession. On January 3, 2007, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced that he would drop the proposal to alter the Imperial Household Law.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Another proposed plan is to allow unmarried men from the abolished collateral branches of the imperial family to rejoin through adoption or marriage. This would be an emergency measure to ensure stable succession. It does not revise the Imperial Household Law. This does not restore the royalty of the 11 collateral branches of the Imperial House that were abolished in October 1947.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Crown Prince Akishino was formally declared first in line to the chrysanthemum throne on November 8, 2020.",
"title": "Succession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "During the Kofun period, so-called \"archaic funerals\" were held for the dead emperors, but only the funerary rites from the end of the period, which the chronicles describe in more detail, are known. They were centered around the rite of the mogari (殯), a provisional depository between death and permanent burial.",
"title": "Burial traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Empress Jitō was the first Japanese imperial personage to be cremated (in 703). After that, with a few exceptions, all emperors were cremated up to the Edo period. For the next 350 years, in-ground burial became the favoured funeral custom. Until 1912, the emperors were usually buried in Kyoto. From Emperor Taishō onward, the emperors have been buried at the Musashi Imperial Graveyard in Tokyo.",
"title": "Burial traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In 2013, the Imperial Household Agency announced that Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko would be cremated after they die.",
"title": "Burial traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Until the end of World War II, the Japanese monarchy was thought to be among the wealthiest in the world. Before 1911, no distinction was made between the imperial crown estates and the emperor's personal properties, which were considerable. The Imperial Property Law, which came into effect in January 1911, established two categories of imperial properties: the hereditary or crown estates and the personal (\"ordinary\") properties of the imperial family. The Imperial Household Minister was given the responsibility for observing any judicial proceedings concerning imperial holdings. Under the terms of the law, imperial properties were only taxable in cases where no conflict with the Imperial House Law existed; however, crown estates could only be used for public or imperially-sanctioned undertakings. Personal properties of certain members of the imperial family, in addition to properties held for imperial family members who were minors, were exempted from taxation. Those family members included the Empress Dowager, the Empress, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, the Imperial Grandson and the consort of the Imperial Grandson. As a result of the poor economic conditions in Japan, 289,259.25 acres of crown lands (about 26% of the total landholdings) were either sold or transferred to government and private-sector interests in 1921. In 1930, the Nagoya Detached Palace (Nagoya Castle) was donated to the city of Nagoya, with six other imperial villas being either sold or donated at the same time. In 1939, Nijō Castle, the former Kyoto residence of the Tokugawa shoguns and an imperial palace since the Meiji Restoration, was likewise donated to the city of Kyoto.",
"title": "Wealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "At the end of 1935, according to official government figures, the Imperial Court owned roughly 3,111,965 acres of landed estates, the bulk of which (2,599,548 acres) were the emperor's private lands, with the total acreage of the crown estates amounting to some 512,161 acres; those landholdings comprised palace complexes, forest and farm lands and other residential and commercial properties. The total value of the imperial properties was then estimated at ¥650 million, or roughly US$195 million at prevailing exchange rates. This was in addition to the emperor's personal fortune, which amounted to hundreds of millions of yen and included numerous family heirlooms and furnishings, purebred livestock and investments in major Japanese firms, such as the Bank of Japan, other major Japanese banks, the Imperial Hotel and Nippon Yusen.",
"title": "Wealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Following Japan's defeat in the Second World War, all of the collateral branches of the imperial family were abolished under the Allied occupation of the country and the subsequent constitutional reforms, forcing those families to sell their assets to private or government owners. Staff numbers in the imperial households were slashed from a peak of roughly 6,000 to about 1,000. The imperial estates and the emperor's personal fortune (then estimated at US$17.15 million, or roughly US$625 million in 2017 terms) were transferred to either state or private ownership, excepting 6,810 acres of landholdings. Since the 1947 constitutional reforms, the imperial family has been supported by an official civil list sanctioned by the Japanese government. The largest imperial divestments were the former imperial Kiso and Amagi forest lands in Gifu and Shizuoka prefectures, grazing lands for livestock in Hokkaido and a stock farm in the Chiba region, all of which were transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Imperial property holdings have been further reduced since 1947 after several handovers to the government. Today, the primary imperial properties include the two imperial palaces at Tokyo and Kyoto, several imperial villas and a number of imperial farms and game preserves.",
"title": "Wealth"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "As of 2017, Akihito has an estimated net worth of US$40 million. The wealth and expenditures of the emperor and the imperial family have remained a subject of speculation and were largely withheld from the public until 2003, when Mori Yohei, a former royal correspondent for the Mainichi Shimbun, obtained access to 200 documents through a recently passed public information law. Mori's findings, which he published in a book, revealed details of the imperial family's US$240 million civil list (in 2003 values). Among other details, the book revealed the imperial family employed a staff of over 1,000 people. The total cost of events related to the enthronement of Emperor Naruhito was approximately 16.6 billion yen ($150 million) in 2019. This is 30% higher than Emperor Emeritus Akihito's accession (1990).",
"title": "Wealth"
}
]
| The Emperor of Japan or, literally "ruler of heaven" or "heavenly sovereign", is the hereditary monarch and head of state of Japan. The emperor is defined by the Constitution of Japan as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, his position deriving from "the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power". The Imperial Household Law governs the line of imperial succession. Pursuant to his constitutional role as a national symbol, and in accordance with rulings by the Supreme Court of Japan, the emperor is personally immune from prosecution. By virtue of his position as the head of the Imperial House, the emperor is also recognized as the head of the Shinto religion, which holds him to be the direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu. According to tradition, the office of emperor was created in the 7th century BC, but modern scholars believe that the first emperors did not appear until the 5th or 6th centuries AD. The role of the emperor of Japan has historically alternated between a largely ceremonial symbolic role and that of an actual imperial ruler. Since the establishment of the first shogunate in 1192, the emperors of Japan have rarely taken on a role as supreme battlefield commander, unlike many Western monarchs. Japanese emperors have nearly always been controlled by external political forces, to varying degrees. For example, between 1192 and 1867, the shōguns, or their shikken regents in Kamakura (1203–1333), were the de facto rulers of Japan, although they were nominally appointed by the emperor. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the emperor was the embodiment of all sovereign power in the realm, as enshrined in the Meiji Constitution of 1889. Since the enactment of the 1947 constitution, the role of emperor has been relegated to that of a ceremonial head of state without even nominal political powers. For example, the emperor is the head of the Japanese honors system, conferring orders, decorations, medals, and awards in the name of the state and on behalf of its people in accordance with the advice of the Cabinet. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the emperor and other members of the imperial family have resided at the Imperial Palace, located on the former site of Edo Castle in the heart of Tokyo, the current capital of Japan. Earlier, emperors resided in Kyoto, the ancient capital, for nearly eleven centuries. The Emperor's Birthday is a national holiday. Naruhito is the current emperor of Japan. He acceded to the Chrysanthemum Throne upon the abdication of his father, Emperor Akihito, on 1 May 2019. He is the only remaining monarch and head of state in the world who holds the title of Emperor. | 2001-11-21T19:02:18Z | 2024-01-01T01:08:44Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_Japan |
10,111 | Emperor | The word emperor (from Latin: imperator, via Old French: empereor) can mean the male absolute ruler of an empire. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules in her own right and name (empress regnant or suo jure). Emperors are generally recognized to be of the highest monarchic honor and rank, surpassing kings. In Europe, the title of Emperor has been used since the Middle Ages, considered in those times equal or almost equal in dignity to that of Pope due to the latter's position as visible head of the Church and spiritual leader of the Catholic part of Western Europe. The emperor of Japan is the only currently reigning monarch whose title is translated into English as "Emperor".
Both emperors and kings are monarchs or sovereigns, but both emperor and empress are considered the higher monarchical titles. In as much as there is a strict definition of emperor, it is that an emperor has no relations implying the superiority of any other ruler and typically rules over more than one nation. Therefore, a king might be obliged to pay tribute to another ruler, or be restrained in his actions in some unequal fashion, but an emperor should in theory be completely free of such restraints. However, monarchs heading empires have not always used the title in all contexts—the British sovereign did not assume the title Empress of the British Empire even during the incorporation of India, though she was declared Empress of India.
In Western Europe, the title of Emperor was used exclusively by the Holy Roman Emperor, whose imperial authority was derived from the concept of translatio imperii, i.e., they claimed succession to the authority of the Roman emperors, thus linking themselves to Roman institutions and traditions as part of state ideology. Although initially ruling much of Central Europe and northern Italy, by the 19th century, the emperor exercised little power beyond the German-speaking states.
Although technically an elective title, by the late 16th century, the imperial title had in practice come to be inherited by the Habsburg Archdukes of Austria and, following the Thirty Years' War, their control over the states (outside the Habsburg monarchy, i.e. Austria, Bohemia and various territories outside the empire) had become nearly non-existent. However, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French in 1804 and was shortly followed by Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, who declared himself Emperor of Austria in the same year. The position of Holy Roman Emperor nonetheless continued until Francis II abdicated that position in 1806. In Eastern Europe, the monarchs of Russia also used translatio imperii to wield imperial authority as successors to the Eastern Roman Empire. Their status was officially recognized by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1514, although not officially used by the Russian monarchs until 1547. However, the Russian emperors are better known by their Russian-language title of Tsar even after Peter the Great adopted the title of Emperor of All Russia in 1721.
Historians have liberally used "emperor" and "empire" anachronistically and out of its Roman and European context to describe any large state from the past or the present. Such pre-Roman titles as Great King or King of Kings, used by the kings of Persia and others, are often considered as the equivalent. Sometimes this reference has even extended to non-monarchically ruled states and their spheres of influence, such as the Athenian Empire of the late 5th century BC, the Angevin Empire of the Plantagenets and the Soviet and American "empires" of the Cold War era. However, such "empires" did not need to be headed by an "emperor". "Empire" became identified instead with vast territorial holdings rather than the title of its ruler by the mid-18th century.
For purposes of protocol, emperors were once given precedence over kings in international diplomatic relations, but currently, precedence among heads of state who are sovereigns—whether they be kings, queens, emperors, empresses, princes, princesses and, to a lesser degree, presidents—is determined by the duration of time that each one has been continuously in office. Outside the European context, "emperor" was the translation given to holders of titles who were accorded the same precedence as European emperors in diplomatic terms. In reciprocity, these rulers might accredit equal titles in their native languages to their European peers. Through centuries of international convention, this has become the dominant rule to identifying an emperor in the modern era.
When Republican Rome turned into a de facto monarchy in the second half of the 1st century BC, at first there was no name for the title of the new type of monarch. Ancient Romans abhorred the name Rex ("king"), and it was critical to the political order to maintain the forms and pretenses of republican rule. Julius Caesar had been Dictator, an acknowledged and traditional office in Republican Rome. Caesar was not the first to hold it, but following his assassination the term was abhorred in Rome.
Augustus, considered the first Roman emperor, established his hegemony by collecting on himself offices, titles, and honours of Republican Rome that had traditionally been distributed to different people, concentrating what had been distributed power in one man. One of these offices was princeps senatus, ("first man of the Senate") and became changed into Augustus' chief honorific, princeps civitatis ("first citizen") from which the modern English word and title prince is descended. The first period of the Roman Empire, from 27 BC to AD 284, is called the principate for this reason. However, it was the informal descriptive of Imperator ("commander") that became the title increasingly favored by his successors. Previously bestowed on high officials and military commanders who had imperium, Augustus reserved it exclusively to himself as the ultimate holder of all imperium. (Imperium is Latin for the authority to command, one of a various types of authority delineated in Roman political thought.)
Beginning with Augustus, Imperator appeared in the title of all Roman monarchs through the extinction of the Empire in 1453. After the reign of Augustus' immediate successor Tiberius, being proclaimed imperator was transformed into the act of accession to the head of state. Other honorifics used by the Roman emperors have also come to be synonyms for Emperor:
After the turbulent Year of the Four Emperors in 69, the Flavian dynasty reigned for three decades. The succeeding Nervan-Antonian dynasty, ruling for most of the 2nd century, stabilised the empire. This epoch became known as the era of the Five Good Emperors, and was followed by the short-lived Severan dynasty.
During the Crisis of the 3rd century, barracks emperors succeeded one another at short intervals. Three short lived secessionist attempts had their own emperors: the Gallic Empire, the Britannic Empire, and the Palmyrene Empire though the latter used rex more regularly.
The Principate (27 BC – 284 AD) period was succeeded by what is known as the Dominate (284 AD – 527 AD), during which Emperor Diocletian tried to put the empire on a more formal footing. Diocletian sought to address the challenges of the Empire's now vast geography and the instability caused by the informality of succession by the creation of co-emperors and junior emperors. At one point, there were as many as five sharers of the imperium (see: Tetrarchy). In 325 AD Constantine I defeated his rivals and restored single emperor rule, but following his death the empire was divided among his sons. For a time the concept was of one empire ruled by multiple emperors with varying territory under their control, however following the death of Theodosius I the rule was divided between his two sons and increasingly became separate entities. The areas administered from Rome are referred to by historians the Western Roman Empire and those under the immediate authority of Constantinople called the Eastern Roman Empire or (after the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 AD) the Later Roman or Byzantine Empire. The subdivisions and co-emperor system were formally abolished by Emperor Zeno in 480 AD following the death of Julius Nepos last Western Emperor and the ascension of Odoacer as the de facto King of Italy in 476 AD.
Historians generally refer to the continuing Roman Empire in the east as the Byzantine Empire after Byzantium, the original name of the town that Constantine I would elevate to the Imperial capital as New Rome in AD 330. (The city is more commonly called Constantinople and is today named Istanbul). Although the empire was again subdivided and a co-emperor sent to Italy at the end of the fourth century, the office became unitary again only 95 years later at the request of the Roman Senate and following the death of Julius Nepos, last Western Emperor. This change was a recognition of the reality that little remained of Imperial authority in the areas that had been the Western Empire, with even Rome and Italy itself now ruled by the essentially autonomous Odoacer.
These Later Roman "Byzantine" emperors completed the transition from the idea of the emperor as a semi-republican official to the emperor as an absolute monarch. Of particular note was the translation of the Latin Imperator into the Greek Basileus, after Emperor Heraclius changed the official language of the empire from Latin to Greek in AD 620. Basileus, a title which had long been used for Alexander the Great was already in common usage as the Greek word for the Roman emperor, but its definition and sense was "King" in Greek, essentially equivalent with the Latin Rex. Byzantine period emperors also used the Greek word "autokrator", meaning "one who rules himself", or "monarch", which was traditionally used by Greek writers to translate the Latin dictator. Essentially, the Greek language did not incorporate the nuances of the Ancient Roman concepts that distinguished imperium from other forms of political power.
In general usage, the Byzantine imperial title evolved from simply "emperor" (basileus) to "emperor of the Romans" (basileus tōn Rōmaiōn) in the 9th century, to "emperor and autocrat of the Romans" (basileus kai autokratōr tōn Rōmaiōn) in the 10th. In fact, none of these (and other) additional epithets and titles had ever been completely discarded.
One important distinction between the post Constantine I (reigned AD 306–337) emperors and their pagan predecessors was cesaropapism, the assertion that the emperor (or other head of state) is also the head of the Church. Although this principle was held by all emperors after Constantine, it met with increasing resistance and ultimately rejection by bishops in the west after the effective end of Imperial power there. This concept became a key element of the meaning of "emperor" in the Byzantine and Orthodox east, but went out of favor in the west with the rise of Roman Catholicism.
The Byzantine Empire also produced three women who effectively governed the state: the Empress Irene and the Empresses Zoe and Theodora.
In 1204 Constantinople fell to the Venetians and the Franks in the Fourth Crusade. Following the tragedy of the horrific sacking of the city, the conquerors declared a new "Empire of Romania", known to historians as the Latin Empire of Constantinople, installing Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, as Emperor. However, Byzantine resistance to the new empire meant that it was in constant struggle to establish itself. Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos succeeded in recapturing Constantinople in 1261. The Principality of Achaea, a vassal state the empire had created in Morea (Greece) intermittently continued to recognize the authority of the crusader emperors for another half century. Pretenders to the title continued among the European nobility until circa 1383.
With Constantinople occupied, claimants to the imperial succession styled themselves as emperor in the chief centers of resistance: The Laskarid dynasty in the Empire of Nicaea, the Komnenid dynasty in the Empire of Trebizond and the Doukid dynasty in the Despotate of Epirus. In 1248, Epirus recognized the Nicaean emperors, who subsequently recaptured Constantinople in 1261. The Trapezuntine emperor formally submitted in Constantinople in 1281, but frequently flouted convention by styling themselves emperor back in Trebizond thereafter.
The Emperor of the Romans' title was a reflection of the translatio imperii (transfer of rule) principle that regarded the Holy Roman emperors as the inheritors of the title of Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, despite the continued existence of the Roman Empire in the east, hence the problem of two emperors.
From the time of Otto the Great onward, much of the former Carolingian kingdom of Eastern Francia became the Holy Roman Empire. The prince-electors elected one of their peers as King of the Romans and King of Italy before being crowned by the Pope. The emperor could also pursue the election of his heir (usually a son) as King, who would then succeed him after his death. This junior king then bore the title of King of the Romans. Although technically already ruling, after the election he would be crowned as emperor by the pope. The last emperor to be crowned by the pope was Charles V; all emperors after him were technically emperors-elect, but were universally referred to as emperor.
The Holy Roman emperor was considered the first among those in power. He was also the first defender of Christianity. From 1452 to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 (except in the years 1742 to 1745) only members of the House of Habsburg were Holy Roman emperors. Karl von Habsburg is currently the head of the House of Habsburg.
The first Austrian Emperor was the last Holy Roman Emperor, Franz II. In the face of aggressions by Napoleon, Francis feared for the future of the Holy Roman Empire. He wished to maintain his and his family's Imperial status in the event that the Holy Roman Empire should be dissolved, as it indeed was in 1806 when an Austrian-led army suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz. After which, the victorious Napoleon proceeded to dismantle the old Reich by severing a good portion from the empire and turning it into a separate Confederation of the Rhine. With the size of his imperial realm significantly reduced, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor became Francis I, Emperor of Austria. The new imperial title may have sounded less prestigious than the old one, but Francis' dynasty continued to rule from Austria and a Habsburg monarch was still an emperor (Kaiser), and not just merely a king (König), in name. According to the historian Friedrich Heer, the Austrian Habsburg emperor remained an "auctoritas" of a special kind. He was "the grandson of the Caesars", he remained the patron of the Holy Church.
The title lasted just a little over one century until 1918, but it was never clear what territory constituted the "Empire of Austria". When Francis took the title in 1804, the Habsburg lands as a whole were dubbed the Kaisertum Österreich. Kaisertum might literally be translated as "emperordom" (on analogy with "kingdom") or "emperor-ship"; the term denotes specifically "the territory ruled by an emperor", and is thus somewhat more general than Reich, which in 1804 carried connotations of universal rule. Austria proper (as opposed to the complex of Habsburg lands as a whole) had been part of the Archduchy of Austria since the 15th century, and most of the other territories of the Empire had their own institutions and territorial history. There were some attempts at centralization, especially during the reign of Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. These efforts were finalized in the early 19th century. When the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen (Hungary) were given self-government in 1867, the non-Hungarian portions were called the Empire of Austria. They were officially known as the "Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council (Reichsrat)". The title of Emperor of Austria and the associated Empire were both abolished at the end World War I in 1918, when German Austria became a republic and the other kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council established their independence or adhesion to other states.
The Kaisers of the Austrian Empire (1804–1918) were Franz I (1804–1835), Ferdinand I (1835–1848), Franz Joseph I (1848–1916) and Karl I (1916–1918). The current head of the House of Habsburg is Karl von Habsburg.
Byzantium's close cultural and political interaction with its Balkan neighbors Bulgaria and Serbia, and with Russia (Kievan Rus', then Muscovy) led to the adoption of Byzantine imperial traditions in all of these countries.
In 913, Simeon I of Bulgaria was crowned Emperor (Tsar, originally more fully Tsesar, cěsar') of his own people by the Patriarch of Constantinople and Imperial regent Nicholas Mystikos outside the Byzantine capital. In its final expanded form, under the Second Bulgarian Empire the title read "Emperor and Autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks" (Цар и самодържец на всички българи и гърци, Car i samodăržec na vsički bălgari i gărci in the modern vernacular). The Roman component in the Bulgarian imperial title indicated both rule over Greek speakers and the derivation of the imperial tradition from the Romans, however this component was never recognised by the Byzantine court.
Byzantine recognition of Simeon's imperial title was revoked by the succeeding Byzantine government. The decade 914–924 was spent in destructive warfare between Byzantium and Bulgaria over this and other matters of conflict. The Bulgarian monarch, who had further irritated his Byzantine counterpart by claiming the title "Emperor of the Romans" (basileus tōn Rōmaiōn), was eventually recognized, as "Emperor of the Bulgarians" (basileus tōn Boulgarōn) by the Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lakapenos in 924. Byzantine recognition of the imperial dignity of the Bulgarian monarch and the patriarchal dignity of the Bulgarian patriarch was again confirmed at the conclusion of permanent peace and a Bulgarian-Byzantine dynastic marriage in 927. In the meantime, the Bulgarian imperial title may have been also tacitly confirmed by the pope, as claimed in later Bulgarian diplomatic correspondence. The Bulgarian imperial title "tsar" was adopted by all Bulgarian monarchs up to the fall of Bulgaria under Ottoman rule. Despite the attempt of Pope Innocent III to limit the Bulgarian monarch to the title of King (Rex), Kaloyan of Bulgaria considered himself an Emperor (Imperator) and his successor Boril of Bulgaria was specifically accused of improperly using the imperial title by his neighbor, the Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian imperial title was recognized by its neighbors and trading partners, including Byzantium, Hungary, Serbia, Venice, Genoa, Dubrovnik. 14th-century Bulgarian literary compositions saw the Bulgarian capital (Tarnovo) as a successor of Rome and Constantinople.
After Bulgaria obtained full independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908, its monarch, who was previously styled Knyaz, Prince, took the traditional title of Tsar, this time translated as King. Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is the former Tsar Simeon II of Bulgaria.
The kings of the Ancien Régime and the July Monarchy used the title Empereur de France in diplomatic correspondence and treaties with the Ottoman emperor from at least 1673 onwards. The Ottomans insisted on this elevated style while refusing to recognize the Holy Roman emperors or the Russian tsars because of their rival claims of the Roman crown. In short, it was an indirect insult by the Ottomans to the HRE and the Russians. The French kings also used it for Morocco (1682) and Persia (1715).
Napoleon Bonaparte, who was already First Consul of the French Republic (Premier Consul de la République française) for life, declared himself Emperor of the French (Empereur des Français) on 18 May 1804, thus creating the French Empire (Empire Français).
Napoleon relinquished the title of Emperor of the French on 6 April and again on 11 April 1814. Napoleon's infant son, Napoleon II, was recognized by the Council of Peers, as Emperor from the moment of his father's abdication, and therefore reigned (as opposed to ruled) as Emperor for fifteen days, 22 June to 7 July 1815.
Since 3 May 1814, the Sovereign Principality of Elba was created as a miniature non-hereditary monarchy under the exiled French Emperor Napoleon I. According to the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814), Napoleon I was allowed to enjoy the imperial title for life. The islands were not restyled an empire.
On 26 February 1815, Napoleon abandoned Elba for France, reviving the French Empire for a Hundred Days; the Allies declared an end to Napoleon's sovereignty over Elba on 25 March 1815, and on 31 March 1815 Elba was ceded to the restored Grand Duchy of Tuscany by the Congress of Vienna. After his final defeat, Napoleon was treated as a general by the British authorities during his second exile to Atlantic Isle of St. Helena. His title was a matter of dispute with the governor of St Helena, who insisted on addressing him as "General Bonaparte", despite the "historical reality that he had been an emperor" and therefore retained the title.
Napoleon I's nephew, Napoleon III, resurrected the title of emperor on 2 December 1852, after establishing the Second French Empire in a presidential coup, subsequently approved by a plebiscite. His reign was marked by large scale public works, the development of social policy, and the extension of France's influence throughout the world. During his reign, he also set about creating the Second Mexican Empire (headed by his choice of Maximilian I of Mexico, a member of the House of Habsburg), to regain France's hold in the Americas and to achieve greatness for the 'Latin' race. Napoleon III was deposed on 4 September 1870, after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The Third Republic followed and after the death of his son Napoleon (IV), in 1879 during the Zulu War, the Bonapartist movement split, and the Third Republic was to last until 1940.
The role of head of the House of Bonaparte is claimed by Jean-Christophe Napoléon and Charles Napoléon.
The origin of the title Imperator totius Hispaniae (Latin for Emperor of All Spain) is murky. It was associated with the Leonese monarchy perhaps as far back as Alfonso the Great (r. 866–910). The last two kings of its Astur-Leonese dynasty were called emperors in a contemporary source.
King Sancho III of Navarre conquered Leon in 1034 and began using it. His son, Ferdinand I of Castile also took the title in 1039. Ferdinand's son, Alfonso VI of León and Castile took the title in 1077. It then passed to his son-in-law, Alfonso I of Aragon in 1109. His stepson and Alfonso VI's grandson, Alfonso VII was the only one who actually had an imperial coronation in 1135.
The title was not exactly hereditary but self-proclaimed by those who had, wholly or partially, united the Christian northern part of the Iberian Peninsula, often at the expense of killing rival siblings. The popes and Holy Roman emperors protested at the usage of the imperial title as a usurpation of leadership in western Christendom. After Alfonso VII's death in 1157, the title was abandoned, and the kings who used it are not commonly mentioned as having been "emperors", in Spanish or other historiography.
After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the legitimate heir to the throne, Andreas Palaiologos, willed away his claim to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1503.
After the independence and proclamation of the Empire of Brazil from the Kingdom of Portugal by Prince Pedro, who became Emperor, in 1822, his father, King John VI of Portugal briefly held the honorific style of Titular Emperor of Brazil and the treatment of His Imperial and Royal Majesty under the 1825 Treaty of Rio de Janeiro, by which Portugal recognized the independence of Brazil. The style of Titular Emperor was a life title, and became extinct upon the holder's demise. John VI held the imperial title for a few months only, from the ratification of the Treaty in November 1825 until his death in March 1826. During those months, however, as John's imperial title was purely honorific while his son, Pedro I, remained the sole monarch of the Brazilian Empire. Duarte Pio is the current head of the House of Braganza.
In the late 3rd century, by the end of the epoch of the barracks emperors in Rome, there were two Britannic emperors, reigning for about a decade. After the end of Roman rule in Britain, the Imperator Cunedda forged the Kingdom of Gwynedd in northern Wales, but all his successors were titled kings and princes.
There was no consistent title for the king of England before 1066, and monarchs chose to style themselves as they pleased. Imperial titles were used inconsistently, beginning with Athelstan in 930 and ended with the Norman conquest of England. Empress Matilda (1102–1167) is the only English monarch commonly referred to as "emperor" or "empress", but she acquired her title through her marriage to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor.
During the rule of Henry VIII the Statute in Restraint of Appeals declared that 'this realm of England is an Empire...governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same'. This was in the context of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon and the English Reformation, to emphasize that England had never accepted the quasi-imperial claims of the papacy. Hence England and, by extension its modern successor state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is according to English law an Empire ruled by a King endowed with the imperial dignity. However, this has not led to the creation of the title of Emperor in England, nor in Great Britain, nor in the United Kingdom.
In 1801, George III rejected the title of Emperor when offered. The only period when British monarchs held the title of Emperor in a dynastic succession started when the title Empress of India was created for Queen Victoria. The government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, conferred the additional title upon her by an Act of Parliament, reputedly to assuage the monarch's irritation at being, as a mere Queen, notionally inferior to the emperors of Russia, Germany, and Austria. That included her own daughter (Princess Victoria, who was the wife of the reigning German Emperor). Hence, "Queen Victoria felt handicapped in the battle of protocol by not being an Empress herself". The Indian Imperial designation was also formally justified as the expression of Britain succeeding the former Mughal Emperor as suzerain over hundreds of princely states. The Indian Independence Act 1947 provided for the abolition of the use of the title "Emperor of India" by the British monarch, but this was not executed by King George VI until a royal proclamation on 22 June 1948. Despite this, George VI continued as king of India until 1950 and as king of Pakistan until his death in 1952.
The last Empress of India was George VI's wife, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
Under the guise of idealism giving way to realism, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848 to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck's authoritarian Realpolitik. Bismarck wanted to unify the rival German states to achieve his aim of a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany. Three wars led to military successes and helped to convince German people to do this: the Second war of Schleswig against Denmark in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War against Austria in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War against the Second French Empire in 1870–71. During the Siege of Paris in 1871, the North German Confederation, supported by its allies from southern Germany, formed the German Empire with the proclamation of the Prussian king Wilhelm I as German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, to the humiliation of the French, who ceased to resist only days later.
After his death he was succeeded by his son Frederick III who was only emperor for 99 days. In the same year his son Wilhelm II became the third emperor within a year. He was the last German emperor. After the empire's defeat in World War I the empire, called the German Reich, had a president as head of state instead of an emperor. The use of the word Reich was abandoned following World War II.
In 1472, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Sophia Palaiologina, married Ivan III, grand prince of Moscow, who began championing the idea of Russia being the successor to the Byzantine Empire. This idea was represented more emphatically in the composition the monk Filofej addressed to their son Vasili III. In 1480, after ending Muscovy's dependence on its overlords of the Great Horde, Ivan III began the usage of the titles Tsar and Autocrat (samoderzhets). His insistence on recognition as such by the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire since 1489 resulted in the granting of this recognition in 1514 by Emperor Maximilian I to Vasili III. His son Ivan IV emphatically crowned himself Tsar of Russia on 16 January 1547. The word "Tsar" derives from Latin Caesar, but this title was used in Russia as equivalent to "King"; the error occurred when medieval Russian clerics referred to the biblical Jewish kings with the same title that was used to designate Roman and Byzantine rulers — "Caesar".
On 31 October 1721, Peter I was proclaimed Emperor by the Governing Senate. The title used was Latin "Imperator", which is a westernizing form equivalent to the traditional Slavic title "Tsar". He based his claim partially upon a letter discovered in 1717 written in 1514 from Maximilian I to Vasili III, in which the Holy Roman Emperor used the term in referring to Vasili.
A formal address to the ruling Russian monarch adopted thereafter was 'Your Imperial Majesty'. The crown prince was addressed as 'Your Imperial Highness'.
The title has not been used in Russia since the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II on 15 March 1917.
The Russian Empire produced four reigning Empresses, all in the eighteenth century.
The role of head of the House of Romanov is claimed by Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia (Great-great-granddaughter of Alexander II of Russia), Prince Andrew Romanoff (great-great-grandson of Nicholas I of Russia), and Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen (Great-grandson of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia).
In 1345, the Serbian King Stefan Uroš IV Dušan proclaimed himself Emperor (Tsar) and was crowned as such at Skopje on Easter 1346 by the newly created Serbian Patriarch, and by the Patriarch of Bulgaria and the autocephalous Archbishop of Ohrid. His imperial title was recognized by Bulgaria and various other neighbors and trading partners but not by the Byzantine Empire. In its final standardized form, the Serbian imperial title read "Emperor of Serbs and Greeks" (цар Срба и Грка, car Srba i Grka in modern Serbian). It was only employed by two monarchs in Serbia, Stefan Uroš IV Dušan and his son Stefan Uroš V, becoming extinct after the latter's death in 1371. A half-brother of Dušan, Simeon Uroš, and then his son Jovan Uroš, claimed the same title, until the latter's abdication in 1373, while ruling as dynasts in Thessaly. The "Greek" component in the Serbian imperial title indicates both rule over Greek speakers and the derivation of the imperial tradition from the Romans. A renegade Hungarian-Serb commander, Jovan Nenad, who claimed to be a descendant of Serbian and Byzantine rulers, styled himself Emperor.
Ottoman rulers held many titles and appellations denoting their Imperial status. These included: Sultan of Sultans, Padishah, and Hakan.
The full style of the Ottoman sultan once the empire's frontiers had stabilized became:
Sultan (given name) Khan, Sovereign of The Sublime House of Osman, Sultan us-Selatin (Sultan of Sultans), Hakan (Khan of Khans), Commander of the faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Custodian of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Quds (Jerusalem), Padishah (Emperor) of The Three Cities of Istanbul (Constantinople), Edirne (Adrianople) and Bursa, and of the Cities of Châm (Damascus) and Cairo (Egypt), of all Azerbaijan, of the Maghreb, of Barkah, of Kairouan, of Alep, of the Arab and Persian Iraq, of Basra, of El Hasa strip, of Raqqa, of Mosul, of Parthia, of Diyâr-ı Bekr, of Cilicia, of the provinces of Erzurum, of Sivas, of Adana, of Karaman, of Van, of Barbaria, of Habech (Abyssinia), of Tunisia, of Tripoli, of Châm (Syria), of Cyprus, of Rhodes, of Crete, of the province of Morea (Peloponnese), of Bahr-i Sefid (Mediterranean Sea), of Bahr-i Siyah (Black Sea), of Anatolia, of Rumelia (the European part of the Empire), of Bagdad, of Kurdistan, of Greece, of Turkestan, of Tartary, of Circassia, of the two regions of Kabarda, of Gorjestan (Georgia), of the steppe of Kipchaks, of the whole country of the Tatars, of Kefa (Theodosia) and of all the neighbouring regions, of Bosnia, of the City and Fort of Belgrade, of the province of Sirbistan (Serbia), with all the castles and cities, of all Arnaut, of all Eflak (Wallachia) and Bogdania (Moldavia), as well as all the dependencies and borders, and many others countries and cities.
After the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman sultans began to style themselves Kaysar-i Rum (Ceaser of the Romans) as they asserted themselves to be the heirs to the Roman Empire by right of conquest. The title was of such importance to them that it led them to eliminate the various Byzantine successor states – and therefore rival claimants – over the next eight years. Though the term "emperor" was rarely used by Westerners of the Ottoman sultan, it was generally accepted by Westerners that he had imperial status.
Harun Osman is currently the head of the Ottoman dynasty.
The Aztec and Inca traditions are unrelated to one another. Both were conquered under the reign of King Charles I of Spain who was simultaneously emperor-elect of the Holy Roman Empire during the fall of the Aztecs and fully emperor during the fall of the Incas. Incidentally by being king of Spain, he was also Roman (Byzantine) emperor in pretence through Andreas Palaiologos. The translations of their titles were provided by the Spanish.
The only pre-Columbian North American rulers to be commonly called emperors were the Huey Tlatoani (es:Huey Tlatoani) of the Mexica city-states of Tenochtitlan, Tlacopan and Texcoco, which along with their allies and tributaries are popularly known as the Aztec Empire (1375–1521). Tlatoani is a generic Nahuatl word for "ruler"; however, most English translators use "king" for their translation, thus rendering huey tlatoani as great king or emperor.
The Triple Alliance was an elected monarchy chosen by the elite. The emperors of Tenochtitlan and Texcoco were nominally equals, each receiving two-fifths of tribute from the vassal kingdoms, whereas the emperor of Tlacopan was a junior member and only received one-fifth of the tribute, due to the fact that Tlacopan was a newcomer to the alliance. Despite the nominal equality, Tenochtitlan eventually assumed a de facto dominant role in the Empire, to the point that even the emperors of Tlacopan and Texcoco would acknowledge Tenochtitlan's effective supremacy. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés executed Emperor Cuauhtémoc and installed puppet rulers who became vassals for Spain.
The only pre-Columbian South American rulers to be commonly called emperors were the Sapa Inca of the Inca Empire (1438–1533). Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, conquered the Inca for Spain, killed Emperor Atahualpa, and installed puppets as well. Atahualpa may actually be considered a usurper as he had achieved power by killing his half-brother and he did not perform the required coronation with the imperial crown mascaipacha by the Huillaq Uma (high priest).
When Napoleon I ordered the invasion of Portugal in 1807 because it refused to join the Continental System, the Portuguese Braganzas moved their capital to Rio de Janeiro to avoid the fate of the Spanish Bourbons (Napoleon I arrested them and made his brother Joseph king). When the French general Jean-Andoche Junot arrived in Lisbon, the Portuguese fleet had already left with all the local elite.
In 1808, under a British naval escort, the fleet arrived in Brazil. Later, in 1815, the Portuguese Prince Regent (since 1816 King João VI) proclaimed the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, as a union of three kingdoms, lifting Brazil from its colonial status.
After the fall of Napoleon I and the Liberal revolution in Portugal, the Portuguese royal family returned to Europe (1821). Prince Pedro of Braganza (King João's older son) stayed in South America acting as regent of the local kingdom, but, two years later in 1822, he proclaimed himself Pedro I, first Emperor of Brazil. He did, however, recognize his father, João VI, as Titular Emperor of Brazil —a purely honorific title—until João VI's death in 1826.
The empire came to an end in 1889, with the overthrow of Emperor Pedro II (Pedro I's son and successor), when the Brazilian republic was proclaimed.
Today the headship of the Imperial House of Brazil is disputed between two branches of the House of Orléans-Braganza.
Haiti was declared an empire by its ruler, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who made himself Jacques I, on 20 May 1805. He was assassinated the next year. Haiti again became an empire from 1849 to 1859 under Faustin Soulouque.
In Mexico, the First Mexican Empire was the first of two empires created. After the declaration of independence on 15 September 1821, it was the intention of the Mexican parliament to establish a commonwealth whereby the king of Spain, Ferdinand VII, would also be Emperor of Mexico, but in which both countries were to be governed by separate laws and with their own legislative offices. Should the king refuse the position, the law provided for a member of the House of Bourbon to accede to the Mexican throne.
Ferdinand VII, however, did not recognize the independence and said that Spain would not allow any other European prince to take the throne of Mexico. By request of Parliament, the president of the regency Agustín de Iturbide was proclaimed emperor of Mexico on 12 July 1822 as Agustín I. Agustín de Iturbide was the general who helped secure Mexican independence from Spanish rule, but was overthrown by the Plan of Casa Mata.
In 1863, the invading French, under Napoleon III (see above), in alliance with Mexican conservatives and nobility, helped create the Second Mexican Empire, and invited Archduke Maximilian, of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, younger brother of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I, to become emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. The childless Maximilian and his consort Empress Carlota of Mexico, daughter of Leopold I of Belgium, adopted Agustín's grandsons Agustin and Salvador as his heirs to bolster his claim to the throne of Mexico. Maximilian and Carlota made Chapultepec Castle their home, which has been the only palace in North America to house sovereigns. After the withdrawal of French protection in 1867, Maximilian was captured and executed by the liberal forces of Benito Juárez.
This empire led to French influence in the Mexican culture and also immigration from France, Belgium, and Switzerland to Mexico. Maximilian's closest living agnatic relative is Karl von Habsburg, the head of the House of Habsburg.
In Persia, from the time of Darius the Great, Persian rulers used the title "King of Kings" (Shahanshah in Persian) since they had dominion over peoples from the borders of India to the borders of Greece and Egypt. Alexander the Great probably crowned himself shahanshah after conquering Persia, bringing the phrase basileus ton basileon to Greek. It is also known that Tigranes the Great, king of Armenia, was named as the king of kings when he made his empire after defeating the Parthians. Georgian title "mephet'mephe" has the same meaning.
The last shahanshah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) was ousted in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution. Shahanshah is usually translated as king of kings or simply king for ancient rulers of the Achaemenid, Arsacid, and Sassanid dynasties, and often shortened to shah for rulers since the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century. Iranian rulers were typically regarded in the West as emperors.
Alongside the Maurya, other dynasties that are considered imperial by historians are the Chauhans, Tomars, Marathas, Guptas, Vijayanagara, Kakatiya, Hoysala, Mughals and the Cholas.
The Sanskrit equivalents for emperor titles are:
Samraat refers to the king of kings, meaning that he is not only a sovereign ruler but also has feudatories. Chakravarti literally means the ruler, the wheels of whose chariot roll everywhere without obstruction. This word has been used as an epithet of various Vedic deities, like Varuna, and has been attested in the Rig-Veda. The feminine equivalent of Samraat is Samrajni.
In the later Vedic age, a Samraat was only called Chakravarti Samraaṭ after performing the Vedic Ashwamedha Yajna, enabling him by religious tradition to claim superiority over the other kings and princes. A Chakravartī was always considered a Samraat, but the inverse was not always true. The feminine form of chakravarti is chakravartini.
The title of Samraaṭ has been used by many rulers of the Indian subcontinent. Most historians call Chandragupta Maurya the first samraaṭ (emperor) of the Indian subcontinent, because of the huge empire he ruled.
The title of Maharaja, meaning "great king" in Sanskrit were also used by monarchs in South and Southeast Asia. The female equivalent of Maharaja is Maharani. The title Maharajadhiraja, the King of Kings form of Maharaja, is even higher than Maharaja. Imperial rulers like Chandragupta I of Guptas used the title Maharajadhiraja as emperor.
From the 14th century until the 19th century the Indian subcontinent was dominated by predominantly Muslim rulers first the Delhi Sultanate, used the title Sultan of Sultans, and then the Mughal Empire, used the title Shahenshah and Padishah (or Badshah).
Towards the end of Mughal rule, the Maratha Empire was established and its rulers used the title Chhatrapati.
When the British monarchs ruled over India, they adopted the additional title of Kaisar-i-Hind (transl. Emperor of India).
From 1270 the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia used the title Nəgusä Nägäst, literally "King of Kings". The use of the king of kings style began a millennium earlier in this region, however, with the title being used by the kings of Aksum, beginning with Sembrouthes in the 3rd century.
Another title used by this dynasty was Itegue Zetopia. Itegue translates as Empress, and was used by the only reigning Empress, Zauditu, along with the official title Negiste Negest ("Queen of Kings").
In 1936, the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III claimed the title of Emperor of Ethiopia after Ethiopia was occupied by Italy during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. After the defeat of the Italians by the British and the Ethiopians in 1941, Haile Selassie was restored to the throne but Victor Emmanuel did not relinquish his claim until 1943, even though he had no standing to the title.
The current head of the Solomonic dynasty is Zera Yacob Amha Selassie.
In 1976, President Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, proclaimed the country to be an autocratic Central African Empire, and made himself Emperor as Bokassa I. The expenses of his coronation ceremony actually bankrupted the country. He was overthrown three years later and the republic was restored.
皇帝 is the title of emperors in East Asia. An emperor is called Huángdì in Chinese, Hwangje in Korean, Hoàng đế in Vietnamese, and Kōtei in Japanese, but these are all just their respective pronunciations of the Chinese character 皇帝. But, the Japanese call only their emperors with the special title Tennō.
The rulers of China and (once Westerners became aware of the role) Japan were always accepted in the West as emperors, and referred to as such. The claims of other East Asian monarchies to the title may have been accepted for diplomatic purposes, but it was not necessarily used in more general contexts.
The East Asian tradition is different from the Roman tradition, having arisen separately. What links them together is the use of the Chinese logographs 皇 (huáng) and 帝 (dì) which together or individually are imperial. Because of the cultural influence of China, China's neighbors adopted these titles or had their native titles conform in hanzi. Anyone who spoke to the emperor was to address the emperor as bìxià (陛下, lit. the "Bottom of the Steps"), corresponding to the Imperial Majesty"; shèngshàng (聖上, lit. Holy Highness); or wànsuì (萬歲, lit. "You, of Ten Thousand Years").
In 221 BC, Ying Zheng, who was king of Qin at the time, proclaimed himself Shi Huangdi (始皇帝), which translates as "first emperor". Huangdi is composed of huang ("august one", 皇) and di ("sage-king", 帝), and referred to legendary/mythological sage-emperors living several millennia earlier, of which three were huang and five were di. Thus Ying Zheng became Qin Shi Huang, abolishing the system where the huang/di titles were reserved to dead and/or mythological rulers. Since then, the title "king" became a lower ranked title, and later divided into two grades. Although not as popular, the title 王 wang (king or prince) was still used by many monarchs and dynasties in China up to the Taipings in the 19th century. 王 is pronounced vương in Vietnamese, ō in Japanese, and wang in Korean.
The imperial title continued in China until the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1912. The title was briefly revived from 12 December 1915 to 22 March 1916 by President Yuan Shikai and again in early July 1917 when General Zhang Xun attempted to restore last Qing emperor Puyi to the throne. Puyi retained the title and attributes of a foreign emperor, as a personal status, until 1924. After the Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1931, they proclaimed it to be the Empire of Manchukuo, and Puyi became emperor of Manchukuo. This empire ceased to exist when it was occupied by the Soviet Red Army in 1945.
In general, an emperor would have one empress (Huanghou, 皇后) at one time, although posthumous entitlement to empress for a concubine was not uncommon. The earliest known usage of huanghou was in the Han dynasty. The emperor would generally select the empress from his concubines. In subsequent dynasties, when the distinction between wife and concubine became more accentuated, the crown prince would have chosen an empress-designate before his reign. Imperial China produced only one reigning empress, Wu Zetian, and she used the same Chinese title as an emperor (Huangdi, 皇帝). Wu Zetian then reigned for about 15 years (AD 690–705).
Under the tributary system of China, monarchs of Korea and Vietnam sometimes called themselves emperor in their country. They introduced themselves as king for China and other countries (Emperor at home, king abroad). In Japan, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu a shogun was granted title of King of Japan for trade by the Ming emperor. However, the Shogun was a subject of the Japanese emperor. It was contrary to rules of tributary system, but the Ming emperor connived it for the purpose of suppressing the Wokou.
The earliest emperor recorded in Kojiki and Nihon Shoki is Emperor Jimmu, who is said to be a descendant of Amaterasu's grandson Ninigi who descended from Heaven (Tenson kōrin). If one believes what is written in Nihon Shoki, the emperors have an unbroken direct male lineage that goes back more than 2,600 years.
In ancient Japan, the earliest titles for the sovereign were either ヤマト大王/大君 (yamato ōkimi, Grand King of Yamato), 倭王/倭国王 (waō/wakokuō, King of Wa, used externally), or 治天下大王 (amenoshita shiroshimesu ōkimi, Grand King who rules all under heaven, used internally).
In 607, Empress Suiko sent a diplomatic document to China, which she wrote "the emperor of the land of the rising sun (日出處天子) sends a document to the emperor of the land of the setting sun (日沒處天子)" and began to use the title emperor externally. As early as the 7th century, the word 天皇 (which can be read either as sumera no mikoto, divine order, or as tennō, Heavenly Emperor, the latter being derived from a Tang Chinese term referring to the Pole star around which all other stars revolve) began to be used. The earliest use of this term is found on a wooden slat, or mokkan, unearthed in Asuka-mura, Nara Prefecture in 1998. The slat dated back to the reign of Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jitō. The reading 'Tennō' has become the standard title for the Japanese sovereign up to the present age. The term 帝 (mikado, Emperor) is also found in literary sources.
In the Japanese language, the word tennō is restricted to Japan's own monarch; kōtei (皇帝) is usually used for foreign emperors. Historically, retired emperors often kept power over a child-emperor as de facto regent. For a long time, a shōgun (formally the imperial military dictator, but made hereditary) or an imperial regent wielded actual political power. In fact, through much of Japanese history, the emperor has been little more than a figurehead. The Meiji Restoration restored practical abilities and the political system under Emperor Meiji. The last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned in 1868.
After World War II, all claims of divinity were dropped (see Ningen-sengen). The Diet acquired all prerogative powers of the Crown, reverting the latter to a ceremonial role. By 1979, after the short-lived Central African Empire (1976–1979), Emperor Shōwa was the only monarch in the world with the title emperor.
As of the early 21st century, Japan's succession law prohibits a female from ascending the throne. With the birth of a daughter as the first child of the then-Crown Prince Naruhito, Japan considered abandoning that rule. However, shortly after the announcement that Princess Kiko was pregnant with her third child, the proposal to alter the Imperial Household Law was suspended by then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. On 3 January 2007, as the child turned out to be a son, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced that he would drop the proposal.
Emperor Naruhito is the 126th monarch according to Japan's traditional order of succession. The second and third in line of succession are Fumihito, Prince Akishino and Prince Hisahito. Historically, Japan has had eight reigning empresses who used the genderless title Tennō, rather than the female consort title kōgō (皇后) or chūgū (中宮). There is ongoing discussion of the Japanese Imperial succession controversy. Although current Japanese law prohibits female succession, all Japanese emperors claim to trace their lineage to Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess of the Shintō religion. Thus, the emperor is thought to be the highest authority of the Shinto religion, and one of his duties is to perform Shinto rituals for the people of Japan.
Some rulers of Goguryeo (37 BC–AD 668) used the title of Taewang (태왕; 太王), literally translated as "Greatest King". The title of Taewang was also used by some rulers of Silla (57 BC–AD 935), including Beopheung and Jinheung.
The rulers of Balhae (698–926) internally called themselves Seongwang (성왕; 聖王; lit. "Holy King").
The rulers of Goryeo (918–1392) used the titles of emperor and Son of Heaven of the East of the Ocean (해동천자; 海東天子). Goryeo's imperial system ended in 1270 with capitulation to the Mongol Empire.
In 1897, Gojong, the king of Joseon, proclaimed the founding of the Korean Empire (1897–1910), becoming the emperor of Korea. He declared the era name of "Gwangmu" (광무; 光武), meaning "Bright and Martial". The Korean Empire lasted until 1910, when it was annexed by the Empire of Japan.
The title Khagan (khan of khans or grand khan) was held by Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire in 1206; he also formally took the Chinese title huangdi, as "Genghis Emperor" (成吉思皇帝; Chéngjísī Huángdì ). Only the Khagans from Genghis Khan to the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 are normally referred to as emperors in English.
Đại Việt Kingdom (40–43, 544–602, 938–1407, 1427–1945) (The first ruler of Vietnam to take the title of Emperor (Hoàng Đế) was the founder of the Early Lý dynasty, Lý Nam Đế, in the year AD 544)
Ngô Quyền, the first ruler of Đại Việt as an independent state, used the title Vương (王, King). However, after the death of Ngô Quyền, the country immersed in a civil war known as Anarchy of the 12 Warlords that lasted for over 20 years. In the end, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh unified the country after defeating all the warlords and became the first ruler of Đại Việt to use the title Hoàng Đế (皇帝, Emperor) in 968. Succeeding rulers in Vietnam then continued to use this Emperor title until 1806 when this title was stopped being used for a century.
Đinh Bộ Lĩnh was not the first to claim the title of Đế (帝, Emperor). Before him, Lý Bí and Mai Thúc Loan also claimed this title. However, their rules were short-lived.
The Vietnamese emperors also gave this title to their ancestors who were lords or influential figures in the previous dynasty, as did the Chinese emperors. This practice was one of the many indications that Vietnam considered itself an equal to China which remained intact up to the twentieth century.
In 1802 the newly established Nguyễn dynasty requested canonization from the Chinese Jiaqing Emperor and received the title Quốc Vương (國王, King of a State) and the name of the country as Việt Nam (越南) instead Đại Việt (大越). To avoid unnecessary armed conflicts, the Vietnamese rulers accepted this in diplomatic relation and used the title Emperor only domestically. However, Vietnamese rulers never accepted the vassalage relationship with China and always refused to come to Chinese courts to pay homage to Chinese rulers (a sign of vassalage acceptance). China waged a number of wars against Vietnam throughout history, and after each failure, settled for the tributary relationship. The Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan waged three wars against Vietnam to force it into a vassalage relationship but after successive failures, Kublai Khan's successor, Temür Khan, finally settled for a tributary relationship with Vietnam. Vietnam sent tributary missions to China once in three years (with some periods of disruptions) until the 19th century, Sino-French War France replaced China in control of northern Vietnam.
The emperors of the last dynasty of Vietnam continued to hold this title until the French conquered Vietnam. The emperor, however, was then a puppet figure only and could easily be disposed of by the French for more pro-France figure. Japan took Vietnam from France and the Axis-occupied Vietnam was declared an empire by the Japanese in March 1945. The line of emperors came to an end with Bảo Đại, who was deposed after the war, although he later served as head of state of South Vietnam from 1949 to 1955.
There have been many fictional emperors in movies and books. To see a list of these emperors, see Category of fictional emperors and empresses. | [
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"text": "The word emperor (from Latin: imperator, via Old French: empereor) can mean the male absolute ruler of an empire. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules in her own right and name (empress regnant or suo jure). Emperors are generally recognized to be of the highest monarchic honor and rank, surpassing kings. In Europe, the title of Emperor has been used since the Middle Ages, considered in those times equal or almost equal in dignity to that of Pope due to the latter's position as visible head of the Church and spiritual leader of the Catholic part of Western Europe. The emperor of Japan is the only currently reigning monarch whose title is translated into English as \"Emperor\".",
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"text": "Both emperors and kings are monarchs or sovereigns, but both emperor and empress are considered the higher monarchical titles. In as much as there is a strict definition of emperor, it is that an emperor has no relations implying the superiority of any other ruler and typically rules over more than one nation. Therefore, a king might be obliged to pay tribute to another ruler, or be restrained in his actions in some unequal fashion, but an emperor should in theory be completely free of such restraints. However, monarchs heading empires have not always used the title in all contexts—the British sovereign did not assume the title Empress of the British Empire even during the incorporation of India, though she was declared Empress of India.",
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"text": "In Western Europe, the title of Emperor was used exclusively by the Holy Roman Emperor, whose imperial authority was derived from the concept of translatio imperii, i.e., they claimed succession to the authority of the Roman emperors, thus linking themselves to Roman institutions and traditions as part of state ideology. Although initially ruling much of Central Europe and northern Italy, by the 19th century, the emperor exercised little power beyond the German-speaking states.",
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{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Although technically an elective title, by the late 16th century, the imperial title had in practice come to be inherited by the Habsburg Archdukes of Austria and, following the Thirty Years' War, their control over the states (outside the Habsburg monarchy, i.e. Austria, Bohemia and various territories outside the empire) had become nearly non-existent. However, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French in 1804 and was shortly followed by Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, who declared himself Emperor of Austria in the same year. The position of Holy Roman Emperor nonetheless continued until Francis II abdicated that position in 1806. In Eastern Europe, the monarchs of Russia also used translatio imperii to wield imperial authority as successors to the Eastern Roman Empire. Their status was officially recognized by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1514, although not officially used by the Russian monarchs until 1547. However, the Russian emperors are better known by their Russian-language title of Tsar even after Peter the Great adopted the title of Emperor of All Russia in 1721.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Historians have liberally used \"emperor\" and \"empire\" anachronistically and out of its Roman and European context to describe any large state from the past or the present. Such pre-Roman titles as Great King or King of Kings, used by the kings of Persia and others, are often considered as the equivalent. Sometimes this reference has even extended to non-monarchically ruled states and their spheres of influence, such as the Athenian Empire of the late 5th century BC, the Angevin Empire of the Plantagenets and the Soviet and American \"empires\" of the Cold War era. However, such \"empires\" did not need to be headed by an \"emperor\". \"Empire\" became identified instead with vast territorial holdings rather than the title of its ruler by the mid-18th century.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "For purposes of protocol, emperors were once given precedence over kings in international diplomatic relations, but currently, precedence among heads of state who are sovereigns—whether they be kings, queens, emperors, empresses, princes, princesses and, to a lesser degree, presidents—is determined by the duration of time that each one has been continuously in office. Outside the European context, \"emperor\" was the translation given to holders of titles who were accorded the same precedence as European emperors in diplomatic terms. In reciprocity, these rulers might accredit equal titles in their native languages to their European peers. Through centuries of international convention, this has become the dominant rule to identifying an emperor in the modern era.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "When Republican Rome turned into a de facto monarchy in the second half of the 1st century BC, at first there was no name for the title of the new type of monarch. Ancient Romans abhorred the name Rex (\"king\"), and it was critical to the political order to maintain the forms and pretenses of republican rule. Julius Caesar had been Dictator, an acknowledged and traditional office in Republican Rome. Caesar was not the first to hold it, but following his assassination the term was abhorred in Rome.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Augustus, considered the first Roman emperor, established his hegemony by collecting on himself offices, titles, and honours of Republican Rome that had traditionally been distributed to different people, concentrating what had been distributed power in one man. One of these offices was princeps senatus, (\"first man of the Senate\") and became changed into Augustus' chief honorific, princeps civitatis (\"first citizen\") from which the modern English word and title prince is descended. The first period of the Roman Empire, from 27 BC to AD 284, is called the principate for this reason. However, it was the informal descriptive of Imperator (\"commander\") that became the title increasingly favored by his successors. Previously bestowed on high officials and military commanders who had imperium, Augustus reserved it exclusively to himself as the ultimate holder of all imperium. (Imperium is Latin for the authority to command, one of a various types of authority delineated in Roman political thought.)",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Beginning with Augustus, Imperator appeared in the title of all Roman monarchs through the extinction of the Empire in 1453. After the reign of Augustus' immediate successor Tiberius, being proclaimed imperator was transformed into the act of accession to the head of state. Other honorifics used by the Roman emperors have also come to be synonyms for Emperor:",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "After the turbulent Year of the Four Emperors in 69, the Flavian dynasty reigned for three decades. The succeeding Nervan-Antonian dynasty, ruling for most of the 2nd century, stabilised the empire. This epoch became known as the era of the Five Good Emperors, and was followed by the short-lived Severan dynasty.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "During the Crisis of the 3rd century, barracks emperors succeeded one another at short intervals. Three short lived secessionist attempts had their own emperors: the Gallic Empire, the Britannic Empire, and the Palmyrene Empire though the latter used rex more regularly.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Principate (27 BC – 284 AD) period was succeeded by what is known as the Dominate (284 AD – 527 AD), during which Emperor Diocletian tried to put the empire on a more formal footing. Diocletian sought to address the challenges of the Empire's now vast geography and the instability caused by the informality of succession by the creation of co-emperors and junior emperors. At one point, there were as many as five sharers of the imperium (see: Tetrarchy). In 325 AD Constantine I defeated his rivals and restored single emperor rule, but following his death the empire was divided among his sons. For a time the concept was of one empire ruled by multiple emperors with varying territory under their control, however following the death of Theodosius I the rule was divided between his two sons and increasingly became separate entities. The areas administered from Rome are referred to by historians the Western Roman Empire and those under the immediate authority of Constantinople called the Eastern Roman Empire or (after the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 AD) the Later Roman or Byzantine Empire. The subdivisions and co-emperor system were formally abolished by Emperor Zeno in 480 AD following the death of Julius Nepos last Western Emperor and the ascension of Odoacer as the de facto King of Italy in 476 AD.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Historians generally refer to the continuing Roman Empire in the east as the Byzantine Empire after Byzantium, the original name of the town that Constantine I would elevate to the Imperial capital as New Rome in AD 330. (The city is more commonly called Constantinople and is today named Istanbul). Although the empire was again subdivided and a co-emperor sent to Italy at the end of the fourth century, the office became unitary again only 95 years later at the request of the Roman Senate and following the death of Julius Nepos, last Western Emperor. This change was a recognition of the reality that little remained of Imperial authority in the areas that had been the Western Empire, with even Rome and Italy itself now ruled by the essentially autonomous Odoacer.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "These Later Roman \"Byzantine\" emperors completed the transition from the idea of the emperor as a semi-republican official to the emperor as an absolute monarch. Of particular note was the translation of the Latin Imperator into the Greek Basileus, after Emperor Heraclius changed the official language of the empire from Latin to Greek in AD 620. Basileus, a title which had long been used for Alexander the Great was already in common usage as the Greek word for the Roman emperor, but its definition and sense was \"King\" in Greek, essentially equivalent with the Latin Rex. Byzantine period emperors also used the Greek word \"autokrator\", meaning \"one who rules himself\", or \"monarch\", which was traditionally used by Greek writers to translate the Latin dictator. Essentially, the Greek language did not incorporate the nuances of the Ancient Roman concepts that distinguished imperium from other forms of political power.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In general usage, the Byzantine imperial title evolved from simply \"emperor\" (basileus) to \"emperor of the Romans\" (basileus tōn Rōmaiōn) in the 9th century, to \"emperor and autocrat of the Romans\" (basileus kai autokratōr tōn Rōmaiōn) in the 10th. In fact, none of these (and other) additional epithets and titles had ever been completely discarded.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "One important distinction between the post Constantine I (reigned AD 306–337) emperors and their pagan predecessors was cesaropapism, the assertion that the emperor (or other head of state) is also the head of the Church. Although this principle was held by all emperors after Constantine, it met with increasing resistance and ultimately rejection by bishops in the west after the effective end of Imperial power there. This concept became a key element of the meaning of \"emperor\" in the Byzantine and Orthodox east, but went out of favor in the west with the rise of Roman Catholicism.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Byzantine Empire also produced three women who effectively governed the state: the Empress Irene and the Empresses Zoe and Theodora.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 1204 Constantinople fell to the Venetians and the Franks in the Fourth Crusade. Following the tragedy of the horrific sacking of the city, the conquerors declared a new \"Empire of Romania\", known to historians as the Latin Empire of Constantinople, installing Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders, as Emperor. However, Byzantine resistance to the new empire meant that it was in constant struggle to establish itself. Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos succeeded in recapturing Constantinople in 1261. The Principality of Achaea, a vassal state the empire had created in Morea (Greece) intermittently continued to recognize the authority of the crusader emperors for another half century. Pretenders to the title continued among the European nobility until circa 1383.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "With Constantinople occupied, claimants to the imperial succession styled themselves as emperor in the chief centers of resistance: The Laskarid dynasty in the Empire of Nicaea, the Komnenid dynasty in the Empire of Trebizond and the Doukid dynasty in the Despotate of Epirus. In 1248, Epirus recognized the Nicaean emperors, who subsequently recaptured Constantinople in 1261. The Trapezuntine emperor formally submitted in Constantinople in 1281, but frequently flouted convention by styling themselves emperor back in Trebizond thereafter.",
"title": "Roman and Byzantine emperors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The Emperor of the Romans' title was a reflection of the translatio imperii (transfer of rule) principle that regarded the Holy Roman emperors as the inheritors of the title of Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, despite the continued existence of the Roman Empire in the east, hence the problem of two emperors.",
"title": "Holy Roman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "From the time of Otto the Great onward, much of the former Carolingian kingdom of Eastern Francia became the Holy Roman Empire. The prince-electors elected one of their peers as King of the Romans and King of Italy before being crowned by the Pope. The emperor could also pursue the election of his heir (usually a son) as King, who would then succeed him after his death. This junior king then bore the title of King of the Romans. Although technically already ruling, after the election he would be crowned as emperor by the pope. The last emperor to be crowned by the pope was Charles V; all emperors after him were technically emperors-elect, but were universally referred to as emperor.",
"title": "Holy Roman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Holy Roman emperor was considered the first among those in power. He was also the first defender of Christianity. From 1452 to the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 (except in the years 1742 to 1745) only members of the House of Habsburg were Holy Roman emperors. Karl von Habsburg is currently the head of the House of Habsburg.",
"title": "Holy Roman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The first Austrian Emperor was the last Holy Roman Emperor, Franz II. In the face of aggressions by Napoleon, Francis feared for the future of the Holy Roman Empire. He wished to maintain his and his family's Imperial status in the event that the Holy Roman Empire should be dissolved, as it indeed was in 1806 when an Austrian-led army suffered a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz. After which, the victorious Napoleon proceeded to dismantle the old Reich by severing a good portion from the empire and turning it into a separate Confederation of the Rhine. With the size of his imperial realm significantly reduced, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor became Francis I, Emperor of Austria. The new imperial title may have sounded less prestigious than the old one, but Francis' dynasty continued to rule from Austria and a Habsburg monarch was still an emperor (Kaiser), and not just merely a king (König), in name. According to the historian Friedrich Heer, the Austrian Habsburg emperor remained an \"auctoritas\" of a special kind. He was \"the grandson of the Caesars\", he remained the patron of the Holy Church.",
"title": "Austrian Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The title lasted just a little over one century until 1918, but it was never clear what territory constituted the \"Empire of Austria\". When Francis took the title in 1804, the Habsburg lands as a whole were dubbed the Kaisertum Österreich. Kaisertum might literally be translated as \"emperordom\" (on analogy with \"kingdom\") or \"emperor-ship\"; the term denotes specifically \"the territory ruled by an emperor\", and is thus somewhat more general than Reich, which in 1804 carried connotations of universal rule. Austria proper (as opposed to the complex of Habsburg lands as a whole) had been part of the Archduchy of Austria since the 15th century, and most of the other territories of the Empire had their own institutions and territorial history. There were some attempts at centralization, especially during the reign of Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. These efforts were finalized in the early 19th century. When the Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen (Hungary) were given self-government in 1867, the non-Hungarian portions were called the Empire of Austria. They were officially known as the \"Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council (Reichsrat)\". The title of Emperor of Austria and the associated Empire were both abolished at the end World War I in 1918, when German Austria became a republic and the other kingdoms and lands represented in the Imperial Council established their independence or adhesion to other states.",
"title": "Austrian Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Kaisers of the Austrian Empire (1804–1918) were Franz I (1804–1835), Ferdinand I (1835–1848), Franz Joseph I (1848–1916) and Karl I (1916–1918). The current head of the House of Habsburg is Karl von Habsburg.",
"title": "Austrian Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Byzantium's close cultural and political interaction with its Balkan neighbors Bulgaria and Serbia, and with Russia (Kievan Rus', then Muscovy) led to the adoption of Byzantine imperial traditions in all of these countries.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 913, Simeon I of Bulgaria was crowned Emperor (Tsar, originally more fully Tsesar, cěsar') of his own people by the Patriarch of Constantinople and Imperial regent Nicholas Mystikos outside the Byzantine capital. In its final expanded form, under the Second Bulgarian Empire the title read \"Emperor and Autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks\" (Цар и самодържец на всички българи и гърци, Car i samodăržec na vsički bălgari i gărci in the modern vernacular). The Roman component in the Bulgarian imperial title indicated both rule over Greek speakers and the derivation of the imperial tradition from the Romans, however this component was never recognised by the Byzantine court.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Byzantine recognition of Simeon's imperial title was revoked by the succeeding Byzantine government. The decade 914–924 was spent in destructive warfare between Byzantium and Bulgaria over this and other matters of conflict. The Bulgarian monarch, who had further irritated his Byzantine counterpart by claiming the title \"Emperor of the Romans\" (basileus tōn Rōmaiōn), was eventually recognized, as \"Emperor of the Bulgarians\" (basileus tōn Boulgarōn) by the Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lakapenos in 924. Byzantine recognition of the imperial dignity of the Bulgarian monarch and the patriarchal dignity of the Bulgarian patriarch was again confirmed at the conclusion of permanent peace and a Bulgarian-Byzantine dynastic marriage in 927. In the meantime, the Bulgarian imperial title may have been also tacitly confirmed by the pope, as claimed in later Bulgarian diplomatic correspondence. The Bulgarian imperial title \"tsar\" was adopted by all Bulgarian monarchs up to the fall of Bulgaria under Ottoman rule. Despite the attempt of Pope Innocent III to limit the Bulgarian monarch to the title of King (Rex), Kaloyan of Bulgaria considered himself an Emperor (Imperator) and his successor Boril of Bulgaria was specifically accused of improperly using the imperial title by his neighbor, the Latin Emperor Henry of Flanders. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian imperial title was recognized by its neighbors and trading partners, including Byzantium, Hungary, Serbia, Venice, Genoa, Dubrovnik. 14th-century Bulgarian literary compositions saw the Bulgarian capital (Tarnovo) as a successor of Rome and Constantinople.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "After Bulgaria obtained full independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908, its monarch, who was previously styled Knyaz, Prince, took the traditional title of Tsar, this time translated as King. Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is the former Tsar Simeon II of Bulgaria.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The kings of the Ancien Régime and the July Monarchy used the title Empereur de France in diplomatic correspondence and treaties with the Ottoman emperor from at least 1673 onwards. The Ottomans insisted on this elevated style while refusing to recognize the Holy Roman emperors or the Russian tsars because of their rival claims of the Roman crown. In short, it was an indirect insult by the Ottomans to the HRE and the Russians. The French kings also used it for Morocco (1682) and Persia (1715).",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Napoleon Bonaparte, who was already First Consul of the French Republic (Premier Consul de la République française) for life, declared himself Emperor of the French (Empereur des Français) on 18 May 1804, thus creating the French Empire (Empire Français).",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Napoleon relinquished the title of Emperor of the French on 6 April and again on 11 April 1814. Napoleon's infant son, Napoleon II, was recognized by the Council of Peers, as Emperor from the moment of his father's abdication, and therefore reigned (as opposed to ruled) as Emperor for fifteen days, 22 June to 7 July 1815.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Since 3 May 1814, the Sovereign Principality of Elba was created as a miniature non-hereditary monarchy under the exiled French Emperor Napoleon I. According to the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1814), Napoleon I was allowed to enjoy the imperial title for life. The islands were not restyled an empire.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "On 26 February 1815, Napoleon abandoned Elba for France, reviving the French Empire for a Hundred Days; the Allies declared an end to Napoleon's sovereignty over Elba on 25 March 1815, and on 31 March 1815 Elba was ceded to the restored Grand Duchy of Tuscany by the Congress of Vienna. After his final defeat, Napoleon was treated as a general by the British authorities during his second exile to Atlantic Isle of St. Helena. His title was a matter of dispute with the governor of St Helena, who insisted on addressing him as \"General Bonaparte\", despite the \"historical reality that he had been an emperor\" and therefore retained the title.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Napoleon I's nephew, Napoleon III, resurrected the title of emperor on 2 December 1852, after establishing the Second French Empire in a presidential coup, subsequently approved by a plebiscite. His reign was marked by large scale public works, the development of social policy, and the extension of France's influence throughout the world. During his reign, he also set about creating the Second Mexican Empire (headed by his choice of Maximilian I of Mexico, a member of the House of Habsburg), to regain France's hold in the Americas and to achieve greatness for the 'Latin' race. Napoleon III was deposed on 4 September 1870, after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The Third Republic followed and after the death of his son Napoleon (IV), in 1879 during the Zulu War, the Bonapartist movement split, and the Third Republic was to last until 1940.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The role of head of the House of Bonaparte is claimed by Jean-Christophe Napoléon and Charles Napoléon.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The origin of the title Imperator totius Hispaniae (Latin for Emperor of All Spain) is murky. It was associated with the Leonese monarchy perhaps as far back as Alfonso the Great (r. 866–910). The last two kings of its Astur-Leonese dynasty were called emperors in a contemporary source.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "King Sancho III of Navarre conquered Leon in 1034 and began using it. His son, Ferdinand I of Castile also took the title in 1039. Ferdinand's son, Alfonso VI of León and Castile took the title in 1077. It then passed to his son-in-law, Alfonso I of Aragon in 1109. His stepson and Alfonso VI's grandson, Alfonso VII was the only one who actually had an imperial coronation in 1135.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The title was not exactly hereditary but self-proclaimed by those who had, wholly or partially, united the Christian northern part of the Iberian Peninsula, often at the expense of killing rival siblings. The popes and Holy Roman emperors protested at the usage of the imperial title as a usurpation of leadership in western Christendom. After Alfonso VII's death in 1157, the title was abandoned, and the kings who used it are not commonly mentioned as having been \"emperors\", in Spanish or other historiography.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the legitimate heir to the throne, Andreas Palaiologos, willed away his claim to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1503.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "After the independence and proclamation of the Empire of Brazil from the Kingdom of Portugal by Prince Pedro, who became Emperor, in 1822, his father, King John VI of Portugal briefly held the honorific style of Titular Emperor of Brazil and the treatment of His Imperial and Royal Majesty under the 1825 Treaty of Rio de Janeiro, by which Portugal recognized the independence of Brazil. The style of Titular Emperor was a life title, and became extinct upon the holder's demise. John VI held the imperial title for a few months only, from the ratification of the Treaty in November 1825 until his death in March 1826. During those months, however, as John's imperial title was purely honorific while his son, Pedro I, remained the sole monarch of the Brazilian Empire. Duarte Pio is the current head of the House of Braganza.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "In the late 3rd century, by the end of the epoch of the barracks emperors in Rome, there were two Britannic emperors, reigning for about a decade. After the end of Roman rule in Britain, the Imperator Cunedda forged the Kingdom of Gwynedd in northern Wales, but all his successors were titled kings and princes.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "There was no consistent title for the king of England before 1066, and monarchs chose to style themselves as they pleased. Imperial titles were used inconsistently, beginning with Athelstan in 930 and ended with the Norman conquest of England. Empress Matilda (1102–1167) is the only English monarch commonly referred to as \"emperor\" or \"empress\", but she acquired her title through her marriage to Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "During the rule of Henry VIII the Statute in Restraint of Appeals declared that 'this realm of England is an Empire...governed by one Supreme Head and King having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown of the same'. This was in the context of the divorce of Catherine of Aragon and the English Reformation, to emphasize that England had never accepted the quasi-imperial claims of the papacy. Hence England and, by extension its modern successor state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is according to English law an Empire ruled by a King endowed with the imperial dignity. However, this has not led to the creation of the title of Emperor in England, nor in Great Britain, nor in the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In 1801, George III rejected the title of Emperor when offered. The only period when British monarchs held the title of Emperor in a dynastic succession started when the title Empress of India was created for Queen Victoria. The government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, conferred the additional title upon her by an Act of Parliament, reputedly to assuage the monarch's irritation at being, as a mere Queen, notionally inferior to the emperors of Russia, Germany, and Austria. That included her own daughter (Princess Victoria, who was the wife of the reigning German Emperor). Hence, \"Queen Victoria felt handicapped in the battle of protocol by not being an Empress herself\". The Indian Imperial designation was also formally justified as the expression of Britain succeeding the former Mughal Emperor as suzerain over hundreds of princely states. The Indian Independence Act 1947 provided for the abolition of the use of the title \"Emperor of India\" by the British monarch, but this was not executed by King George VI until a royal proclamation on 22 June 1948. Despite this, George VI continued as king of India until 1950 and as king of Pakistan until his death in 1952.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The last Empress of India was George VI's wife, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Under the guise of idealism giving way to realism, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848 to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck's authoritarian Realpolitik. Bismarck wanted to unify the rival German states to achieve his aim of a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany. Three wars led to military successes and helped to convince German people to do this: the Second war of Schleswig against Denmark in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War against Austria in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War against the Second French Empire in 1870–71. During the Siege of Paris in 1871, the North German Confederation, supported by its allies from southern Germany, formed the German Empire with the proclamation of the Prussian king Wilhelm I as German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, to the humiliation of the French, who ceased to resist only days later.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "After his death he was succeeded by his son Frederick III who was only emperor for 99 days. In the same year his son Wilhelm II became the third emperor within a year. He was the last German emperor. After the empire's defeat in World War I the empire, called the German Reich, had a president as head of state instead of an emperor. The use of the word Reich was abandoned following World War II.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "In 1472, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Sophia Palaiologina, married Ivan III, grand prince of Moscow, who began championing the idea of Russia being the successor to the Byzantine Empire. This idea was represented more emphatically in the composition the monk Filofej addressed to their son Vasili III. In 1480, after ending Muscovy's dependence on its overlords of the Great Horde, Ivan III began the usage of the titles Tsar and Autocrat (samoderzhets). His insistence on recognition as such by the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire since 1489 resulted in the granting of this recognition in 1514 by Emperor Maximilian I to Vasili III. His son Ivan IV emphatically crowned himself Tsar of Russia on 16 January 1547. The word \"Tsar\" derives from Latin Caesar, but this title was used in Russia as equivalent to \"King\"; the error occurred when medieval Russian clerics referred to the biblical Jewish kings with the same title that was used to designate Roman and Byzantine rulers — \"Caesar\".",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On 31 October 1721, Peter I was proclaimed Emperor by the Governing Senate. The title used was Latin \"Imperator\", which is a westernizing form equivalent to the traditional Slavic title \"Tsar\". He based his claim partially upon a letter discovered in 1717 written in 1514 from Maximilian I to Vasili III, in which the Holy Roman Emperor used the term in referring to Vasili.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "A formal address to the ruling Russian monarch adopted thereafter was 'Your Imperial Majesty'. The crown prince was addressed as 'Your Imperial Highness'.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The title has not been used in Russia since the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II on 15 March 1917.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "The Russian Empire produced four reigning Empresses, all in the eighteenth century.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "The role of head of the House of Romanov is claimed by Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia (Great-great-granddaughter of Alexander II of Russia), Prince Andrew Romanoff (great-great-grandson of Nicholas I of Russia), and Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen (Great-grandson of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia).",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1345, the Serbian King Stefan Uroš IV Dušan proclaimed himself Emperor (Tsar) and was crowned as such at Skopje on Easter 1346 by the newly created Serbian Patriarch, and by the Patriarch of Bulgaria and the autocephalous Archbishop of Ohrid. His imperial title was recognized by Bulgaria and various other neighbors and trading partners but not by the Byzantine Empire. In its final standardized form, the Serbian imperial title read \"Emperor of Serbs and Greeks\" (цар Срба и Грка, car Srba i Grka in modern Serbian). It was only employed by two monarchs in Serbia, Stefan Uroš IV Dušan and his son Stefan Uroš V, becoming extinct after the latter's death in 1371. A half-brother of Dušan, Simeon Uroš, and then his son Jovan Uroš, claimed the same title, until the latter's abdication in 1373, while ruling as dynasts in Thessaly. The \"Greek\" component in the Serbian imperial title indicates both rule over Greek speakers and the derivation of the imperial tradition from the Romans. A renegade Hungarian-Serb commander, Jovan Nenad, who claimed to be a descendant of Serbian and Byzantine rulers, styled himself Emperor.",
"title": "Emperors of Europe"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Ottoman rulers held many titles and appellations denoting their Imperial status. These included: Sultan of Sultans, Padishah, and Hakan.",
"title": "Ottoman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "The full style of the Ottoman sultan once the empire's frontiers had stabilized became:",
"title": "Ottoman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Sultan (given name) Khan, Sovereign of The Sublime House of Osman, Sultan us-Selatin (Sultan of Sultans), Hakan (Khan of Khans), Commander of the faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Custodian of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Quds (Jerusalem), Padishah (Emperor) of The Three Cities of Istanbul (Constantinople), Edirne (Adrianople) and Bursa, and of the Cities of Châm (Damascus) and Cairo (Egypt), of all Azerbaijan, of the Maghreb, of Barkah, of Kairouan, of Alep, of the Arab and Persian Iraq, of Basra, of El Hasa strip, of Raqqa, of Mosul, of Parthia, of Diyâr-ı Bekr, of Cilicia, of the provinces of Erzurum, of Sivas, of Adana, of Karaman, of Van, of Barbaria, of Habech (Abyssinia), of Tunisia, of Tripoli, of Châm (Syria), of Cyprus, of Rhodes, of Crete, of the province of Morea (Peloponnese), of Bahr-i Sefid (Mediterranean Sea), of Bahr-i Siyah (Black Sea), of Anatolia, of Rumelia (the European part of the Empire), of Bagdad, of Kurdistan, of Greece, of Turkestan, of Tartary, of Circassia, of the two regions of Kabarda, of Gorjestan (Georgia), of the steppe of Kipchaks, of the whole country of the Tatars, of Kefa (Theodosia) and of all the neighbouring regions, of Bosnia, of the City and Fort of Belgrade, of the province of Sirbistan (Serbia), with all the castles and cities, of all Arnaut, of all Eflak (Wallachia) and Bogdania (Moldavia), as well as all the dependencies and borders, and many others countries and cities.",
"title": "Ottoman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "After the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman sultans began to style themselves Kaysar-i Rum (Ceaser of the Romans) as they asserted themselves to be the heirs to the Roman Empire by right of conquest. The title was of such importance to them that it led them to eliminate the various Byzantine successor states – and therefore rival claimants – over the next eight years. Though the term \"emperor\" was rarely used by Westerners of the Ottoman sultan, it was generally accepted by Westerners that he had imperial status.",
"title": "Ottoman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Harun Osman is currently the head of the Ottoman dynasty.",
"title": "Ottoman Empire"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The Aztec and Inca traditions are unrelated to one another. Both were conquered under the reign of King Charles I of Spain who was simultaneously emperor-elect of the Holy Roman Empire during the fall of the Aztecs and fully emperor during the fall of the Incas. Incidentally by being king of Spain, he was also Roman (Byzantine) emperor in pretence through Andreas Palaiologos. The translations of their titles were provided by the Spanish.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "The only pre-Columbian North American rulers to be commonly called emperors were the Huey Tlatoani (es:Huey Tlatoani) of the Mexica city-states of Tenochtitlan, Tlacopan and Texcoco, which along with their allies and tributaries are popularly known as the Aztec Empire (1375–1521). Tlatoani is a generic Nahuatl word for \"ruler\"; however, most English translators use \"king\" for their translation, thus rendering huey tlatoani as great king or emperor.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Triple Alliance was an elected monarchy chosen by the elite. The emperors of Tenochtitlan and Texcoco were nominally equals, each receiving two-fifths of tribute from the vassal kingdoms, whereas the emperor of Tlacopan was a junior member and only received one-fifth of the tribute, due to the fact that Tlacopan was a newcomer to the alliance. Despite the nominal equality, Tenochtitlan eventually assumed a de facto dominant role in the Empire, to the point that even the emperors of Tlacopan and Texcoco would acknowledge Tenochtitlan's effective supremacy. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés executed Emperor Cuauhtémoc and installed puppet rulers who became vassals for Spain.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The only pre-Columbian South American rulers to be commonly called emperors were the Sapa Inca of the Inca Empire (1438–1533). Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, conquered the Inca for Spain, killed Emperor Atahualpa, and installed puppets as well. Atahualpa may actually be considered a usurper as he had achieved power by killing his half-brother and he did not perform the required coronation with the imperial crown mascaipacha by the Huillaq Uma (high priest).",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "When Napoleon I ordered the invasion of Portugal in 1807 because it refused to join the Continental System, the Portuguese Braganzas moved their capital to Rio de Janeiro to avoid the fate of the Spanish Bourbons (Napoleon I arrested them and made his brother Joseph king). When the French general Jean-Andoche Junot arrived in Lisbon, the Portuguese fleet had already left with all the local elite.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "In 1808, under a British naval escort, the fleet arrived in Brazil. Later, in 1815, the Portuguese Prince Regent (since 1816 King João VI) proclaimed the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, as a union of three kingdoms, lifting Brazil from its colonial status.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "After the fall of Napoleon I and the Liberal revolution in Portugal, the Portuguese royal family returned to Europe (1821). Prince Pedro of Braganza (King João's older son) stayed in South America acting as regent of the local kingdom, but, two years later in 1822, he proclaimed himself Pedro I, first Emperor of Brazil. He did, however, recognize his father, João VI, as Titular Emperor of Brazil —a purely honorific title—until João VI's death in 1826.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The empire came to an end in 1889, with the overthrow of Emperor Pedro II (Pedro I's son and successor), when the Brazilian republic was proclaimed.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Today the headship of the Imperial House of Brazil is disputed between two branches of the House of Orléans-Braganza.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Haiti was declared an empire by its ruler, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who made himself Jacques I, on 20 May 1805. He was assassinated the next year. Haiti again became an empire from 1849 to 1859 under Faustin Soulouque.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In Mexico, the First Mexican Empire was the first of two empires created. After the declaration of independence on 15 September 1821, it was the intention of the Mexican parliament to establish a commonwealth whereby the king of Spain, Ferdinand VII, would also be Emperor of Mexico, but in which both countries were to be governed by separate laws and with their own legislative offices. Should the king refuse the position, the law provided for a member of the House of Bourbon to accede to the Mexican throne.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Ferdinand VII, however, did not recognize the independence and said that Spain would not allow any other European prince to take the throne of Mexico. By request of Parliament, the president of the regency Agustín de Iturbide was proclaimed emperor of Mexico on 12 July 1822 as Agustín I. Agustín de Iturbide was the general who helped secure Mexican independence from Spanish rule, but was overthrown by the Plan of Casa Mata.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In 1863, the invading French, under Napoleon III (see above), in alliance with Mexican conservatives and nobility, helped create the Second Mexican Empire, and invited Archduke Maximilian, of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, younger brother of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I, to become emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. The childless Maximilian and his consort Empress Carlota of Mexico, daughter of Leopold I of Belgium, adopted Agustín's grandsons Agustin and Salvador as his heirs to bolster his claim to the throne of Mexico. Maximilian and Carlota made Chapultepec Castle their home, which has been the only palace in North America to house sovereigns. After the withdrawal of French protection in 1867, Maximilian was captured and executed by the liberal forces of Benito Juárez.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "This empire led to French influence in the Mexican culture and also immigration from France, Belgium, and Switzerland to Mexico. Maximilian's closest living agnatic relative is Karl von Habsburg, the head of the House of Habsburg.",
"title": "Emperors in the Americas"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In Persia, from the time of Darius the Great, Persian rulers used the title \"King of Kings\" (Shahanshah in Persian) since they had dominion over peoples from the borders of India to the borders of Greece and Egypt. Alexander the Great probably crowned himself shahanshah after conquering Persia, bringing the phrase basileus ton basileon to Greek. It is also known that Tigranes the Great, king of Armenia, was named as the king of kings when he made his empire after defeating the Parthians. Georgian title \"mephet'mephe\" has the same meaning.",
"title": "Persia (Iran)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "The last shahanshah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) was ousted in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution. Shahanshah is usually translated as king of kings or simply king for ancient rulers of the Achaemenid, Arsacid, and Sassanid dynasties, and often shortened to shah for rulers since the Safavid dynasty in the 16th century. Iranian rulers were typically regarded in the West as emperors.",
"title": "Persia (Iran)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Alongside the Maurya, other dynasties that are considered imperial by historians are the Chauhans, Tomars, Marathas, Guptas, Vijayanagara, Kakatiya, Hoysala, Mughals and the Cholas.",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The Sanskrit equivalents for emperor titles are:",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Samraat refers to the king of kings, meaning that he is not only a sovereign ruler but also has feudatories. Chakravarti literally means the ruler, the wheels of whose chariot roll everywhere without obstruction. This word has been used as an epithet of various Vedic deities, like Varuna, and has been attested in the Rig-Veda. The feminine equivalent of Samraat is Samrajni.",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "In the later Vedic age, a Samraat was only called Chakravarti Samraaṭ after performing the Vedic Ashwamedha Yajna, enabling him by religious tradition to claim superiority over the other kings and princes. A Chakravartī was always considered a Samraat, but the inverse was not always true. The feminine form of chakravarti is chakravartini.",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "The title of Samraaṭ has been used by many rulers of the Indian subcontinent. Most historians call Chandragupta Maurya the first samraaṭ (emperor) of the Indian subcontinent, because of the huge empire he ruled.",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The title of Maharaja, meaning \"great king\" in Sanskrit were also used by monarchs in South and Southeast Asia. The female equivalent of Maharaja is Maharani. The title Maharajadhiraja, the King of Kings form of Maharaja, is even higher than Maharaja. Imperial rulers like Chandragupta I of Guptas used the title Maharajadhiraja as emperor.",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "From the 14th century until the 19th century the Indian subcontinent was dominated by predominantly Muslim rulers first the Delhi Sultanate, used the title Sultan of Sultans, and then the Mughal Empire, used the title Shahenshah and Padishah (or Badshah).",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Towards the end of Mughal rule, the Maratha Empire was established and its rulers used the title Chhatrapati.",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "When the British monarchs ruled over India, they adopted the additional title of Kaisar-i-Hind (transl. Emperor of India).",
"title": "Indian subcontinent"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "From 1270 the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia used the title Nəgusä Nägäst, literally \"King of Kings\". The use of the king of kings style began a millennium earlier in this region, however, with the title being used by the kings of Aksum, beginning with Sembrouthes in the 3rd century.",
"title": "Africa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Another title used by this dynasty was Itegue Zetopia. Itegue translates as Empress, and was used by the only reigning Empress, Zauditu, along with the official title Negiste Negest (\"Queen of Kings\").",
"title": "Africa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "In 1936, the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III claimed the title of Emperor of Ethiopia after Ethiopia was occupied by Italy during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. After the defeat of the Italians by the British and the Ethiopians in 1941, Haile Selassie was restored to the throne but Victor Emmanuel did not relinquish his claim until 1943, even though he had no standing to the title.",
"title": "Africa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The current head of the Solomonic dynasty is Zera Yacob Amha Selassie.",
"title": "Africa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "In 1976, President Jean-Bédel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, proclaimed the country to be an autocratic Central African Empire, and made himself Emperor as Bokassa I. The expenses of his coronation ceremony actually bankrupted the country. He was overthrown three years later and the republic was restored.",
"title": "Africa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "皇帝 is the title of emperors in East Asia. An emperor is called Huángdì in Chinese, Hwangje in Korean, Hoàng đế in Vietnamese, and Kōtei in Japanese, but these are all just their respective pronunciations of the Chinese character 皇帝. But, the Japanese call only their emperors with the special title Tennō.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The rulers of China and (once Westerners became aware of the role) Japan were always accepted in the West as emperors, and referred to as such. The claims of other East Asian monarchies to the title may have been accepted for diplomatic purposes, but it was not necessarily used in more general contexts.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The East Asian tradition is different from the Roman tradition, having arisen separately. What links them together is the use of the Chinese logographs 皇 (huáng) and 帝 (dì) which together or individually are imperial. Because of the cultural influence of China, China's neighbors adopted these titles or had their native titles conform in hanzi. Anyone who spoke to the emperor was to address the emperor as bìxià (陛下, lit. the \"Bottom of the Steps\"), corresponding to the Imperial Majesty\"; shèngshàng (聖上, lit. Holy Highness); or wànsuì (萬歲, lit. \"You, of Ten Thousand Years\").",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "In 221 BC, Ying Zheng, who was king of Qin at the time, proclaimed himself Shi Huangdi (始皇帝), which translates as \"first emperor\". Huangdi is composed of huang (\"august one\", 皇) and di (\"sage-king\", 帝), and referred to legendary/mythological sage-emperors living several millennia earlier, of which three were huang and five were di. Thus Ying Zheng became Qin Shi Huang, abolishing the system where the huang/di titles were reserved to dead and/or mythological rulers. Since then, the title \"king\" became a lower ranked title, and later divided into two grades. Although not as popular, the title 王 wang (king or prince) was still used by many monarchs and dynasties in China up to the Taipings in the 19th century. 王 is pronounced vương in Vietnamese, ō in Japanese, and wang in Korean.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The imperial title continued in China until the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1912. The title was briefly revived from 12 December 1915 to 22 March 1916 by President Yuan Shikai and again in early July 1917 when General Zhang Xun attempted to restore last Qing emperor Puyi to the throne. Puyi retained the title and attributes of a foreign emperor, as a personal status, until 1924. After the Japanese occupied Manchuria in 1931, they proclaimed it to be the Empire of Manchukuo, and Puyi became emperor of Manchukuo. This empire ceased to exist when it was occupied by the Soviet Red Army in 1945.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "In general, an emperor would have one empress (Huanghou, 皇后) at one time, although posthumous entitlement to empress for a concubine was not uncommon. The earliest known usage of huanghou was in the Han dynasty. The emperor would generally select the empress from his concubines. In subsequent dynasties, when the distinction between wife and concubine became more accentuated, the crown prince would have chosen an empress-designate before his reign. Imperial China produced only one reigning empress, Wu Zetian, and she used the same Chinese title as an emperor (Huangdi, 皇帝). Wu Zetian then reigned for about 15 years (AD 690–705).",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Under the tributary system of China, monarchs of Korea and Vietnam sometimes called themselves emperor in their country. They introduced themselves as king for China and other countries (Emperor at home, king abroad). In Japan, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu a shogun was granted title of King of Japan for trade by the Ming emperor. However, the Shogun was a subject of the Japanese emperor. It was contrary to rules of tributary system, but the Ming emperor connived it for the purpose of suppressing the Wokou.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The earliest emperor recorded in Kojiki and Nihon Shoki is Emperor Jimmu, who is said to be a descendant of Amaterasu's grandson Ninigi who descended from Heaven (Tenson kōrin). If one believes what is written in Nihon Shoki, the emperors have an unbroken direct male lineage that goes back more than 2,600 years.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "In ancient Japan, the earliest titles for the sovereign were either ヤマト大王/大君 (yamato ōkimi, Grand King of Yamato), 倭王/倭国王 (waō/wakokuō, King of Wa, used externally), or 治天下大王 (amenoshita shiroshimesu ōkimi, Grand King who rules all under heaven, used internally).",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "In 607, Empress Suiko sent a diplomatic document to China, which she wrote \"the emperor of the land of the rising sun (日出處天子) sends a document to the emperor of the land of the setting sun (日沒處天子)\" and began to use the title emperor externally. As early as the 7th century, the word 天皇 (which can be read either as sumera no mikoto, divine order, or as tennō, Heavenly Emperor, the latter being derived from a Tang Chinese term referring to the Pole star around which all other stars revolve) began to be used. The earliest use of this term is found on a wooden slat, or mokkan, unearthed in Asuka-mura, Nara Prefecture in 1998. The slat dated back to the reign of Emperor Tenmu and Empress Jitō. The reading 'Tennō' has become the standard title for the Japanese sovereign up to the present age. The term 帝 (mikado, Emperor) is also found in literary sources.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "In the Japanese language, the word tennō is restricted to Japan's own monarch; kōtei (皇帝) is usually used for foreign emperors. Historically, retired emperors often kept power over a child-emperor as de facto regent. For a long time, a shōgun (formally the imperial military dictator, but made hereditary) or an imperial regent wielded actual political power. In fact, through much of Japanese history, the emperor has been little more than a figurehead. The Meiji Restoration restored practical abilities and the political system under Emperor Meiji. The last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned in 1868.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "After World War II, all claims of divinity were dropped (see Ningen-sengen). The Diet acquired all prerogative powers of the Crown, reverting the latter to a ceremonial role. By 1979, after the short-lived Central African Empire (1976–1979), Emperor Shōwa was the only monarch in the world with the title emperor.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "As of the early 21st century, Japan's succession law prohibits a female from ascending the throne. With the birth of a daughter as the first child of the then-Crown Prince Naruhito, Japan considered abandoning that rule. However, shortly after the announcement that Princess Kiko was pregnant with her third child, the proposal to alter the Imperial Household Law was suspended by then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. On 3 January 2007, as the child turned out to be a son, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe announced that he would drop the proposal.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Emperor Naruhito is the 126th monarch according to Japan's traditional order of succession. The second and third in line of succession are Fumihito, Prince Akishino and Prince Hisahito. Historically, Japan has had eight reigning empresses who used the genderless title Tennō, rather than the female consort title kōgō (皇后) or chūgū (中宮). There is ongoing discussion of the Japanese Imperial succession controversy. Although current Japanese law prohibits female succession, all Japanese emperors claim to trace their lineage to Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess of the Shintō religion. Thus, the emperor is thought to be the highest authority of the Shinto religion, and one of his duties is to perform Shinto rituals for the people of Japan.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Some rulers of Goguryeo (37 BC–AD 668) used the title of Taewang (태왕; 太王), literally translated as \"Greatest King\". The title of Taewang was also used by some rulers of Silla (57 BC–AD 935), including Beopheung and Jinheung.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "The rulers of Balhae (698–926) internally called themselves Seongwang (성왕; 聖王; lit. \"Holy King\").",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The rulers of Goryeo (918–1392) used the titles of emperor and Son of Heaven of the East of the Ocean (해동천자; 海東天子). Goryeo's imperial system ended in 1270 with capitulation to the Mongol Empire.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "In 1897, Gojong, the king of Joseon, proclaimed the founding of the Korean Empire (1897–1910), becoming the emperor of Korea. He declared the era name of \"Gwangmu\" (광무; 光武), meaning \"Bright and Martial\". The Korean Empire lasted until 1910, when it was annexed by the Empire of Japan.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "The title Khagan (khan of khans or grand khan) was held by Genghis Khan, founder of the Mongol Empire in 1206; he also formally took the Chinese title huangdi, as \"Genghis Emperor\" (成吉思皇帝; Chéngjísī Huángdì ). Only the Khagans from Genghis Khan to the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 are normally referred to as emperors in English.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Đại Việt Kingdom (40–43, 544–602, 938–1407, 1427–1945) (The first ruler of Vietnam to take the title of Emperor (Hoàng Đế) was the founder of the Early Lý dynasty, Lý Nam Đế, in the year AD 544)",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Ngô Quyền, the first ruler of Đại Việt as an independent state, used the title Vương (王, King). However, after the death of Ngô Quyền, the country immersed in a civil war known as Anarchy of the 12 Warlords that lasted for over 20 years. In the end, Đinh Bộ Lĩnh unified the country after defeating all the warlords and became the first ruler of Đại Việt to use the title Hoàng Đế (皇帝, Emperor) in 968. Succeeding rulers in Vietnam then continued to use this Emperor title until 1806 when this title was stopped being used for a century.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Đinh Bộ Lĩnh was not the first to claim the title of Đế (帝, Emperor). Before him, Lý Bí and Mai Thúc Loan also claimed this title. However, their rules were short-lived.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "The Vietnamese emperors also gave this title to their ancestors who were lords or influential figures in the previous dynasty, as did the Chinese emperors. This practice was one of the many indications that Vietnam considered itself an equal to China which remained intact up to the twentieth century.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "In 1802 the newly established Nguyễn dynasty requested canonization from the Chinese Jiaqing Emperor and received the title Quốc Vương (國王, King of a State) and the name of the country as Việt Nam (越南) instead Đại Việt (大越). To avoid unnecessary armed conflicts, the Vietnamese rulers accepted this in diplomatic relation and used the title Emperor only domestically. However, Vietnamese rulers never accepted the vassalage relationship with China and always refused to come to Chinese courts to pay homage to Chinese rulers (a sign of vassalage acceptance). China waged a number of wars against Vietnam throughout history, and after each failure, settled for the tributary relationship. The Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan waged three wars against Vietnam to force it into a vassalage relationship but after successive failures, Kublai Khan's successor, Temür Khan, finally settled for a tributary relationship with Vietnam. Vietnam sent tributary missions to China once in three years (with some periods of disruptions) until the 19th century, Sino-French War France replaced China in control of northern Vietnam.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "The emperors of the last dynasty of Vietnam continued to hold this title until the French conquered Vietnam. The emperor, however, was then a puppet figure only and could easily be disposed of by the French for more pro-France figure. Japan took Vietnam from France and the Axis-occupied Vietnam was declared an empire by the Japanese in March 1945. The line of emperors came to an end with Bảo Đại, who was deposed after the war, although he later served as head of state of South Vietnam from 1949 to 1955.",
"title": "East Asian tradition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "There have been many fictional emperors in movies and books. To see a list of these emperors, see Category of fictional emperors and empresses.",
"title": "Fictional uses"
}
]
| The word emperor can mean the male absolute ruler of an empire. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife, mother/grandmother, or a woman who rules in her own right and name. Emperors are generally recognized to be of the highest monarchic honor and rank, surpassing kings. In Europe, the title of Emperor has been used since the Middle Ages, considered in those times equal or almost equal in dignity to that of Pope due to the latter's position as visible head of the Church and spiritual leader of the Catholic part of Western Europe. The emperor of Japan is the only currently reigning monarch whose title is translated into English as "Emperor". Both emperors and kings are monarchs or sovereigns, but both emperor and empress are considered the higher monarchical titles. In as much as there is a strict definition of emperor, it is that an emperor has no relations implying the superiority of any other ruler and typically rules over more than one nation. Therefore, a king might be obliged to pay tribute to another ruler, or be restrained in his actions in some unequal fashion, but an emperor should in theory be completely free of such restraints. However, monarchs heading empires have not always used the title in all contexts—the British sovereign did not assume the title Empress of the British Empire even during the incorporation of India, though she was declared Empress of India. In Western Europe, the title of Emperor was used exclusively by the Holy Roman Emperor, whose imperial authority was derived from the concept of translatio imperii, i.e., they claimed succession to the authority of the Roman emperors, thus linking themselves to Roman institutions and traditions as part of state ideology. Although initially ruling much of Central Europe and northern Italy, by the 19th century, the emperor exercised little power beyond the German-speaking states. Although technically an elective title, by the late 16th century, the imperial title had in practice come to be inherited by the Habsburg Archdukes of Austria and, following the Thirty Years' War, their control over the states had become nearly non-existent. However, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French in 1804 and was shortly followed by Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, who declared himself Emperor of Austria in the same year. The position of Holy Roman Emperor nonetheless continued until Francis II abdicated that position in 1806. In Eastern Europe, the monarchs of Russia also used translatio imperii to wield imperial authority as successors to the Eastern Roman Empire. Their status was officially recognized by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1514, although not officially used by the Russian monarchs until 1547. However, the Russian emperors are better known by their Russian-language title of Tsar even after Peter the Great adopted the title of Emperor of All Russia in 1721. Historians have liberally used "emperor" and "empire" anachronistically and out of its Roman and European context to describe any large state from the past or the present. Such pre-Roman titles as Great King or King of Kings, used by the kings of Persia and others, are often considered as the equivalent. Sometimes this reference has even extended to non-monarchically ruled states and their spheres of influence, such as the Athenian Empire of the late 5th century BC, the Angevin Empire of the Plantagenets and the Soviet and American "empires" of the Cold War era. However, such "empires" did not need to be headed by an "emperor". "Empire" became identified instead with vast territorial holdings rather than the title of its ruler by the mid-18th century. For purposes of protocol, emperors were once given precedence over kings in international diplomatic relations, but currently, precedence among heads of state who are sovereigns—whether they be kings, queens, emperors, empresses, princes, princesses and, to a lesser degree, presidents—is determined by the duration of time that each one has been continuously in office. Outside the European context, "emperor" was the translation given to holders of titles who were accorded the same precedence as European emperors in diplomatic terms. In reciprocity, these rulers might accredit equal titles in their native languages to their European peers. Through centuries of international convention, this has become the dominant rule to identifying an emperor in the modern era. | 2001-11-21T19:55:12Z | 2023-12-28T12:28:27Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor |
10,113 | Egalitarianism | Egalitarianism (from French égal 'equal'), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds on the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. As such, all citizens of a state should be accorded equal rights and treatment under the law. Egalitarian doctrines have supported many modern social movements, including the Enlightenment, feminism, civil rights, and international human rights.
Some specifically focused egalitarian concerns include communism, legal egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism, political egalitarianism, gender egalitarianism, racial equality, equality of opportunity, and Christian egalitarianism. Common forms of egalitarianism include political and philosophical.
One argument is that liberalism provides democratic societies with the means to carry out civic reform by providing a framework for developing public policy and providing the correct conditions for individuals to achieve civil rights.
The English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the United States Constitution use only the term person in operative language involving fundamental rights and responsibilities, except for a reference to men in the English Bill of Rights regarding men on trial for treason; and a rule of proportional Congressional representation in the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
As the rest of the Constitution, in its operative language the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution uses the term person, stating that "nor shall any State deprives any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws".
The motto "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" was used during the French Revolution and is still used as an official motto of the French government. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen French Constitution is also framed with this basis in equal rights of humankind.
The Declaration of Independence of the United States is an example of an assertion of equality of men as "All men are created equal" and the wording of men and man is a reference to both men and women, i.e., mankind. John Locke is sometimes considered the founder of this form. Many state constitutions in the United States also use the rights of man language rather than rights of person since the noun man has always been a reference to and an inclusion of both men and women.
The Tunisian Constitution of 2014 provides that "men and women shall be equal in their rights and duties".
Feminism is informed by egalitarian philosophy, being a gender-focused philosophy of equality. Feminism is distinguished from egalitarianism by also existing as a political and social movement.
At a cultural level, egalitarian theories have developed in sophistication and acceptance during the past two hundred years. Among the notable broadly egalitarian philosophies are socialism, communism, social anarchism, libertarian socialism, left-libertarianism, and progressivism, some of which propound economic egalitarianism. Whether any of these ideas have been significantly implemented in practice remains a controversial question. Anti-egalitarianism or elitism is opposition to egalitarianism.
An early example of equality is what might be described as outcome economic egalitarianism is the Chinese philosophy of agriculturalism which held that the economic policies of a country need to be based upon egalitarian self-sufficiency.
In socialism, social ownership of means of production is sometimes considered to be a form of economic egalitarianism because in an economy characterized by social ownership the surplus product generated by industry would accrue to the population as a whole as opposed to a class of private owners, thereby granting each increased autonomy and greater equality in their relationships with one another. Although the economist Karl Marx is sometimes mistaken to be an egalitarian, Marx eschewed normative theorizing on moral principles altogether. Marx did have a theory of the evolution of moral principles concerning specific economic systems.
The American economist John Roemer has put forth a new perspective on equality and its relationship to socialism. Roemer attempts to reformulate Marxist analysis to accommodate normative principles of distributive justice, shifting the argument for socialism away from purely technical and materialist reasons to one of distributive justice. Roemer argues that according to the principle of distributive justice, the traditional definition of socialism is based on the principle that individual compensation is proportional to the value of the labor one expends in production ("To each according to his contribution") is inadequate. Roemer concludes that egalitarians must reject socialism as it is classically defined for equality to be realized.
Many philosophers, including Ingmar Persson, Peter Vallentyne, Nils Holtug, Catia Faria and Lewis Gompertz, have argued that egalitarianism implies that the interests of non-human animals must be taken into account as well. Philosopher Oscar Horta has further argued that egalitarianism implies rejecting speciesism, ceasing to exploit nonhuman animals and aiding animals suffering in nature. Furthermore, Horta argues that nonhuman animals should be prioritized since they are worse off then humans.
In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Galatians 3:28 ("There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus") in a pamphlet opposing racial segregation in the United States. He wrote, "Racial segregation is a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ." He also alluded to that verse at the end of his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. The verse is cited to support an egalitarian interpretation of Christianity. According to Jakobus M. Vorster, the central question debated by theologians is whether the statement about ecclesiastical relationships can be translated into a Christian-ethical norm for all human relationships. Vorster argues that it can, and that the verse provides a Christian foundation for the promotion of human rights and equality, in contrast to "patriarchy, racism and exploitation" which in his opinion are caused by human sinfulness. Karin Neutel notes how some apply the philosophy of Paul's statement to include sexuality, health and race saying "[The original] three pairs must have been as relevant in the first century, as the additional categories are today." She argues that the verse points to a utopian, cosmopolitan community.
The verse 49:13 of The Quran states: "O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted". Muhammad echoed these egalitarian sentiments, sentiments that clashed with the practices of the pre-Islamic cultures. In a review of Louise Marlow's Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought, Ismail Poonawala argues the desire for the Arab-Muslim Empire to consolidate power and administer the state rather led to the deemphasis of egalitarian teachings in the Qur'an and by the Prophet.
Modern egalitarianism is a theory that rejects the classic definition of egalitarianism as a possible achievement economically, politically, and socially. Modern egalitarianism theory, or new egalitarianism, outlines that if everyone had the same opportunity cost, then there would be no comparative advances and no one would gain from trading with each other. In essence, the immense gains people receive from trading with each other arise because they are unequal in characteristics and talents—these differences may be innate or developed so that people can gain from trading with each other.
The Atlas movement defines equitism as the idea that all groups should have equal rights and benefits. The term has been used as the claimed philosophical basis of Telosa, a proposed utopia to be built in the US by Marc Lore.
Thompson et al. theorize that any society consisting of only one perspective, be it egalitarianism, hierarchies, individualist, fatalist or autonomists will be inherently unstable as the claim is that an interplay between all these perspectives are required if each perspective is to be fulfilling. Although an individualist according to cultural theory is aversive towards both principles and groups, individualism is not fulfilling if individual brilliance cannot be recognized by groups, or if individual brilliance cannot be made permanent in the form of principles. Accordingly, they argue that egalitarians have no power except through their presence, unless they (by definition, reluctantly) embrace principles which enable them to cooperate with fatalists and hierarchies. They argue that this means they will also have no individual sense of direction without a group, which could be mitigated by following individuals outside their group, namely autonomists or individualists. Alexander Berkman suggests that "equality does not mean an equal amount but equal opportunity. ... Do not make the mistake of identifying equality in liberty with the forced equality of the convict camp. True anarchist equality implies freedom, not quantity. It does not mean that everyone must eat, drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in the same manner. Far from it: the very reverse. ... Individual needs and tastes differ, as appetites differ. It is an equal opportunity to satisfy them that constitutes true equality. ... Far from leveling, such equality opens the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development. For human character is diverse."
The cultural theory of risk holds egalitarianism—with fatalism termed as its opposite—as defined by a negative attitude towards rules and principles; and a positive attitude towards group decision-making. The theory distinguishes between hierarchists, who are positive towards both rules and groups; and egalitarians, who are positive towards groups, but negative towards rules. This is by definition a form of anarchist equality as referred to by Berkman. Thus, the fabric of an egalitarian society is held together by cooperation and implicit peer pressure rather than by explicit rules and punishment.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that an international proletarian revolution would bring about a socialist society which would then eventually give way to a communist stage of social development which would be a classless, stateless, moneyless, humane society erected on common ownership of the means of production and the principle of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs". Marxism rejected egalitarianism in the sense of greater equality between classes, clearly distinguishing it from the socialist notion of the abolition of classes based on the division between workers and owners of productive property. Allen Woods finds that Marx's view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal interest such as a universal notion of equality, but it was about the creation of the conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires, making Marx's notion of communist society radically individualistic.
Although his position is often confused or conflated with distributive egalitarianism in which only the goods and services resulting from production are distributed according to notional equality, Marx eschewed the entire concept of equality as abstract and bourgeois, preferring to focus on more concrete principles such as opposition to exploitation on materialist grounds and economic logic.
In the title essay of his book Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, Murray Rothbard argued that egalitarian theory always results in a politics of statist control because it is founded on revolt against the ontological structure of reality itself.
According to Rothbard, individuals are naturally unequal in their abilities, talents, and characteristics. He believed that this inequality was not only natural but necessary for a functioning society. In his view, people's unique qualities and abilities are what allow them to contribute to society in different ways.
Rothbard argued that egalitarianism was a misguided attempt to impose an artificial equality on individuals, which would ultimately lead to societal breakdown. He believed that attempts to force equality through government policies or other means would stifle individual freedom and prevent people from pursuing their own interests and passions.
Furthermore, Rothbard believed that egalitarianism was rooted in envy and resentment towards those who were more successful or talented than others. He saw it as a destructive force that would lead to a culture of mediocrity, where people were discouraged from striving for excellence. | [
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"text": "Egalitarianism (from French égal 'equal'), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds on the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. As such, all citizens of a state should be accorded equal rights and treatment under the law. Egalitarian doctrines have supported many modern social movements, including the Enlightenment, feminism, civil rights, and international human rights.",
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"text": "The English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the United States Constitution use only the term person in operative language involving fundamental rights and responsibilities, except for a reference to men in the English Bill of Rights regarding men on trial for treason; and a rule of proportional Congressional representation in the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
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"text": "As the rest of the Constitution, in its operative language the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution uses the term person, stating that \"nor shall any State deprives any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws\".",
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"text": "The motto \"Liberté, égalité, fraternité\" was used during the French Revolution and is still used as an official motto of the French government. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen French Constitution is also framed with this basis in equal rights of humankind.",
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"text": "The Declaration of Independence of the United States is an example of an assertion of equality of men as \"All men are created equal\" and the wording of men and man is a reference to both men and women, i.e., mankind. John Locke is sometimes considered the founder of this form. Many state constitutions in the United States also use the rights of man language rather than rights of person since the noun man has always been a reference to and an inclusion of both men and women.",
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"text": "The Tunisian Constitution of 2014 provides that \"men and women shall be equal in their rights and duties\".",
"title": "Forms"
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{
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"text": "Feminism is informed by egalitarian philosophy, being a gender-focused philosophy of equality. Feminism is distinguished from egalitarianism by also existing as a political and social movement.",
"title": "Forms"
},
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"text": "At a cultural level, egalitarian theories have developed in sophistication and acceptance during the past two hundred years. Among the notable broadly egalitarian philosophies are socialism, communism, social anarchism, libertarian socialism, left-libertarianism, and progressivism, some of which propound economic egalitarianism. Whether any of these ideas have been significantly implemented in practice remains a controversial question. Anti-egalitarianism or elitism is opposition to egalitarianism.",
"title": "Forms"
},
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"text": "An early example of equality is what might be described as outcome economic egalitarianism is the Chinese philosophy of agriculturalism which held that the economic policies of a country need to be based upon egalitarian self-sufficiency.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In socialism, social ownership of means of production is sometimes considered to be a form of economic egalitarianism because in an economy characterized by social ownership the surplus product generated by industry would accrue to the population as a whole as opposed to a class of private owners, thereby granting each increased autonomy and greater equality in their relationships with one another. Although the economist Karl Marx is sometimes mistaken to be an egalitarian, Marx eschewed normative theorizing on moral principles altogether. Marx did have a theory of the evolution of moral principles concerning specific economic systems.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The American economist John Roemer has put forth a new perspective on equality and its relationship to socialism. Roemer attempts to reformulate Marxist analysis to accommodate normative principles of distributive justice, shifting the argument for socialism away from purely technical and materialist reasons to one of distributive justice. Roemer argues that according to the principle of distributive justice, the traditional definition of socialism is based on the principle that individual compensation is proportional to the value of the labor one expends in production (\"To each according to his contribution\") is inadequate. Roemer concludes that egalitarians must reject socialism as it is classically defined for equality to be realized.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Many philosophers, including Ingmar Persson, Peter Vallentyne, Nils Holtug, Catia Faria and Lewis Gompertz, have argued that egalitarianism implies that the interests of non-human animals must be taken into account as well. Philosopher Oscar Horta has further argued that egalitarianism implies rejecting speciesism, ceasing to exploit nonhuman animals and aiding animals suffering in nature. Furthermore, Horta argues that nonhuman animals should be prioritized since they are worse off then humans.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. quoted Galatians 3:28 (\"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus\") in a pamphlet opposing racial segregation in the United States. He wrote, \"Racial segregation is a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ.\" He also alluded to that verse at the end of his 1963 \"I Have a Dream\" speech. The verse is cited to support an egalitarian interpretation of Christianity. According to Jakobus M. Vorster, the central question debated by theologians is whether the statement about ecclesiastical relationships can be translated into a Christian-ethical norm for all human relationships. Vorster argues that it can, and that the verse provides a Christian foundation for the promotion of human rights and equality, in contrast to \"patriarchy, racism and exploitation\" which in his opinion are caused by human sinfulness. Karin Neutel notes how some apply the philosophy of Paul's statement to include sexuality, health and race saying \"[The original] three pairs must have been as relevant in the first century, as the additional categories are today.\" She argues that the verse points to a utopian, cosmopolitan community.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The verse 49:13 of The Quran states: \"O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted\". Muhammad echoed these egalitarian sentiments, sentiments that clashed with the practices of the pre-Islamic cultures. In a review of Louise Marlow's Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought, Ismail Poonawala argues the desire for the Arab-Muslim Empire to consolidate power and administer the state rather led to the deemphasis of egalitarian teachings in the Qur'an and by the Prophet.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Modern egalitarianism is a theory that rejects the classic definition of egalitarianism as a possible achievement economically, politically, and socially. Modern egalitarianism theory, or new egalitarianism, outlines that if everyone had the same opportunity cost, then there would be no comparative advances and no one would gain from trading with each other. In essence, the immense gains people receive from trading with each other arise because they are unequal in characteristics and talents—these differences may be innate or developed so that people can gain from trading with each other.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Atlas movement defines equitism as the idea that all groups should have equal rights and benefits. The term has been used as the claimed philosophical basis of Telosa, a proposed utopia to be built in the US by Marc Lore.",
"title": "Forms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Thompson et al. theorize that any society consisting of only one perspective, be it egalitarianism, hierarchies, individualist, fatalist or autonomists will be inherently unstable as the claim is that an interplay between all these perspectives are required if each perspective is to be fulfilling. Although an individualist according to cultural theory is aversive towards both principles and groups, individualism is not fulfilling if individual brilliance cannot be recognized by groups, or if individual brilliance cannot be made permanent in the form of principles. Accordingly, they argue that egalitarians have no power except through their presence, unless they (by definition, reluctantly) embrace principles which enable them to cooperate with fatalists and hierarchies. They argue that this means they will also have no individual sense of direction without a group, which could be mitigated by following individuals outside their group, namely autonomists or individualists. Alexander Berkman suggests that \"equality does not mean an equal amount but equal opportunity. ... Do not make the mistake of identifying equality in liberty with the forced equality of the convict camp. True anarchist equality implies freedom, not quantity. It does not mean that everyone must eat, drink, or wear the same things, do the same work, or live in the same manner. Far from it: the very reverse. ... Individual needs and tastes differ, as appetites differ. It is an equal opportunity to satisfy them that constitutes true equality. ... Far from leveling, such equality opens the door for the greatest possible variety of activity and development. For human character is diverse.\"",
"title": "Discussion "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The cultural theory of risk holds egalitarianism—with fatalism termed as its opposite—as defined by a negative attitude towards rules and principles; and a positive attitude towards group decision-making. The theory distinguishes between hierarchists, who are positive towards both rules and groups; and egalitarians, who are positive towards groups, but negative towards rules. This is by definition a form of anarchist equality as referred to by Berkman. Thus, the fabric of an egalitarian society is held together by cooperation and implicit peer pressure rather than by explicit rules and punishment.",
"title": "Discussion "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that an international proletarian revolution would bring about a socialist society which would then eventually give way to a communist stage of social development which would be a classless, stateless, moneyless, humane society erected on common ownership of the means of production and the principle of \"From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs\". Marxism rejected egalitarianism in the sense of greater equality between classes, clearly distinguishing it from the socialist notion of the abolition of classes based on the division between workers and owners of productive property. Allen Woods finds that Marx's view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal interest such as a universal notion of equality, but it was about the creation of the conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires, making Marx's notion of communist society radically individualistic.",
"title": "Discussion "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Although his position is often confused or conflated with distributive egalitarianism in which only the goods and services resulting from production are distributed according to notional equality, Marx eschewed the entire concept of equality as abstract and bourgeois, preferring to focus on more concrete principles such as opposition to exploitation on materialist grounds and economic logic.",
"title": "Discussion "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the title essay of his book Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, Murray Rothbard argued that egalitarian theory always results in a politics of statist control because it is founded on revolt against the ontological structure of reality itself.",
"title": "Discussion "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "According to Rothbard, individuals are naturally unequal in their abilities, talents, and characteristics. He believed that this inequality was not only natural but necessary for a functioning society. In his view, people's unique qualities and abilities are what allow them to contribute to society in different ways.",
"title": "Discussion "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Rothbard argued that egalitarianism was a misguided attempt to impose an artificial equality on individuals, which would ultimately lead to societal breakdown. He believed that attempts to force equality through government policies or other means would stifle individual freedom and prevent people from pursuing their own interests and passions.",
"title": "Discussion "
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Furthermore, Rothbard believed that egalitarianism was rooted in envy and resentment towards those who were more successful or talented than others. He saw it as a destructive force that would lead to a culture of mediocrity, where people were discouraged from striving for excellence.",
"title": "Discussion "
}
]
| Egalitarianism, or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds on the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. As such, all citizens of a state should be accorded equal rights and treatment under the law. Egalitarian doctrines have supported many modern social movements, including the Enlightenment, feminism, civil rights, and international human rights. | 2001-11-21T21:14:14Z | 2023-12-14T22:26:51Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism |
10,115 | Expert witness | An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as an expert. The judge may consider the witness's specialized (scientific, technical or other) opinion about evidence or about facts before the court within the expert's area of expertise, to be referred to as an "expert opinion". Expert witnesses may also deliver "expert evidence" within the area of their expertise. Their testimony may be rebutted by testimony from other experts or by other evidence or facts.
The forensic expert practice is an ancient profession. For example, in ancient Babylonia, midwives were used as experts in determining pregnancy, virginity and female fertility. Similarly, the Roman Empire recognized midwives, handwriting experts and land surveyors as legal experts. The codified use of expert witnesses and the admissibility of their testimony and scientific evidence has developed significantly in the Western court system over the last 250 years. The concept of allowing an expert witness to testify in a court setting and provide opinionated evidence on the facts of other witnesses was first introduced by Lord Mansfield in the case of Folkes v. Chadd in 1782. In this particular case, the court was hearing litigation regarding the silting of Wells Harbor in Norfolk and allowed leading civil engineer, John Smeaton, to provide scientific rationale behind the proposed legislation. The decision by the English Court to allow for an expert to provide contextual background and detail on a case is often cited as the root of modern rules on expert testimony.
Expert witnesses are called upon in the court system to serve as an objective party to the lawsuit and never function as an advocate for one side or the other. Expert witnesses are present in litigation to explain complicated scientific issues, not to influence the jury or judge with fervor. The main responsibilities of expert witnesses are to evaluate potential problems, defects, deficiencies, or errors only when able to fully appreciate a process or system. Expert witnesses are obligated to study the processes prior to making a survey or postpone the assignment prior to potentially missing the target due to lack of specific condition understanding. They are called to testify under the assumption that all the preparation required for a competent evaluation of the process has been made.
Typically, experts are relied on for opinions on severity of injury, degree of sanity, cause of failure in a machine or other device, loss of earnings and associated benefits, care costs, and the like. In an intellectual property case an expert may be shown two music scores, book texts, or circuit boards and asked to ascertain their degree of similarity. In the majority of cases, the expert's personal relation to the defendant is considered and usually adjudged to be irrelevant.
The tribunal itself, or the judge, can in some systems call upon experts to technically evaluate a certain fact or action, in order to provide the court with a complete knowledge on the fact/action it is judging. The expertise has the legal value of an acquisition of data. The results of these experts are then compared to those by the experts of the parties.
The expert has a great responsibility, and especially in penal trials, and perjury by an expert is a severely punished crime in most countries. The use of expert witnesses is sometimes criticized in the United States because in civil trials, they are often used by both sides to advocate differing positions, and it is left up to a jury to decide which expert witness to believe. Although experts are legally prohibited from expressing their opinion of submitted evidence until after they are hired, sometimes a party can surmise beforehand, because of reputation or prior cases, that the testimony will be favorable regardless of any basis in the submitted data; such experts are commonly disparaged as "hired guns."
An expert witness at the time of trial is qualified by the court and must be re-qualified each time that person comes to trial for the offering of opinions. The qualification is given by each trial judge and takes place regardless of prior appearances by a particular expert witness. Expert witnesses are those whom the court has deemed qualified to speak on a topic to provide background to anyone on a lay jury.
In high stakes cases multiple experts, in multiple topics, are often retained by each party. Although it is still relatively rare, the court itself may also retain its own independent expert. In all cases, fees paid to an expert may not be contingent on the outcome of the case.
Expert evidence is often the most important component of many civil and criminal cases today. Fingerprint examination, blood analysis, DNA fingerprinting, and forensic firearm examination are common kinds of expert evidence heard in serious criminal cases. In civil cases, the work of accident analysis, forensic engineers, and forensic accountants is usually important, the latter to assess damages and costs in long and complex cases. Intellectual property and medical negligence cases are typical examples.
Electronic evidence has also entered the courtroom as critical forensic evidence. Audio and video evidence must be authenticated by both parties in any litigation by a forensic expert who is also an expert witness who assists the court in understanding details about that electronic evidence.
Voice-mail recordings and closed-circuit television systems produce electronic evidence often used in litigation, more so today than in the past. Video recordings of bank robberies and audio recordings of life threats are presented in court rooms by electronic expert witnesses.
One important rule that applies to the expert witness but not the percipient witness is the exception to the hearsay rule. A percipient witness tells only what he/she actually knows about a case and nothing more. Percipient witnesses cannot give opinions nor conjecture regarding a hypothetical set of conditions. Conversely, the court does allow an expert to testify about issues that may not be personally known by them. This allows the expert to rely upon scientific articles, discussions with colleagues on the subject, testimony read in preparation for testimony in the case and similar pieces of information not personally known to the expert.
It is important that expert witnesses who handle evidence maintain a proper chain of custody such that they are able to authenticate the evidence, prove that it is what they represent it to be, when testifying at trial. Most notably in the context of a criminal prosecution, an expert witness who evaluates or examines an item pertinent to an investigation or case evaluation may add an entry to a "chain of custody" document, a form that contains the item's description, the time and date of release for all prior custodians of the item, and the time and date of release to the witness.
In the case of an expert witness, the weight of his/her evidence depends heavily on the foundation support established prior to an opinion being given. Examples include educational background, review of scholarly works, field studies and trainings which all lead up to developing a foundation of knowledge for credibility of a testimony. Before trial, all experts must prepare a report summarizing their analysis and conclusions and share the report with all other parties. This allows other parties to effectively cross-examine the expert.
If the witness needs to testify in court, the privilege is no longer protected. The expert witness's identity and nearly all documents used to prepare the testimony will become discoverable. Usually an experienced lawyer will advise the expert not to take notes on documents because all of the notes will be available to the other party.
An expert testifying in a United States federal court must satisfy the requirements of Fed. R. Evid. 702. Generally, under Rule 702, an expert is a person with "scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge" who can "assist the trier of fact," which is typically a jury. A witness who is being offered as an expert must first establish his or her competency in the relevant field through an examination of his or her credentials. The opposing attorney is permitted to conduct a voir dire of the witness in order to challenge that witness' qualifications. If qualified by the court, then the expert may testify "in the form of an opinion or otherwise" so long as: "(1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case."
Although experts can testify in any case in which their expertise is relevant, criminal cases are more likely to use forensic scientists or forensic psychologists, whereas civil cases, such as personal injury, may use forensic engineers, forensic accountants, employment consultants or care experts. Senior physicians – UK, Ireland, and Commonwealth consultants, U.S. attending physicians – are frequently used in both the civil and criminal courts.
The Federal Court of Australia has issued guidelines for experts appearing in Australian courts. This covers the format of the expert's written testimony as well as their behaviour in court. Similar procedures apply in non-court forums, such as the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
The educating witness teaches the fact-finder (jury or, in a bench trial, judge) about the underlying scientific theory and instrument implementing theory. This witness is an expert witness, called to elicit opinions that a theory is valid and the instruments involved are reliable. The witness must be qualified as an expert witness, which may require academic qualifications or specific training.
Called after teaching witness leaves stand. Usually the laboratory technician who personally conducted the test. Witness will describe both the test and the results. When describing test, will venture opinions that proper test procedures were used and that equipment was in good working order.
In the U.S., a party may hire experts to help them evaluate a given case. For example, a car maker may hire an experienced mechanic to decide if its cars were built to specification. This kind of expert opinion will be protected from discovery by the opposing party. In other words, if the expert finds evidence against their client, the opposite party will not automatically gain access to it. This privilege is similar to the work-product doctrine (not to be confused with attorney–client privilege).
The non-testifying expert can be present at the trial or hearing to aid the attorney in asking questions of other expert witnesses. Unlike a testifying expert, a non-testifying expert can be easily withdrawn from a case. It is also possible to change a non-testifying expert to a testifying expert before the expert disclosure date.
In the United States, under the Federal Rule of Evidence 702 (FRE), an expert witness must be qualified on the topic of testimony. In determining the qualifications of the expert, the FRE requires the expert have had specialized education, training, or practical experience in the subject matter relating to the case. The expert's testimony must be based on facts in evidence, and should offer opinion about the causation or correlation to the evidence in drawing a conclusion.
Experts in the U.S. typically are paid on an hourly basis for their services in investigating the facts, preparing a report, and if necessary, testifying during pre-trial discovery, or at trial. Hourly fees range from approximately $200 to $750 or more per hour, varying primarily by the expert's field of expertise, and the individual expert's qualifications and reputation. In several fields, such as handwriting analysis, where the expert compares signatures to determine the likelihood of a forgery, and medical case reviews by a physician or nurse, in which the expert goes over hospital and medical records to assess the possibility of malpractice, experts often initially charge a flat fixed fee for their initial report. As with the hourly fees discussed previously, the amount of that flat fee varies considerably based on the reviewing expert's field, experience and reputation.
In 2017 Kootenai County, Idaho paid nearly $600,000 during the trial over the killing of a Coeur d'Alene police officer, with the public defenders paying approximately $311,000 for seven experts and the prosecutors paying $270,000 for three experts. A 2021 survey conducted by SEAK, Inc., a company that helps professionals serve as expert witnesses, revealed a median hourly rate of $500, $400, and $475 for testifying in court, case preparation, and deposition respectively. As for the highest amount ever billed for a single case, the median was $24,000 and the mean was just over $62,000.
The expert's professional fee, plus his or her related expenses, is generally paid by the party retaining the expert. In some circumstance the party who prevails in the litigation may be entitled to recover the amounts paid to its expert from the losing party.
In law, scientific evidence is evidence derived from scientific knowledge or techniques. Most forensic evidence, including genetic evidence, is scientific evidence.
The Frye test, coming from the case Frye v. United States (1923), said that admissible scientific evidence must be a result of a theory that had "general acceptance" in the scientific community. This test results in uniform decisions regarding admissibility. In particular, the judges in Frye ruled that:
In 1923, the case of Frye v. United States instituted significant change to both criminal and civil law by addressing the use of expert witness testimony in conjunction with scientific testimony. In Frye v. United States, the defense team attempted to introduce both the results of a polygraph test administered to Frye to determine Frye's innocence as well as the testimony of an expert witness to verify and explain the results.
However, the court rejected the expert's testimony, ruling that: "While courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs."
Through this ruling, the judge's opinion in Frye v. United States set precedent and the standard by which expert witnesses would be utilized in the court system for decades. In the federal courts, between 1948 and 1975, Frye was cited 55 times; however, the use and application was not consistent. One of the major struggles that came out of this precedent was the application to both civil and criminal cases. Many of the courts and judges had trouble interpreting the "general acceptance" notion of a particular field in a concise and non-arbitrary manner. In 2012, courts in nine states still used the Frye standard when analyzing state expert witness rules.
The Federal Rules of Evidence
In 1975, the United States Congress issued the Federal Rules of Evidence. FRE 702 was issued to provide a standard for expert witness testimony to be upheld by the United States court system. The rule specified that the application of expert witnesses had to be attributed to a person with "scientific or technical knowledge," in conjunction with a list of qualifications that would quality one to be an expert in terms of "knowledge, skill, experience, training or education". This rule thus clarified the acceptable use of expert witnesses in both criminal and civil cases.
However, FRE 702 still left some courts in confusion. The courts who would use this new rule were confused as to whether FRE 702 served to bolster the "general acceptance" ruling in Frye or if FRE 702 was the replacement of this rule. For instance, in U.S. v. Williams (1978), the Second Circuit responded that "the applicable considerations [for expert witness testimony] are ‘probativeness, materiality, and reliability of the evidence on the one side, and any tendency to mislead, prejudice or confuse the jury on the other.'" The court appeared to reject the previous precedent set by Frye. The rationale in the Williams case was later adopted by other federal courts, including the Third Circuit which adopted a "reliability" test in 1984. Meanwhile, other federal courts stuck to the Frye precedent, causing a circuit split which would not be solved until the Supreme Court set a new expert standard in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993).
The Daubert standard arose out of the U.S. Supreme Court case Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. It provides four factors that courts ought to consider when determining whether expert testimony is admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence:
In 2012, twenty-two states used the Daubert test when analyzing their own expert witness rules.
In England and Wales, under the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), an expert witness is required to be independent and address his or her expert report to the court. A witness may be jointly instructed by both sides if the parties agree to this, especially in cases where the liability is relatively small.
Under the CPR, expert witnesses may be instructed to produce a joint statement detailing points of agreement and disagreement to assist the court or tribunal. The meeting is held quite independently of instructing lawyers, and often assists in resolution of a case, especially if the experts review and modify their opinions. When this happens, substantial trial costs can be saved when the parties to a dispute agree to a settlement. In most systems, the trial (or the procedure) can be suspended in order to allow the experts to study the case and produce their results. More frequently, meetings of experts occur before trial. Experts charge a professional fee which is paid by the party commissioning the report (both parties for joint instructions) although the report is addressed to the court. The fee must not be contingent on the outcome of the case. Expert witnesses may be subpoenaed (issued with a witness summons), although this is normally a formality to avoid court date clashes.
In Scots Law, Davie v Magistrates of Edinburgh (1953) provides authority that where a witness has particular knowledge or skills in an area being examined by the court, and has been called to court in order to elaborate on that area for the benefit of the court, that witness may give evidence of his/her opinion on that area.
During a Erdoğan-Gollum comparison trial, a panel of expert witnesses had to decide on the character of Gollum. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as an expert. The judge may consider the witness's specialized (scientific, technical or other) opinion about evidence or about facts before the court within the expert's area of expertise, to be referred to as an \"expert opinion\". Expert witnesses may also deliver \"expert evidence\" within the area of their expertise. Their testimony may be rebutted by testimony from other experts or by other evidence or facts.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The forensic expert practice is an ancient profession. For example, in ancient Babylonia, midwives were used as experts in determining pregnancy, virginity and female fertility. Similarly, the Roman Empire recognized midwives, handwriting experts and land surveyors as legal experts. The codified use of expert witnesses and the admissibility of their testimony and scientific evidence has developed significantly in the Western court system over the last 250 years. The concept of allowing an expert witness to testify in a court setting and provide opinionated evidence on the facts of other witnesses was first introduced by Lord Mansfield in the case of Folkes v. Chadd in 1782. In this particular case, the court was hearing litigation regarding the silting of Wells Harbor in Norfolk and allowed leading civil engineer, John Smeaton, to provide scientific rationale behind the proposed legislation. The decision by the English Court to allow for an expert to provide contextual background and detail on a case is often cited as the root of modern rules on expert testimony.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Expert witnesses are called upon in the court system to serve as an objective party to the lawsuit and never function as an advocate for one side or the other. Expert witnesses are present in litigation to explain complicated scientific issues, not to influence the jury or judge with fervor. The main responsibilities of expert witnesses are to evaluate potential problems, defects, deficiencies, or errors only when able to fully appreciate a process or system. Expert witnesses are obligated to study the processes prior to making a survey or postpone the assignment prior to potentially missing the target due to lack of specific condition understanding. They are called to testify under the assumption that all the preparation required for a competent evaluation of the process has been made.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Typically, experts are relied on for opinions on severity of injury, degree of sanity, cause of failure in a machine or other device, loss of earnings and associated benefits, care costs, and the like. In an intellectual property case an expert may be shown two music scores, book texts, or circuit boards and asked to ascertain their degree of similarity. In the majority of cases, the expert's personal relation to the defendant is considered and usually adjudged to be irrelevant.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The tribunal itself, or the judge, can in some systems call upon experts to technically evaluate a certain fact or action, in order to provide the court with a complete knowledge on the fact/action it is judging. The expertise has the legal value of an acquisition of data. The results of these experts are then compared to those by the experts of the parties.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The expert has a great responsibility, and especially in penal trials, and perjury by an expert is a severely punished crime in most countries. The use of expert witnesses is sometimes criticized in the United States because in civil trials, they are often used by both sides to advocate differing positions, and it is left up to a jury to decide which expert witness to believe. Although experts are legally prohibited from expressing their opinion of submitted evidence until after they are hired, sometimes a party can surmise beforehand, because of reputation or prior cases, that the testimony will be favorable regardless of any basis in the submitted data; such experts are commonly disparaged as \"hired guns.\"",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "An expert witness at the time of trial is qualified by the court and must be re-qualified each time that person comes to trial for the offering of opinions. The qualification is given by each trial judge and takes place regardless of prior appearances by a particular expert witness. Expert witnesses are those whom the court has deemed qualified to speak on a topic to provide background to anyone on a lay jury.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In high stakes cases multiple experts, in multiple topics, are often retained by each party. Although it is still relatively rare, the court itself may also retain its own independent expert. In all cases, fees paid to an expert may not be contingent on the outcome of the case.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Expert evidence is often the most important component of many civil and criminal cases today. Fingerprint examination, blood analysis, DNA fingerprinting, and forensic firearm examination are common kinds of expert evidence heard in serious criminal cases. In civil cases, the work of accident analysis, forensic engineers, and forensic accountants is usually important, the latter to assess damages and costs in long and complex cases. Intellectual property and medical negligence cases are typical examples.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Electronic evidence has also entered the courtroom as critical forensic evidence. Audio and video evidence must be authenticated by both parties in any litigation by a forensic expert who is also an expert witness who assists the court in understanding details about that electronic evidence.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Voice-mail recordings and closed-circuit television systems produce electronic evidence often used in litigation, more so today than in the past. Video recordings of bank robberies and audio recordings of life threats are presented in court rooms by electronic expert witnesses.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "One important rule that applies to the expert witness but not the percipient witness is the exception to the hearsay rule. A percipient witness tells only what he/she actually knows about a case and nothing more. Percipient witnesses cannot give opinions nor conjecture regarding a hypothetical set of conditions. Conversely, the court does allow an expert to testify about issues that may not be personally known by them. This allows the expert to rely upon scientific articles, discussions with colleagues on the subject, testimony read in preparation for testimony in the case and similar pieces of information not personally known to the expert.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "It is important that expert witnesses who handle evidence maintain a proper chain of custody such that they are able to authenticate the evidence, prove that it is what they represent it to be, when testifying at trial. Most notably in the context of a criminal prosecution, an expert witness who evaluates or examines an item pertinent to an investigation or case evaluation may add an entry to a \"chain of custody\" document, a form that contains the item's description, the time and date of release for all prior custodians of the item, and the time and date of release to the witness.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In the case of an expert witness, the weight of his/her evidence depends heavily on the foundation support established prior to an opinion being given. Examples include educational background, review of scholarly works, field studies and trainings which all lead up to developing a foundation of knowledge for credibility of a testimony. Before trial, all experts must prepare a report summarizing their analysis and conclusions and share the report with all other parties. This allows other parties to effectively cross-examine the expert.",
"title": "Role"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "If the witness needs to testify in court, the privilege is no longer protected. The expert witness's identity and nearly all documents used to prepare the testimony will become discoverable. Usually an experienced lawyer will advise the expert not to take notes on documents because all of the notes will be available to the other party.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "An expert testifying in a United States federal court must satisfy the requirements of Fed. R. Evid. 702. Generally, under Rule 702, an expert is a person with \"scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge\" who can \"assist the trier of fact,\" which is typically a jury. A witness who is being offered as an expert must first establish his or her competency in the relevant field through an examination of his or her credentials. The opposing attorney is permitted to conduct a voir dire of the witness in order to challenge that witness' qualifications. If qualified by the court, then the expert may testify \"in the form of an opinion or otherwise\" so long as: \"(1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.\"",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Although experts can testify in any case in which their expertise is relevant, criminal cases are more likely to use forensic scientists or forensic psychologists, whereas civil cases, such as personal injury, may use forensic engineers, forensic accountants, employment consultants or care experts. Senior physicians – UK, Ireland, and Commonwealth consultants, U.S. attending physicians – are frequently used in both the civil and criminal courts.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Federal Court of Australia has issued guidelines for experts appearing in Australian courts. This covers the format of the expert's written testimony as well as their behaviour in court. Similar procedures apply in non-court forums, such as the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The educating witness teaches the fact-finder (jury or, in a bench trial, judge) about the underlying scientific theory and instrument implementing theory. This witness is an expert witness, called to elicit opinions that a theory is valid and the instruments involved are reliable. The witness must be qualified as an expert witness, which may require academic qualifications or specific training.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Called after teaching witness leaves stand. Usually the laboratory technician who personally conducted the test. Witness will describe both the test and the results. When describing test, will venture opinions that proper test procedures were used and that equipment was in good working order.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the U.S., a party may hire experts to help them evaluate a given case. For example, a car maker may hire an experienced mechanic to decide if its cars were built to specification. This kind of expert opinion will be protected from discovery by the opposing party. In other words, if the expert finds evidence against their client, the opposite party will not automatically gain access to it. This privilege is similar to the work-product doctrine (not to be confused with attorney–client privilege).",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The non-testifying expert can be present at the trial or hearing to aid the attorney in asking questions of other expert witnesses. Unlike a testifying expert, a non-testifying expert can be easily withdrawn from a case. It is also possible to change a non-testifying expert to a testifying expert before the expert disclosure date.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In the United States, under the Federal Rule of Evidence 702 (FRE), an expert witness must be qualified on the topic of testimony. In determining the qualifications of the expert, the FRE requires the expert have had specialized education, training, or practical experience in the subject matter relating to the case. The expert's testimony must be based on facts in evidence, and should offer opinion about the causation or correlation to the evidence in drawing a conclusion.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Experts in the U.S. typically are paid on an hourly basis for their services in investigating the facts, preparing a report, and if necessary, testifying during pre-trial discovery, or at trial. Hourly fees range from approximately $200 to $750 or more per hour, varying primarily by the expert's field of expertise, and the individual expert's qualifications and reputation. In several fields, such as handwriting analysis, where the expert compares signatures to determine the likelihood of a forgery, and medical case reviews by a physician or nurse, in which the expert goes over hospital and medical records to assess the possibility of malpractice, experts often initially charge a flat fixed fee for their initial report. As with the hourly fees discussed previously, the amount of that flat fee varies considerably based on the reviewing expert's field, experience and reputation.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In 2017 Kootenai County, Idaho paid nearly $600,000 during the trial over the killing of a Coeur d'Alene police officer, with the public defenders paying approximately $311,000 for seven experts and the prosecutors paying $270,000 for three experts. A 2021 survey conducted by SEAK, Inc., a company that helps professionals serve as expert witnesses, revealed a median hourly rate of $500, $400, and $475 for testifying in court, case preparation, and deposition respectively. As for the highest amount ever billed for a single case, the median was $24,000 and the mean was just over $62,000.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The expert's professional fee, plus his or her related expenses, is generally paid by the party retaining the expert. In some circumstance the party who prevails in the litigation may be entitled to recover the amounts paid to its expert from the losing party.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In law, scientific evidence is evidence derived from scientific knowledge or techniques. Most forensic evidence, including genetic evidence, is scientific evidence.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The Frye test, coming from the case Frye v. United States (1923), said that admissible scientific evidence must be a result of a theory that had \"general acceptance\" in the scientific community. This test results in uniform decisions regarding admissibility. In particular, the judges in Frye ruled that:",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In 1923, the case of Frye v. United States instituted significant change to both criminal and civil law by addressing the use of expert witness testimony in conjunction with scientific testimony. In Frye v. United States, the defense team attempted to introduce both the results of a polygraph test administered to Frye to determine Frye's innocence as well as the testimony of an expert witness to verify and explain the results.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "However, the court rejected the expert's testimony, ruling that: \"While courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs.\"",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Through this ruling, the judge's opinion in Frye v. United States set precedent and the standard by which expert witnesses would be utilized in the court system for decades. In the federal courts, between 1948 and 1975, Frye was cited 55 times; however, the use and application was not consistent. One of the major struggles that came out of this precedent was the application to both civil and criminal cases. Many of the courts and judges had trouble interpreting the \"general acceptance\" notion of a particular field in a concise and non-arbitrary manner. In 2012, courts in nine states still used the Frye standard when analyzing state expert witness rules.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The Federal Rules of Evidence",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1975, the United States Congress issued the Federal Rules of Evidence. FRE 702 was issued to provide a standard for expert witness testimony to be upheld by the United States court system. The rule specified that the application of expert witnesses had to be attributed to a person with \"scientific or technical knowledge,\" in conjunction with a list of qualifications that would quality one to be an expert in terms of \"knowledge, skill, experience, training or education\". This rule thus clarified the acceptable use of expert witnesses in both criminal and civil cases.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "However, FRE 702 still left some courts in confusion. The courts who would use this new rule were confused as to whether FRE 702 served to bolster the \"general acceptance\" ruling in Frye or if FRE 702 was the replacement of this rule. For instance, in U.S. v. Williams (1978), the Second Circuit responded that \"the applicable considerations [for expert witness testimony] are ‘probativeness, materiality, and reliability of the evidence on the one side, and any tendency to mislead, prejudice or confuse the jury on the other.'\" The court appeared to reject the previous precedent set by Frye. The rationale in the Williams case was later adopted by other federal courts, including the Third Circuit which adopted a \"reliability\" test in 1984. Meanwhile, other federal courts stuck to the Frye precedent, causing a circuit split which would not be solved until the Supreme Court set a new expert standard in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993).",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The Daubert standard arose out of the U.S. Supreme Court case Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. It provides four factors that courts ought to consider when determining whether expert testimony is admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence:",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 2012, twenty-two states used the Daubert test when analyzing their own expert witness rules.",
"title": "United States"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In England and Wales, under the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), an expert witness is required to be independent and address his or her expert report to the court. A witness may be jointly instructed by both sides if the parties agree to this, especially in cases where the liability is relatively small.",
"title": "United Kingdom"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Under the CPR, expert witnesses may be instructed to produce a joint statement detailing points of agreement and disagreement to assist the court or tribunal. The meeting is held quite independently of instructing lawyers, and often assists in resolution of a case, especially if the experts review and modify their opinions. When this happens, substantial trial costs can be saved when the parties to a dispute agree to a settlement. In most systems, the trial (or the procedure) can be suspended in order to allow the experts to study the case and produce their results. More frequently, meetings of experts occur before trial. Experts charge a professional fee which is paid by the party commissioning the report (both parties for joint instructions) although the report is addressed to the court. The fee must not be contingent on the outcome of the case. Expert witnesses may be subpoenaed (issued with a witness summons), although this is normally a formality to avoid court date clashes.",
"title": "United Kingdom"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In Scots Law, Davie v Magistrates of Edinburgh (1953) provides authority that where a witness has particular knowledge or skills in an area being examined by the court, and has been called to court in order to elaborate on that area for the benefit of the court, that witness may give evidence of his/her opinion on that area.",
"title": "United Kingdom"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "During a Erdoğan-Gollum comparison trial, a panel of expert witnesses had to decide on the character of Gollum.",
"title": "Turkey"
}
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| An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as an expert. The judge may consider the witness's specialized opinion about evidence or about facts before the court within the expert's area of expertise, to be referred to as an "expert opinion". Expert witnesses may also deliver "expert evidence" within the area of their expertise. Their testimony may be rebutted by testimony from other experts or by other evidence or facts. | 2001-11-21T21:29:14Z | 2023-08-13T09:36:51Z | [
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10,116 | Endocytosis | Endocytosis is a cellular process in which substances are brought into the cell. The material to be internalized is surrounded by an area of cell membrane, which then buds off inside the cell to form a vesicle containing the ingested material. Endocytosis includes pinocytosis (cell drinking) and phagocytosis (cell eating). It is a form of active transport.
The term was proposed by De Duve in 1963. Phagocytosis was discovered by Élie Metchnikoff in 1882.
Endocytosis pathways can be subdivided into four categories: namely, receptor-mediated endocytosis (also known as clathrin-mediated endocytosis), caveolae, pinocytosis, and phagocytosis.
More recent experiments have suggested that these morphological descriptions of endocytic events may be inadequate, and a more appropriate method of classification may be based upon whether particular pathways are dependent on clathrin and dynamin.
Dynamin-dependent clathrin-independent pathways include FEME, UFE, ADBE, EGFR-NCE and IL2Rβ uptake.
Dynamin-independent clathrin-independent pathways include the CLIC/GEEC pathway (regulated by Graf1), as well as MEND and macropinocytosis.
Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is the only pathway dependent on both clathrin and dynamin.
The endocytic pathway of mammalian cells consists of distinct membrane compartments, which internalize molecules from the plasma membrane and recycle them back to the surface (as in early endosomes and recycling endosomes), or sort them to degradation (as in late endosomes and lysosomes). The principal components of the endocytic pathway are:
It was recently found that an eisosome serves as a portal of endocytosis in yeast.
The major route for endocytosis in most cells, and the best-understood, is that mediated by the molecule clathrin. This large protein assists in the formation of a coated pit on the inner surface of the plasma membrane of the cell. This pit then buds into the cell to form a coated vesicle in the cytoplasm of the cell. In so doing, it brings into the cell not only a small area of the surface of the cell but also a small volume of fluid from outside the cell.
Coats function to deform the donor membrane to produce a vesicle, and they also function in the selection of the vesicle cargo. Coat complexes that have been well characterized so far include coat protein-I (COP-I), COP-II, and clathrin. Clathrin coats are involved in two crucial transport steps: (i) receptor-mediated and fluid-phase endocytosis from the plasma membrane to early endosome and (ii) transport from the TGN to endosomes. In endocytosis, the clathrin coat is assembled on the cytoplasmic face of the plasma membrane, forming pits that invaginate to pinch off (scission) and become free CCVs. In cultured cells, the assembly of a CCV takes ~ 1min, and several hundred to a thousand or more can form every minute. The main scaffold component of clathrin coat is the 190-kD protein called clathrin heavy chain (CHC), which is associated with a 25- kD protein called clathrin light chain (CLC), forming three-legged trimers called triskelions.
Vesicles selectively concentrate and exclude certain proteins during formation and are not representative of the membrane as a whole. AP2 adaptors are multisubunit complexes that perform this function at the plasma membrane. The best-understood receptors that are found concentrated in coated vesicles of mammalian cells are the LDL receptor (which removes LDL from circulating blood), the transferrin receptor (which brings ferric ions bound by transferrin into the cell) and certain hormone receptors (such as that for EGF).
At any one moment, about 25% of the plasma membrane of a fibroblast is made up of coated pits. As a coated pit has a life of about a minute before it buds into the cell, a fibroblast takes up its surface by this route about once every 50 minutes. Coated vesicles formed from the plasma membrane have a diameter of about 100 nm and a lifetime measured in a few seconds. Once the coat has been shed, the remaining vesicle fuses with endosomes and proceeds down the endocytic pathway. The actual budding-in process, whereby a pit is converted to a vesicle, is carried out by clathrin assisted by a set of cytoplasmic proteins, which includes dynamin and adaptors such as adaptin.
Coated pits and vesicles were first seen in thin sections of tissue in the electron microscope by Thomas F Roth and Keith R. Porter. The importance of them for the clearance of LDL from blood was discovered by Richard G. Anderson, Michael S. Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein in 1977. Coated vesicles were first purified by Barbara Pearse, who discovered the clathrin coat molecule in 1976.
Caveolin proteins like caveolin-1 (CAV1), caveolin-2 (CAV2), and caveolin-3 (CAV3), play significant roles in the caveolar formation process. More specifically, CAV1 and CAV2 are responsible for caveolae formation in non-muscle cells while CAV3 functions in muscle cells. The process starts with CAV1 being synthesized in the ER where it forms detergent-resistant oligomers. Then, these oligomers travel through the Golgi complex before arriving at the cell surface to aid in caveolar formation. Caveolae formation is also reversible through disassembly under certain conditions such as increased plasma membrane tension. These certain conditions then depend on the type of tissues that are expressing the caveolar function. For example, not all tissues that have caveolar proteins have a caveolar structure ie. the blood-brain barrier. Though there are many morphological features conserved among caveolae, the functions of each CAV protein are diverse. One common feature among caveolins is their hydrophobic stretches of potential hairpin structures that are made of α-helices. The insertion of these hairpin-like α-helices forms a caveolae coat which leads to membrane curvature. In addition to insertion, caveolins are also capable of oligomerization which further plays a role in membrane curvature. Recent studies have also discovered that polymerase I, transcript release factor, and serum deprivation protein response also play a role in the assembly of caveolae. Besides caveolae assembly, researchers have also discovered that CAV1 proteins can also influence other endocytic pathways. When CAV1 binds to Cdc42, CAV1 inactivates it and regulates Cdc42 activity during membrane trafficking events.
The process of cell uptake depends on the tilt and chirality of constituent molecules to induce membrane budding. Since such chiral and tilted lipid molecules are likely to be in a "raft" form, researchers suggest that caveolae formation also follows this mechanism since caveolae are also enriched in raft constituents. When caveolin proteins bind to the inner leaflet via cholesterol, the membrane starts to bend, leading to spontaneous curvature. This effect is due to the force distribution generated when the caveolin oligomer binds to the membrane. The force distribution then alters the tension of the membrane which leads to budding and eventually vesicle formation. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Endocytosis is a cellular process in which substances are brought into the cell. The material to be internalized is surrounded by an area of cell membrane, which then buds off inside the cell to form a vesicle containing the ingested material. Endocytosis includes pinocytosis (cell drinking) and phagocytosis (cell eating). It is a form of active transport.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The term was proposed by De Duve in 1963. Phagocytosis was discovered by Élie Metchnikoff in 1882.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Endocytosis pathways can be subdivided into four categories: namely, receptor-mediated endocytosis (also known as clathrin-mediated endocytosis), caveolae, pinocytosis, and phagocytosis.",
"title": "Pathways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "More recent experiments have suggested that these morphological descriptions of endocytic events may be inadequate, and a more appropriate method of classification may be based upon whether particular pathways are dependent on clathrin and dynamin.",
"title": "Pathways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Dynamin-dependent clathrin-independent pathways include FEME, UFE, ADBE, EGFR-NCE and IL2Rβ uptake.",
"title": "Pathways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Dynamin-independent clathrin-independent pathways include the CLIC/GEEC pathway (regulated by Graf1), as well as MEND and macropinocytosis.",
"title": "Pathways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is the only pathway dependent on both clathrin and dynamin.",
"title": "Pathways"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The endocytic pathway of mammalian cells consists of distinct membrane compartments, which internalize molecules from the plasma membrane and recycle them back to the surface (as in early endosomes and recycling endosomes), or sort them to degradation (as in late endosomes and lysosomes). The principal components of the endocytic pathway are:",
"title": "Principal components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "It was recently found that an eisosome serves as a portal of endocytosis in yeast.",
"title": "Principal components"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The major route for endocytosis in most cells, and the best-understood, is that mediated by the molecule clathrin. This large protein assists in the formation of a coated pit on the inner surface of the plasma membrane of the cell. This pit then buds into the cell to form a coated vesicle in the cytoplasm of the cell. In so doing, it brings into the cell not only a small area of the surface of the cell but also a small volume of fluid from outside the cell.",
"title": "Clathrin-mediated"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Coats function to deform the donor membrane to produce a vesicle, and they also function in the selection of the vesicle cargo. Coat complexes that have been well characterized so far include coat protein-I (COP-I), COP-II, and clathrin. Clathrin coats are involved in two crucial transport steps: (i) receptor-mediated and fluid-phase endocytosis from the plasma membrane to early endosome and (ii) transport from the TGN to endosomes. In endocytosis, the clathrin coat is assembled on the cytoplasmic face of the plasma membrane, forming pits that invaginate to pinch off (scission) and become free CCVs. In cultured cells, the assembly of a CCV takes ~ 1min, and several hundred to a thousand or more can form every minute. The main scaffold component of clathrin coat is the 190-kD protein called clathrin heavy chain (CHC), which is associated with a 25- kD protein called clathrin light chain (CLC), forming three-legged trimers called triskelions.",
"title": "Clathrin-mediated"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Vesicles selectively concentrate and exclude certain proteins during formation and are not representative of the membrane as a whole. AP2 adaptors are multisubunit complexes that perform this function at the plasma membrane. The best-understood receptors that are found concentrated in coated vesicles of mammalian cells are the LDL receptor (which removes LDL from circulating blood), the transferrin receptor (which brings ferric ions bound by transferrin into the cell) and certain hormone receptors (such as that for EGF).",
"title": "Clathrin-mediated"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "At any one moment, about 25% of the plasma membrane of a fibroblast is made up of coated pits. As a coated pit has a life of about a minute before it buds into the cell, a fibroblast takes up its surface by this route about once every 50 minutes. Coated vesicles formed from the plasma membrane have a diameter of about 100 nm and a lifetime measured in a few seconds. Once the coat has been shed, the remaining vesicle fuses with endosomes and proceeds down the endocytic pathway. The actual budding-in process, whereby a pit is converted to a vesicle, is carried out by clathrin assisted by a set of cytoplasmic proteins, which includes dynamin and adaptors such as adaptin.",
"title": "Clathrin-mediated"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Coated pits and vesicles were first seen in thin sections of tissue in the electron microscope by Thomas F Roth and Keith R. Porter. The importance of them for the clearance of LDL from blood was discovered by Richard G. Anderson, Michael S. Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein in 1977. Coated vesicles were first purified by Barbara Pearse, who discovered the clathrin coat molecule in 1976.",
"title": "Clathrin-mediated"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Caveolin proteins like caveolin-1 (CAV1), caveolin-2 (CAV2), and caveolin-3 (CAV3), play significant roles in the caveolar formation process. More specifically, CAV1 and CAV2 are responsible for caveolae formation in non-muscle cells while CAV3 functions in muscle cells. The process starts with CAV1 being synthesized in the ER where it forms detergent-resistant oligomers. Then, these oligomers travel through the Golgi complex before arriving at the cell surface to aid in caveolar formation. Caveolae formation is also reversible through disassembly under certain conditions such as increased plasma membrane tension. These certain conditions then depend on the type of tissues that are expressing the caveolar function. For example, not all tissues that have caveolar proteins have a caveolar structure ie. the blood-brain barrier. Though there are many morphological features conserved among caveolae, the functions of each CAV protein are diverse. One common feature among caveolins is their hydrophobic stretches of potential hairpin structures that are made of α-helices. The insertion of these hairpin-like α-helices forms a caveolae coat which leads to membrane curvature. In addition to insertion, caveolins are also capable of oligomerization which further plays a role in membrane curvature. Recent studies have also discovered that polymerase I, transcript release factor, and serum deprivation protein response also play a role in the assembly of caveolae. Besides caveolae assembly, researchers have also discovered that CAV1 proteins can also influence other endocytic pathways. When CAV1 binds to Cdc42, CAV1 inactivates it and regulates Cdc42 activity during membrane trafficking events.",
"title": "Clathrin-mediated"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The process of cell uptake depends on the tilt and chirality of constituent molecules to induce membrane budding. Since such chiral and tilted lipid molecules are likely to be in a \"raft\" form, researchers suggest that caveolae formation also follows this mechanism since caveolae are also enriched in raft constituents. When caveolin proteins bind to the inner leaflet via cholesterol, the membrane starts to bend, leading to spontaneous curvature. This effect is due to the force distribution generated when the caveolin oligomer binds to the membrane. The force distribution then alters the tension of the membrane which leads to budding and eventually vesicle formation.",
"title": "Clathrin-mediated"
}
]
| Endocytosis is a cellular process in which substances are brought into the cell. The material to be internalized is surrounded by an area of cell membrane, which then buds off inside the cell to form a vesicle containing the ingested material. Endocytosis includes pinocytosis and phagocytosis. It is a form of active transport. | 2001-11-21T23:01:17Z | 2023-11-21T19:56:43Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocytosis |
10,118 | Ezra Abbot | Ezra Abbot (April 28, 1819, Jackson, Maine – March 21, 1884, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American biblical scholar.
Abbot was born at Jackson, Maine, April 28, 1819; son of Ezra and Phebe Abbot. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1840. In 1847, at the request of Andrews Norton, he went to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he was principal of a public school until 1856. He was assistant librarian of Harvard University from 1856 to 1872, and planned and perfected an alphabetical card catalog, combining many of the advantages of the ordinary dictionary catalogs with the grouping of the minor topics under more general heads, which is characteristic of a systematic catalogue. From 1872 until his death he was Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Harvard Divinity School.
Abbot's studies were chiefly in Southwest Asian languages and textual criticism of the New Testament, though his work as a bibliographer showed such results as the exhaustive list of writings (5300 in all) on the doctrine of the future life, appended to W. R. Alger's History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, as it has prevailed in all Nations and Ages (1862), and published separately in 1864.
Abbot's publications, though always of the most thorough and scholarly character, were to a large extent dispersed in the pages of reviews, dictionaries, concordances, texts edited by others, Unitarian controversial treatises, etc. However, he took a more conspicuous and personal part in the preparation (with Baptist scholar Horatio Balch Hackett) of the enlarged American edition of Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (1867–1870), to which he contributed more than 400 articles, as well as greatly improving the bibliographical completeness of the work. He was an efficient member of the American revision committee for the Revised Version (1881–1885) of the King James Bible, and helped prepare Caspar René Gregory's Prolegomena to the revised Greek New Testament of Constantin von Tischendorf.
He was one of the 32 founding members of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1880.
His principal single work, representing his scholarly method and conservative conclusions, was The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences (1880; 2nd ed. by J. H. Thayer, with other essays, 1889), originally a lecture. In spite of the compression due to its form, this work was up to that time probably the ablest defense, based on external evidence, of the Johannine authorship, and certainly the most complete treatment of the relation of Justin Martyr to this gospel.
Abbot was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1861. Though a layman, he received the degree of S.T.D. from Harvard in 1872, and that of D.D. from Edinburgh in 1884.
Attribution | [
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"title": ""
},
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"text": "Abbot was born at Jackson, Maine, April 28, 1819; son of Ezra and Phebe Abbot. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1840. In 1847, at the request of Andrews Norton, he went to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he was principal of a public school until 1856. He was assistant librarian of Harvard University from 1856 to 1872, and planned and perfected an alphabetical card catalog, combining many of the advantages of the ordinary dictionary catalogs with the grouping of the minor topics under more general heads, which is characteristic of a systematic catalogue. From 1872 until his death he was Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Harvard Divinity School.",
"title": "Life and writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Abbot's studies were chiefly in Southwest Asian languages and textual criticism of the New Testament, though his work as a bibliographer showed such results as the exhaustive list of writings (5300 in all) on the doctrine of the future life, appended to W. R. Alger's History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, as it has prevailed in all Nations and Ages (1862), and published separately in 1864.",
"title": "Life and writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Abbot's publications, though always of the most thorough and scholarly character, were to a large extent dispersed in the pages of reviews, dictionaries, concordances, texts edited by others, Unitarian controversial treatises, etc. However, he took a more conspicuous and personal part in the preparation (with Baptist scholar Horatio Balch Hackett) of the enlarged American edition of Dr. (afterwards Sir) William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (1867–1870), to which he contributed more than 400 articles, as well as greatly improving the bibliographical completeness of the work. He was an efficient member of the American revision committee for the Revised Version (1881–1885) of the King James Bible, and helped prepare Caspar René Gregory's Prolegomena to the revised Greek New Testament of Constantin von Tischendorf.",
"title": "Life and writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "He was one of the 32 founding members of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1880.",
"title": "Life and writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "His principal single work, representing his scholarly method and conservative conclusions, was The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences (1880; 2nd ed. by J. H. Thayer, with other essays, 1889), originally a lecture. In spite of the compression due to its form, this work was up to that time probably the ablest defense, based on external evidence, of the Johannine authorship, and certainly the most complete treatment of the relation of Justin Martyr to this gospel.",
"title": "Life and writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Abbot was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1861. Though a layman, he received the degree of S.T.D. from Harvard in 1872, and that of D.D. from Edinburgh in 1884.",
"title": "Honors"
},
{
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"text": "Attribution",
"title": "References"
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]
| Ezra Abbot was an American biblical scholar. | 2023-07-17T15:53:22Z | [
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|
10,119 | Edwin Abbott Abbott | Edwin Abbott Abbott FBA (20 December 1838 – 12 October 1926) was an English schoolmaster, theologian, and Anglican priest, best known as the author of the novella Flatland (1884).
Edwin Abbott Abbott was the eldest son of Edwin Abbott (1808–1882), headmaster of the Philological School, Marylebone, and his wife, Jane Abbott (1806–1882). His parents were first cousins.
He was born in London and educated at the City of London School and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took the highest honours of his class in classics, mathematics and theology, and became a fellow of his college. In particular, he was 1st Smith's prizeman in 1861. In 1862 he took orders. After holding masterships at King Edward's School, Birmingham, he succeeded G. F. Mortimer as headmaster of the City of London School in 1865, at the early age of 26. There, he oversaw the education of future Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. Abbott was Hulsean lecturer in 1876.
He retired in 1889, and devoted himself to literary and theological pursuits. Abbott's open-minded inclinations in theology were prominent both in his educational views and in his books. His Shakespearian Grammar (1870) is a permanent contribution to English philology. In 1885, he published a life of Francis Bacon. His theological writings include three anonymously published religious romances – Philochristus (1878), where he tried to raise interest in Gospels reading, Onesimus (1882), and Silanus the Christian (1908).
More weighty contributions are the anonymous theological discussion The Kernel and the Husk (1886), Philomythus (1891), his book The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman (1892), and his article "The Gospels" in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, embodying a critical view which caused considerable stir in the English theological world. He also wrote St Thomas of Canterbury, His Death and Miracles (1898), Johannine Vocabulary (1905), and Johannine Grammar (1906).
Abbott also wrote educational textbooks, one being Via Latina: A First Latin Book which was published in 1880 and distributed around the world within the education system.
Abbott's best-known work is his 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions which describes a two-dimensional world and explores the nature of dimensions. It has often been categorized as science fiction although it could more precisely be called "mathematical fiction".
With the advent of modern science fiction from the 1950s to the present day, Flatland has seen a revival in popularity, especially among science fiction and cyberpunk fans. Many works have been inspired by the novella, including novel sequels and short films. | [
{
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},
{
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"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "He was born in London and educated at the City of London School and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took the highest honours of his class in classics, mathematics and theology, and became a fellow of his college. In particular, he was 1st Smith's prizeman in 1861. In 1862 he took orders. After holding masterships at King Edward's School, Birmingham, he succeeded G. F. Mortimer as headmaster of the City of London School in 1865, at the early age of 26. There, he oversaw the education of future Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. Abbott was Hulsean lecturer in 1876.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "He retired in 1889, and devoted himself to literary and theological pursuits. Abbott's open-minded inclinations in theology were prominent both in his educational views and in his books. His Shakespearian Grammar (1870) is a permanent contribution to English philology. In 1885, he published a life of Francis Bacon. His theological writings include three anonymously published religious romances – Philochristus (1878), where he tried to raise interest in Gospels reading, Onesimus (1882), and Silanus the Christian (1908).",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "More weighty contributions are the anonymous theological discussion The Kernel and the Husk (1886), Philomythus (1891), his book The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman (1892), and his article \"The Gospels\" in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, embodying a critical view which caused considerable stir in the English theological world. He also wrote St Thomas of Canterbury, His Death and Miracles (1898), Johannine Vocabulary (1905), and Johannine Grammar (1906).",
"title": "Biography"
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"title": "Biography"
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"title": "Flatland"
},
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"title": "Flatland"
}
]
| Edwin Abbott Abbott was an English schoolmaster, theologian, and Anglican priest, best known as the author of the novella Flatland (1884). | 2001-11-22T04:46:55Z | 2023-09-22T18:48:52Z | [
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10,120 | Emma Abbott | Emma Abbott (December 9, 1850 – January 5, 1891) was an American operatic soprano and impresario known for her pure, clear voice of great flexibility and volume.
Emma Abbott was born in 1850 in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of the struggling Chicago musician Seth Abbott and his wife, Almira (née Palmer). As a child, she and her brother George studied singing, piano, guitar and violin with their father.
The family moved to Peoria, Illinois, Emma was eight years of age when, she made her first appearance on the stage, singing at a concert given in her father's office in Peoria. In 1854, Professor Abbott was unable to find a sufficient number of music students to make ends meet and the family suffered from financial problems. To help out, she and George began performing professionally when Emma was nine years old. She made her debut as a guitar player and singer in Peoria, Illinois in 1859, with George on the violin, and was teaching guitar by age thirteen.
In 1866, she joined an itinerant concert troupe and toured the country. While performing on the road she met and was befriended by Clara Louise Kellogg. Upon hearing Abbott in a concert in Toledo, Kellogg made it a point to meet her and encourage her to pursue an opera career and gave her a letter of introduction. Consequently, Abbott studied in New York City under Achille Errani, and made her concert début there in December 1871.
In 1872, Abbott went abroad to study with Antonio Sangiovanni in Milan. This was followed by further studies with Mathilde Marchesi, Pierre François Wartel and Enrico Delle Sedie in Paris. She appeared in several productions in Paris, earning rave reviews for her fine soprano voice. She was awarded a contract with the Royal Opera in London and made her début at Covent Garden as Marie in La Fille du régiment in 1876. However, her contract was cancelled shortly thereafter when she refused to sing Violetta from Verdi's La Traviata on moral grounds. That same year she secretly married Eugene Wetherell (d. 1889) and they returned to the United States, where she remained for the rest of her life.
On February 23, 1877, Abbott made her American operatic début in New York, once again portraying Marie. In 1878 she and her husband Eugene Wetherell, organized an opera company known by her name (the Emma Abbott Grand English Opera Company), which toured extensively throughout the United States. It was the first opera company formed by a woman in the United States. Her husband ran the business end of the company and she managed the artistic side, often starring in the productions.
The company garnered a reputation among the public for quality productions and was quite successful. Among the notable roles that Abbott sang with the company are Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Virginia in Paul et Virginie, Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore, the title role in Flotow's Martha, Amina in Bellini's La Sonnambula, and Violetta in La Traviata, a role to which she apparently no longer objected, however, instead of singing Addio del passato, she made Violetta expire with Nearer, my God, to Thee.
Throughout her career, she retained artistic control over her troupe, which sometimes numbered 60. Although the company's repertoire included works from the French, Italian and English operatic literatures, they always performed in English. Many of the works were abridged and interpolated songs were commonplace. For this reason the company and Abbott were not popular with many music critics who were unhappy with the changes to the standard repertoire. However, the company was incredibly popular with the public and was consistently financially successful. Abbott herself became known among Americans as 'the people's prima donna'.
Abbott continued performing up until her sudden death from pneumonia in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1891, aged 40. She is buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Gloucester, Massachusetts along with her husband. | [
{
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"text": "Emma Abbott (December 9, 1850 – January 5, 1891) was an American operatic soprano and impresario known for her pure, clear voice of great flexibility and volume.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Emma Abbott was born in 1850 in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of the struggling Chicago musician Seth Abbott and his wife, Almira (née Palmer). As a child, she and her brother George studied singing, piano, guitar and violin with their father.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The family moved to Peoria, Illinois, Emma was eight years of age when, she made her first appearance on the stage, singing at a concert given in her father's office in Peoria. In 1854, Professor Abbott was unable to find a sufficient number of music students to make ends meet and the family suffered from financial problems. To help out, she and George began performing professionally when Emma was nine years old. She made her debut as a guitar player and singer in Peoria, Illinois in 1859, with George on the violin, and was teaching guitar by age thirteen.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In 1866, she joined an itinerant concert troupe and toured the country. While performing on the road she met and was befriended by Clara Louise Kellogg. Upon hearing Abbott in a concert in Toledo, Kellogg made it a point to meet her and encourage her to pursue an opera career and gave her a letter of introduction. Consequently, Abbott studied in New York City under Achille Errani, and made her concert début there in December 1871.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1872, Abbott went abroad to study with Antonio Sangiovanni in Milan. This was followed by further studies with Mathilde Marchesi, Pierre François Wartel and Enrico Delle Sedie in Paris. She appeared in several productions in Paris, earning rave reviews for her fine soprano voice. She was awarded a contract with the Royal Opera in London and made her début at Covent Garden as Marie in La Fille du régiment in 1876. However, her contract was cancelled shortly thereafter when she refused to sing Violetta from Verdi's La Traviata on moral grounds. That same year she secretly married Eugene Wetherell (d. 1889) and they returned to the United States, where she remained for the rest of her life.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On February 23, 1877, Abbott made her American operatic début in New York, once again portraying Marie. In 1878 she and her husband Eugene Wetherell, organized an opera company known by her name (the Emma Abbott Grand English Opera Company), which toured extensively throughout the United States. It was the first opera company formed by a woman in the United States. Her husband ran the business end of the company and she managed the artistic side, often starring in the productions.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The company garnered a reputation among the public for quality productions and was quite successful. Among the notable roles that Abbott sang with the company are Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, Virginia in Paul et Virginie, Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore, the title role in Flotow's Martha, Amina in Bellini's La Sonnambula, and Violetta in La Traviata, a role to which she apparently no longer objected, however, instead of singing Addio del passato, she made Violetta expire with Nearer, my God, to Thee.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Throughout her career, she retained artistic control over her troupe, which sometimes numbered 60. Although the company's repertoire included works from the French, Italian and English operatic literatures, they always performed in English. Many of the works were abridged and interpolated songs were commonplace. For this reason the company and Abbott were not popular with many music critics who were unhappy with the changes to the standard repertoire. However, the company was incredibly popular with the public and was consistently financially successful. Abbott herself became known among Americans as 'the people's prima donna'.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Abbott continued performing up until her sudden death from pneumonia in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1891, aged 40. She is buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Gloucester, Massachusetts along with her husband.",
"title": "Death"
}
]
| Emma Abbott was an American operatic soprano and impresario known for her pure, clear voice of great flexibility and volume. | 2022-09-24T10:12:19Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Abbott |
|
10,121 | Epimetheus (disambiguation) | Epimetheus was a Titan in Greek mythology.
Epimetheus may also refer to: | [
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"text": "Epimetheus was a Titan in Greek mythology.",
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| Epimetheus was a Titan in Greek mythology. Epimetheus may also refer to: Epimetheus (moon), a moon of Saturn
1810 Epimetheus, an asteroid | 2018-04-25T09:15:37Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimetheus_(disambiguation) |
|
10,125 | Emperor Shōmu | Emperor Shōmu (聖武天皇, Shōmu-tennō, September 22, 701 – June 4, 756) was the 45th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Shōmu's reign spanned the years 724 through 749, during the Nara period.
Before his ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (imina) is not clearly known, but he was known as Oshi-hiraki Toyosakura-hiko-no-mikoto.
Shōmu was the son of Emperor Monmu and Fujiwara no Miyako, a daughter of Fujiwara no Fuhito.
Shōmu had five consorts and six Imperial sons and daughters.
Shōmu was still a child at the time of his father's death; thus, his grandmother, Empress Gemmei, and aunt, Empress Gensho, occupied the throne before he acceded.
Shōmu continued to reside in the Hezei Palace.
Shōmu is known as the first emperor whose consort was not born into the imperial household. His consort Kōmyō was a non-royal Fujiwara commoner. A ritsuryō office was created for the queen-consort, the Kogogushiki; and this bureaucratic innovation continued into the Heian period.
While battle maneuvers of the Fujiwara no Hirotsugu Rebellion were still underway, in Tenpyō 12 10th month (November, 740) Emperor Shōmu left the capital at Heijō-kyō (Nara) and traveled eastward via Horikoshi (堀越頓宮; today Tsuge; 10th month, 29th day: November 22), Nabari (10th month, 30th day: November 23), Ao (安保頓宮; today Aoyama ; 11th month 1st day: November 24) to Kawaguchi in Ichishi District, Ise Province (today part of Tsu, formerly part of Hakusan) where he retreated together with his court to a temporary palace. One of his generals was left in command of the capital. Presumably Shōmu feared Fujiwara supporters in Nara and was hoping to quell potential uprisings in other parts of the country with his presence. After four days travelling through heavy rain and thick mud, the party reached Kawaguchi on Tenpyō 12 11th month, 2nd day (25 November, 740) A couple of days later, they learn of Hirotsugu's execution and that the rebellion had been quelled.
Despite the good news, Shōmu did not return to Heijō-kyō immediately, but stayed in Kawaguchi until Tenpyō 12 11th month, 11th day (4 December, 740). He continued his journey east, then north via Mino Province and back west along the shores of Lake Biwa to Kuni in Yamashiro Province (today in Kizugawa) which he reached on Tenpyō 12 12th month, 15th day (6 January, 741). Places passed along the way included Akasaka (赤坂頓宮; today Suzuka; 11th m. 14th d.: Dec 7）, Asake district (朝明郡; today Yokkaichi; 11th m. 20th d.: Dec 13）, Ishiura (石占頓宮; today Tado; 11th m. 25th d.: Dec 18）, Tagi district (当伎郡; today Yōrō; 11th m. 26th d.: Dec 19）, Fuwa (不破頓宮; today Tarui; 12th m. 1st d.: Dec 23）, Yokokawa (横川頓宮; today Santō or Maihara; 12th m. 6th d.: Dec 28), Inukami (犬上頓宮; today Hikone; 12th m. 7th d.: Dec 29）, Gamō district (蒲生郡; today near Yōkaichi; 12th m. 9th d.: Dec 31）, Yasu (野洲頓宮; today Yasu or Moriyama; 12th m. 10th d.: Jan 1）, Awazu (禾津頓宮; today Ōtsu; 12th m. 11th d.： Jan 2）, Tamanoi (玉井頓宮; today Yamashina-ku, Kyoto; 12th m. 14th d.）. Situated among the hills and near a river north of Nara, Kuni was easily defensible. In addition, the area was linked with the Minister of the Right, Tachibana no Moroe, while Nara was a center of the Fujiwara clan. On Tenpyō 12 12th month, 15 day (6 January, 741) Shōmu proclaimed a new capital at Kuni-kyō.
Shōmu, a devout Buddhist, is best remembered for commissioning, in 743, the sixteen-meter high statue of the Vairocana Buddha (the Daibutsu) in Tōdai-ji of Nara. At the time, this was such a massive undertaking that later chroniclers accuse him of having completely exhausted the country's reserves of bronze and precious metals. In 752, the Shōmu held the Eye-opening Ceremony of the Great Buddha.
Earlier in 741, he established the system of provincial temples, making this the closest anyone ever came to declaring Japan a Buddhist nation. In addition he commissioned the observance of the ohigan holiday for both spring and autumnal equinox.
Emperor Shōmu died at age 56.
The actual site of Shōmu's grave is known. This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.
The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Shōmu's mausoleum. It is formally named Sahoyama no minami no misasagi. The tomb site can be visited today in Horenji-cho, Tenri City near Nara City. The Imperial tomb of Shōmu's consort, Empress Kōmyō, is located nearby.
The Shōsō-in (正倉院) is the treasure house of Tōdai-ji Temple in Nara, Japan. It houses about 9.000 artifacts connected to Emperor Shōmu (701–756) and Empress Kōmyō (701–760), as well as arts and crafts of the Tempyō era of Japanese history. Its general importance derives from the fact, that it may be called an ark of Tang dynasty period cultural relics from Japan as well as from the continent: furniture, games, music instruments, clothing/accessories, weaponry, buddhist objects and pieces of writing. See main entry.
Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras.
In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Shōmu's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:
The years of Shōmu's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.
Media related to Emperor Shomu at Wikimedia Commons | [
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"text": "Emperor Shōmu (聖武天皇, Shōmu-tennō, September 22, 701 – June 4, 756) was the 45th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Shōmu's reign spanned the years 724 through 749, during the Nara period.",
"title": ""
},
{
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"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Shōmu had five consorts and six Imperial sons and daughters.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
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"text": "Shōmu was still a child at the time of his father's death; thus, his grandmother, Empress Gemmei, and aunt, Empress Gensho, occupied the throne before he acceded.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Shōmu continued to reside in the Hezei Palace.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Shōmu is known as the first emperor whose consort was not born into the imperial household. His consort Kōmyō was a non-royal Fujiwara commoner. A ritsuryō office was created for the queen-consort, the Kogogushiki; and this bureaucratic innovation continued into the Heian period.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "While battle maneuvers of the Fujiwara no Hirotsugu Rebellion were still underway, in Tenpyō 12 10th month (November, 740) Emperor Shōmu left the capital at Heijō-kyō (Nara) and traveled eastward via Horikoshi (堀越頓宮; today Tsuge; 10th month, 29th day: November 22), Nabari (10th month, 30th day: November 23), Ao (安保頓宮; today Aoyama ; 11th month 1st day: November 24) to Kawaguchi in Ichishi District, Ise Province (today part of Tsu, formerly part of Hakusan) where he retreated together with his court to a temporary palace. One of his generals was left in command of the capital. Presumably Shōmu feared Fujiwara supporters in Nara and was hoping to quell potential uprisings in other parts of the country with his presence. After four days travelling through heavy rain and thick mud, the party reached Kawaguchi on Tenpyō 12 11th month, 2nd day (25 November, 740) A couple of days later, they learn of Hirotsugu's execution and that the rebellion had been quelled.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Despite the good news, Shōmu did not return to Heijō-kyō immediately, but stayed in Kawaguchi until Tenpyō 12 11th month, 11th day (4 December, 740). He continued his journey east, then north via Mino Province and back west along the shores of Lake Biwa to Kuni in Yamashiro Province (today in Kizugawa) which he reached on Tenpyō 12 12th month, 15th day (6 January, 741). Places passed along the way included Akasaka (赤坂頓宮; today Suzuka; 11th m. 14th d.: Dec 7）, Asake district (朝明郡; today Yokkaichi; 11th m. 20th d.: Dec 13）, Ishiura (石占頓宮; today Tado; 11th m. 25th d.: Dec 18）, Tagi district (当伎郡; today Yōrō; 11th m. 26th d.: Dec 19）, Fuwa (不破頓宮; today Tarui; 12th m. 1st d.: Dec 23）, Yokokawa (横川頓宮; today Santō or Maihara; 12th m. 6th d.: Dec 28), Inukami (犬上頓宮; today Hikone; 12th m. 7th d.: Dec 29）, Gamō district (蒲生郡; today near Yōkaichi; 12th m. 9th d.: Dec 31）, Yasu (野洲頓宮; today Yasu or Moriyama; 12th m. 10th d.: Jan 1）, Awazu (禾津頓宮; today Ōtsu; 12th m. 11th d.： Jan 2）, Tamanoi (玉井頓宮; today Yamashina-ku, Kyoto; 12th m. 14th d.）. Situated among the hills and near a river north of Nara, Kuni was easily defensible. In addition, the area was linked with the Minister of the Right, Tachibana no Moroe, while Nara was a center of the Fujiwara clan. On Tenpyō 12 12th month, 15 day (6 January, 741) Shōmu proclaimed a new capital at Kuni-kyō.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Shōmu, a devout Buddhist, is best remembered for commissioning, in 743, the sixteen-meter high statue of the Vairocana Buddha (the Daibutsu) in Tōdai-ji of Nara. At the time, this was such a massive undertaking that later chroniclers accuse him of having completely exhausted the country's reserves of bronze and precious metals. In 752, the Shōmu held the Eye-opening Ceremony of the Great Buddha.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Earlier in 741, he established the system of provincial temples, making this the closest anyone ever came to declaring Japan a Buddhist nation. In addition he commissioned the observance of the ohigan holiday for both spring and autumnal equinox.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Emperor Shōmu died at age 56.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The actual site of Shōmu's grave is known. This emperor is traditionally venerated at a memorial Shinto shrine (misasagi) at Nara.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The Imperial Household Agency designates this location as Shōmu's mausoleum. It is formally named Sahoyama no minami no misasagi. The tomb site can be visited today in Horenji-cho, Tenri City near Nara City. The Imperial tomb of Shōmu's consort, Empress Kōmyō, is located nearby.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The Shōsō-in (正倉院) is the treasure house of Tōdai-ji Temple in Nara, Japan. It houses about 9.000 artifacts connected to Emperor Shōmu (701–756) and Empress Kōmyō (701–760), as well as arts and crafts of the Tempyō era of Japanese history. Its general importance derives from the fact, that it may be called an ark of Tang dynasty period cultural relics from Japan as well as from the continent: furniture, games, music instruments, clothing/accessories, weaponry, buddhist objects and pieces of writing. See main entry.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Shōmu's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The years of Shōmu's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name or nengō.",
"title": "Eras of Shōmu's life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "",
"title": "Ancestry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Media related to Emperor Shomu at Wikimedia Commons",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Emperor Shōmu was the 45th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Shōmu's reign spanned the years 724 through 749, during the Nara period. | 2001-11-22T19:46:56Z | 2023-11-08T22:28:15Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Sh%C5%8Dmu |
10,126 | Emperor Kanmu | Emperor Kanmu (桓武天皇, Kammu-tennō, 735 – 9 April 806), or Kammu, was the 50th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Kammu reigned from 781 to 806, and it was during his reign that the scope of the emperor's powers reached its peak.
Kammu's personal name (imina) was Yamabe (山部). He was the eldest son of Prince Shirakabe (later known as Emperor Kōnin), and was born prior to Shirakabe's ascension to the throne. According to the Shoku Nihongi (続日本紀), Yamabe's mother, Yamato no Niigasa (later called Takano no Niigasa), was a 10th generation descendant of Muryeong of Baekje (462-523).
After his father became emperor, Kammu's half-brother, Prince Osabe was appointed to the rank of crown prince. His mother was Princess Inoe, a daughter of Emperor Shōmu; but instead of Osabe, it was Kammu who was later named to succeed their father. After Inoe and Prince Osabe were confined and then died in 775, Osabe's sister – Kammu's half-sister Princess Sakahito – became Kammu's wife. Later, when he ascended to the throne in 781, Kammu appointed his young brother, Prince Sawara, whose mother was Takano no Niigasa, as crown prince. Hikami no Kawatsugu, a son of Emperor Tenmu's grandson Prince Shioyaki and Shōmu's daughter Fuwa, attempted to carry out a coup d'état in 782, but it failed and Kawatsugu and his mother were sent into exile. In 785 Sawara was expelled and died in exile.
The Nara period saw the appointment of the first shōgun, Ōtomo no Otomaro by Emperor Kammu in 794 CE. The shōgun was the military dictator of Japan with near absolute power over territories via the military. Otomaro was declared "Sei-i Taishōgun" which means "Barbarian-subduing Great General". Emperor Kammu granted the second title of shōgun to Sakanoue no Tamuramaro for subduing the Emishi in northern Honshu.
Kammu had 16 empresses and consorts, and 32 imperial sons and daughters. Among them, three sons would eventually ascend to the imperial throne: Emperor Heizei, Emperor Saga and Emperor Junna. Some of his descendants (known as the Kammu Taira or Kammu Heishi) took the Taira hereditary clan title, and in later generations became prominent warriors. Examples include Taira no Masakado, Taira no Kiyomori, and (with a further surname expansion) the Hōjō clan. The waka poet Ariwara no Narihira was one of his grandsons.
Kammu is traditionally venerated at his tomb; the Imperial Household Agency designates Kashiwabara no Misasagi (柏原陵, Kashiwabara Imperial Mausoleum), in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, as the location of Kammu's mausoleum.
Kammu was an active emperor who attempted to consolidate government hierarchies and functions. Kammu appointed Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758–811) to lead a military expedition against the Emishi.
The years of Kammu's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name (nengō).
Earlier Imperial sponsorship of Buddhism, beginning with Prince Shōtoku (574–622), had led to a general politicization of the clergy, along with an increase in intrigue and corruption. In 784 Kammu shifted his capital from Nara to Nagaoka-kyō in a move that was said to be designed to encumber the powerful Nara Buddhist establishments out of state politics—while the capital moved, the major Buddhist temples, and their officials, stayed put. Indeed, there was a steady stream of edicts issued from 771 right through the period of Kūkai's studies which, for instance, sought to limit the number of Buddhist priests, and the building of temples. However, the move was to prove disastrous and was followed by a series of natural disasters including the flooding of half the city. In 785 the principal architect of the new capital, and royal favourite, Fujiwara no Tanetsugu, was assassinated.
Meanwhile, Kammu's armies were pushing back the boundaries of his empire. This led to an uprising, and in 789 a substantial defeat for Kammu's troops. Also in 789 there was a severe drought and famine—the streets of the capital were clogged with the sick, and people avoiding being drafted into the military, or into forced labour. Many disguised themselves as Buddhist priests for the same reason. Consequently, in 792 Kammu abolished national conscription, replacing it with a system wherein each province formed a militia from the local gentry, however this system vitiated the authority of the Emperor and led to proliferation of private armies. Then in 794 Kammu suddenly shifted the capital again, this time to Heian-kyō, which is modern day Kyoto. The new capital was started early the previous year, but the change was abrupt and led to even more confusion amongst the populace. Kammu's rule witnessed the frontiers of Japan expanding into Izawa and Shiba, under the command of a preeminent commander, Tamura Maro.
Politically Kammu shored up his rule by changing the syllabus of the university. Confucian ideology still provided the raison d'être for the Imperial government. In 784 Kammu authorised the teaching of a new course based on the Spring and Autumn Annals based on two newly imported commentaries: Kung-yang and Ku-liang. These commentaries used political rhetoric to promote a state in which the Emperor, as "Son of Heaven," should extend his sphere of influence to barbarous lands, thereby gladdening the people. In 798 the two commentaries became required reading at the government university.
Kammu also sponsored the travels of the monks Saichō and Kūkai to China, from where they returned to found the Japanese branches of, respectively, Tendai and Shingon Buddhism.
Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras.
In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Kammu's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:
When the daughter of a chūnagon became the favored consort of the Crown Prince Ate (later known as Heizei-tennō), her father's power and position in court was affected. Kammu disapproved of Fujiwara no Kusuko, daughter of Fujiwara no Tanetsugu; and Kammu had her removed from his son's household.
Emperor Kammu's Imperial family included 36 children.
In 2001, Japan's emperor Akihito told reporters "I, on my part, feel a certain kinship with Korea", given the fact that it is recorded in the Chronicles of Japan that the Emperor Kammu's (737-803) mother was one of the descendant of King Muryong of Baekje (462-523). It was the first time that a Japanese emperor publicly referred to any Korean ancestry in the imperial line. According to the Shoku Nihongi, Emperor Kammu's mother, Takano no Niigasa (720–90), is a descendant of Prince Junda, son of Muryeong, who died in Japan in 513 (Nihon Shoki, Chapter 17). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Emperor Kanmu (桓武天皇, Kammu-tennō, 735 – 9 April 806), or Kammu, was the 50th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Kammu reigned from 781 to 806, and it was during his reign that the scope of the emperor's powers reached its peak.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kammu's personal name (imina) was Yamabe (山部). He was the eldest son of Prince Shirakabe (later known as Emperor Kōnin), and was born prior to Shirakabe's ascension to the throne. According to the Shoku Nihongi (続日本紀), Yamabe's mother, Yamato no Niigasa (later called Takano no Niigasa), was a 10th generation descendant of Muryeong of Baekje (462-523).",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "After his father became emperor, Kammu's half-brother, Prince Osabe was appointed to the rank of crown prince. His mother was Princess Inoe, a daughter of Emperor Shōmu; but instead of Osabe, it was Kammu who was later named to succeed their father. After Inoe and Prince Osabe were confined and then died in 775, Osabe's sister – Kammu's half-sister Princess Sakahito – became Kammu's wife. Later, when he ascended to the throne in 781, Kammu appointed his young brother, Prince Sawara, whose mother was Takano no Niigasa, as crown prince. Hikami no Kawatsugu, a son of Emperor Tenmu's grandson Prince Shioyaki and Shōmu's daughter Fuwa, attempted to carry out a coup d'état in 782, but it failed and Kawatsugu and his mother were sent into exile. In 785 Sawara was expelled and died in exile.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Nara period saw the appointment of the first shōgun, Ōtomo no Otomaro by Emperor Kammu in 794 CE. The shōgun was the military dictator of Japan with near absolute power over territories via the military. Otomaro was declared \"Sei-i Taishōgun\" which means \"Barbarian-subduing Great General\". Emperor Kammu granted the second title of shōgun to Sakanoue no Tamuramaro for subduing the Emishi in northern Honshu.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kammu had 16 empresses and consorts, and 32 imperial sons and daughters. Among them, three sons would eventually ascend to the imperial throne: Emperor Heizei, Emperor Saga and Emperor Junna. Some of his descendants (known as the Kammu Taira or Kammu Heishi) took the Taira hereditary clan title, and in later generations became prominent warriors. Examples include Taira no Masakado, Taira no Kiyomori, and (with a further surname expansion) the Hōjō clan. The waka poet Ariwara no Narihira was one of his grandsons.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Kammu is traditionally venerated at his tomb; the Imperial Household Agency designates Kashiwabara no Misasagi (柏原陵, Kashiwabara Imperial Mausoleum), in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, as the location of Kammu's mausoleum.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Kammu was an active emperor who attempted to consolidate government hierarchies and functions. Kammu appointed Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758–811) to lead a military expedition against the Emishi.",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The years of Kammu's reign are more specifically identified by more than one era name (nengō).",
"title": "Traditional narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Earlier Imperial sponsorship of Buddhism, beginning with Prince Shōtoku (574–622), had led to a general politicization of the clergy, along with an increase in intrigue and corruption. In 784 Kammu shifted his capital from Nara to Nagaoka-kyō in a move that was said to be designed to encumber the powerful Nara Buddhist establishments out of state politics—while the capital moved, the major Buddhist temples, and their officials, stayed put. Indeed, there was a steady stream of edicts issued from 771 right through the period of Kūkai's studies which, for instance, sought to limit the number of Buddhist priests, and the building of temples. However, the move was to prove disastrous and was followed by a series of natural disasters including the flooding of half the city. In 785 the principal architect of the new capital, and royal favourite, Fujiwara no Tanetsugu, was assassinated.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Meanwhile, Kammu's armies were pushing back the boundaries of his empire. This led to an uprising, and in 789 a substantial defeat for Kammu's troops. Also in 789 there was a severe drought and famine—the streets of the capital were clogged with the sick, and people avoiding being drafted into the military, or into forced labour. Many disguised themselves as Buddhist priests for the same reason. Consequently, in 792 Kammu abolished national conscription, replacing it with a system wherein each province formed a militia from the local gentry, however this system vitiated the authority of the Emperor and led to proliferation of private armies. Then in 794 Kammu suddenly shifted the capital again, this time to Heian-kyō, which is modern day Kyoto. The new capital was started early the previous year, but the change was abrupt and led to even more confusion amongst the populace. Kammu's rule witnessed the frontiers of Japan expanding into Izawa and Shiba, under the command of a preeminent commander, Tamura Maro.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Politically Kammu shored up his rule by changing the syllabus of the university. Confucian ideology still provided the raison d'être for the Imperial government. In 784 Kammu authorised the teaching of a new course based on the Spring and Autumn Annals based on two newly imported commentaries: Kung-yang and Ku-liang. These commentaries used political rhetoric to promote a state in which the Emperor, as \"Son of Heaven,\" should extend his sphere of influence to barbarous lands, thereby gladdening the people. In 798 the two commentaries became required reading at the government university.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Kammu also sponsored the travels of the monks Saichō and Kūkai to China, from where they returned to found the Japanese branches of, respectively, Tendai and Shingon Buddhism.",
"title": "Politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras.",
"title": "Kugyō"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In general, this elite group included only three to four men at a time. These were hereditary courtiers whose experience and background would have brought them to the pinnacle of a life's career. During Kammu's reign, this apex of the Daijō-kan included:",
"title": "Kugyō"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "When the daughter of a chūnagon became the favored consort of the Crown Prince Ate (later known as Heizei-tennō), her father's power and position in court was affected. Kammu disapproved of Fujiwara no Kusuko, daughter of Fujiwara no Tanetsugu; and Kammu had her removed from his son's household.",
"title": "Kugyō"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Emperor Kammu's Imperial family included 36 children.",
"title": "Consorts and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "",
"title": "Ancestry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In 2001, Japan's emperor Akihito told reporters \"I, on my part, feel a certain kinship with Korea\", given the fact that it is recorded in the Chronicles of Japan that the Emperor Kammu's (737-803) mother was one of the descendant of King Muryong of Baekje (462-523). It was the first time that a Japanese emperor publicly referred to any Korean ancestry in the imperial line. According to the Shoku Nihongi, Emperor Kammu's mother, Takano no Niigasa (720–90), is a descendant of Prince Junda, son of Muryeong, who died in Japan in 513 (Nihon Shoki, Chapter 17).",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Emperor Kanmu, or Kammu, was the 50th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Kammu reigned from 781 to 806, and it was during his reign that the scope of the emperor's powers reached its peak. | 2001-11-22T20:01:51Z | 2023-12-28T14:12:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Kanmu |
10,128 | Elizabeth I | Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last monarch of the House of Tudor.
Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was two years old. Anne's marriage to Henry was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Henry restored her to the line of succession when she was ten, via the Third Succession Act 1543. After Henry's death in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother Edward VI ruled until his own death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to a Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statutes to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside within weeks of his death and Mary became queen, deposing and executing Jane. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.
Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, whom she created Baron Burghley. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did, and because of this she is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings had been. One of her mottoes was video et taceo ("I see and keep silent"). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570, which in theory released English Catholics from allegiance to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers' secret service, run by Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain.
As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth's reign became known as the Elizabethan era. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, the prowess of English maritime adventurers, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, and for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her fair share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer ("Gloriana") and a dogged survivor ("Good Queen Bess") in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short, disastrous reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped to forge a sense of national identity.
Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533 and was named after her grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Lady Elizabeth Howard. She was the second child of Henry VIII of England born in wedlock to survive infancy. Her mother was Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. At birth, Elizabeth was the heir presumptive to the English throne. Her elder half-sister Mary had lost her position as a legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne, with the intent to sire a male heir and ensure the Tudor succession. She was baptised on 10 September 1533, and her godparents were Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter; Elizabeth Stafford, Duchess of Norfolk; and Margaret Wotton, Dowager Marchioness of Dorset. A canopy was carried at the ceremony over the infant by her uncle George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford; John Hussey, 1st Baron Hussey of Sleaford; Lord Thomas Howard; and William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham.
Elizabeth was two years and eight months old when her mother was beheaded on 19 May 1536, four months after Catherine of Aragon's death from natural causes. Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and deprived of her place in the royal succession. Eleven days after Anne Boleyn's execution, Henry married Jane Seymour. Queen Jane died the next year shortly after the birth of their son, Edward, who was the undisputed heir apparent to the throne. Elizabeth was placed in her half-brother's household and carried the chrisom, or baptismal cloth, at his christening.
Elizabeth's first governess, Margaret Bryan, wrote that she was "as toward a child and as gentle of conditions as ever I knew any in my life". Catherine Champernowne, better known by her later, married name of Catherine "Kat" Ashley, was appointed as Elizabeth's governess in 1537, and she remained Elizabeth's friend until her death in 1565. Champernowne taught Elizabeth four languages: French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. By the time William Grindal became her tutor in 1544, Elizabeth could write English, Latin, and Italian. Under Grindal, a talented and skilful tutor, she also progressed in French and Greek. By the age of 12, she was able to translate her stepmother Catherine Parr's religious work Prayers or Meditations from English into Italian, Latin, and French, which she presented to her father as a New Year's gift. From her teenage years and throughout her life, she translated works in Latin and Greek by numerous classical authors, including the Pro Marcello of Cicero, the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius, a treatise by Plutarch, and the Annals of Tacitus. A translation of Tacitus from Lambeth Palace Library, one of only four surviving English translations from the early modern era, was confirmed as Elizabeth's own in 2019, after a detailed analysis of the handwriting and paper was undertaken.
After Grindal died in 1548, Elizabeth received her education under her brother Edward's tutor, Roger Ascham, a sympathetic teacher who believed that learning should be engaging. Current knowledge of Elizabeth's schooling and precocity comes largely from Ascham's memoirs. By the time her formal education ended in 1550, Elizabeth was one of the best educated women of her generation. At the end of her life, she was believed to speak the Welsh, Cornish, Scottish and Irish languages in addition to those mentioned above. The Venetian ambassador stated in 1603 that she "possessed [these] languages so thoroughly that each appeared to be her native tongue". Historian Mark Stoyle suggests that she was probably taught Cornish by William Killigrew, Groom of the Privy Chamber and later Chamberlain of the Exchequer.
Henry VIII died in 1547 and Elizabeth's half-brother, Edward VI, became king at the age of nine. Catherine Parr, Henry's widow, soon married Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Edward VI's uncle and the brother of Lord Protector Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. The couple took Elizabeth into their household at Chelsea. There Elizabeth experienced an emotional crisis that some historians believe affected her for the rest of her life. Thomas Seymour engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth, including entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her, and slapping her on the buttocks. Elizabeth rose early and surrounded herself with maids to avoid his unwelcome morning visits. Parr, rather than confront her husband over his inappropriate activities, joined in. Twice she accompanied him in tickling Elizabeth, and once held her while he cut her black gown "into a thousand pieces". However, after Parr discovered the pair in an embrace, she ended this state of affairs. In May 1548, Elizabeth was sent away.
Thomas Seymour nevertheless continued scheming to control the royal family and tried to have himself appointed the governor of the King's person. When Parr died after childbirth on 5 September 1548, he renewed his attentions towards Elizabeth, intent on marrying her. Her governess Kat Ashley, who was fond of Seymour, sought to convince Elizabeth to take him as her husband. She tried to convince Elizabeth to write to Seymour and "comfort him in his sorrow", but Elizabeth claimed that Thomas was not so saddened by her stepmother's death as to need comfort.
In January 1549, Seymour was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of conspiring to depose his brother Somerset as Protector, marry Lady Jane Grey to King Edward VI, and take Elizabeth as his own wife. Elizabeth, living at Hatfield House, would admit nothing. Her stubbornness exasperated her interrogator, Robert Tyrwhitt, who reported, "I do see it in her face that she is guilty". Seymour was beheaded on 20 March 1549.
Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, aged 15. His will ignored the Succession to the Crown Act 1543, excluded both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession, and instead declared as his heir Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary Tudor, Queen of France. Jane was proclaimed queen by the privy council, but her support quickly crumbled, and she was deposed after nine days. On 3 August 1553, Mary rode triumphantly into London, with Elizabeth at her side. The show of solidarity between the sisters did not last long. Mary, a devout Catholic, was determined to crush the Protestant faith in which Elizabeth had been educated, and she ordered that everyone attend Catholic Mass; Elizabeth had to outwardly conform. Mary's initial popularity ebbed away in 1554 when she announced plans to marry Philip of Spain, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and an active Catholic. Discontent spread rapidly through the country, and many looked to Elizabeth as a focus for their opposition to Mary's religious policies.
In January and February 1554, Wyatt's rebellion broke out; it was soon suppressed. Elizabeth was brought to court and interrogated regarding her role, and on 18 March, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Elizabeth fervently protested her innocence. Though it is unlikely that she had plotted with the rebels, some of them were known to have approached her. Mary's closest confidant, Emperor Charles's ambassador Simon Renard, argued that her throne would never be safe while Elizabeth lived; and Lord Chancellor Stephen Gardiner, worked to have Elizabeth put on trial. Elizabeth's supporters in the government, including William Paget, 1st Baron Paget, convinced Mary to spare her sister in the absence of hard evidence against her. Instead, on 22 May, Elizabeth was moved from the Tower to Woodstock, where she was to spend almost a year under house arrest in the charge of Henry Bedingfeld. Crowds cheered her all along the way.
On 17 April 1555, Elizabeth was recalled to court to attend the final stages of Mary's apparent pregnancy. If Mary and her child died, Elizabeth would become queen, but if Mary gave birth to a healthy child, Elizabeth's chances of becoming queen would recede sharply. When it became clear that Mary was not pregnant, no one believed any longer that she could have a child. Elizabeth's succession seemed assured.
King Philip, who ascended the Spanish throne in 1556, acknowledged the new political reality and cultivated his sister-in-law. She was a better ally than the chief alternative, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had grown up in France and was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. When his wife fell ill in 1558, Philip sent the Count of Feria to consult with Elizabeth. This interview was conducted at Hatfield House, where she had returned to live in October 1555. By October 1558, Elizabeth was already making plans for her government. Mary recognised Elizabeth as her heir on 6 November 1558, and Elizabeth became queen when Mary died on 17 November.
Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, and declared her intentions to her council and other peers who had come to Hatfield to swear allegiance. The speech contains the first record of her adoption of the medieval political theology of the sovereign's "two bodies": the body natural and the body politic:
My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all ... to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel.
As her triumphal progress wound through the city on the eve of the coronation ceremony, she was welcomed wholeheartedly by the citizens and greeted by orations and pageants, most with a strong Protestant flavour. Elizabeth's open and gracious responses endeared her to the spectators, who were "wonderfully ravished". The following day, 15 January 1559, a date chosen by her astrologer John Dee, Elizabeth was crowned and anointed by Owen Oglethorpe, the Catholic bishop of Carlisle, in Westminster Abbey. She was then presented for the people's acceptance, amidst a deafening noise of organs, fifes, trumpets, drums, and bells. Although Elizabeth was welcomed as queen in England, the country was still in a state of anxiety over the perceived Catholic threat at home and overseas, as well as the choice of whom she would marry.
Elizabeth's personal religious convictions have been much debated by scholars. She was a Protestant, but kept Catholic symbols (such as the crucifix), and downplayed the role of sermons in defiance of a key Protestant belief.
Elizabeth and her advisers perceived the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. The queen therefore sought a Protestant solution that would not offend Catholics too greatly while addressing the desires of English Protestants, but she would not tolerate the Puritans, who were pushing for far-reaching reforms. As a result, the Parliament of 1559 started to legislate for a church based on the Protestant settlement of Edward VI, with the monarch as its head, but with many Catholic elements, such as vestments.
The House of Commons backed the proposals strongly, but the bill of supremacy met opposition in the House of Lords, particularly from the bishops. Elizabeth was fortunate that many bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury. This enabled supporters amongst peers to outvote the bishops and conservative peers. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. The new Act of Supremacy became law on 8 May 1559. All public officials were forced to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office; the heresy laws were repealed, to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters by Mary. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer (an adapted version of the 1552 prayer book) compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy, or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme.
From the start of Elizabeth's reign it was expected that she would marry, and the question arose to whom. Although she received many offers, she never married and remained childless; the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships. She considered several suitors until she was about fifty. Her last courtship was with Francis, Duke of Anjou, 22 years her junior. While risking possible loss of power like her sister, who played into the hands of King Philip II of Spain, marriage offered the chance of an heir. However, the choice of a husband might also provoke political instability or even insurrection.
In the spring of 1559, it became evident that Elizabeth was in love with her childhood friend Robert Dudley. It was said that his wife Amy was suffering from a "malady in one of her breasts" and that the queen would like to marry Robert if his wife should die. By the autumn of 1559, several foreign suitors were vying for Elizabeth's hand; their impatient envoys engaged in ever more scandalous talk and reported that a marriage with her favourite was not welcome in England: "There is not a man who does not cry out on him and her with indignation ... she will marry none but the favoured Robert." Amy Dudley died in September 1560, from a fall from a flight of stairs and, despite the coroner's inquest finding of accident, many people suspected her husband of having arranged her death so that he could marry the queen. Elizabeth seriously considered marrying Dudley for some time. However, William Cecil, Nicholas Throckmorton, and some conservative peers made their disapproval unmistakably clear. There were even rumours that the nobility would rise if the marriage took place.
Among other marriage candidates being considered for the queen, Robert Dudley continued to be regarded as a possible candidate for nearly another decade. Elizabeth was extremely jealous of his affections, even when she no longer meant to marry him herself. She raised Dudley to the peerage as Earl of Leicester in 1564. In 1578, he finally married Lettice Knollys, to whom the queen reacted with repeated scenes of displeasure and lifelong hatred. Still, Dudley always "remained at the centre of [Elizabeth's] emotional life", as historian Susan Doran has described the situation. He died shortly after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. After Elizabeth's own death, a note from him was found among her most personal belongings, marked "his last letter" in her handwriting.
Marriage negotiations constituted a key element in Elizabeth's foreign policy. She turned down the hand of Philip, her half-sister's widower, early in 1559 but for several years entertained the proposal of King Eric XIV of Sweden. Earlier in Elizabeth's life a Danish match for her had been discussed; Henry VIII had proposed one with the Danish prince Adolf, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, in 1545, and Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, suggested a marriage with Prince Frederick (later Frederick II) several years later, but the negotiations had abated in 1551. In the years around 1559 a Dano-English Protestant alliance was considered, and to counter Sweden's proposal, King Frederick II proposed to Elizabeth in late 1559.
For several years she also seriously negotiated to marry Philip's cousin Charles II, Archduke of Austria. By 1569, relations with the Habsburgs had deteriorated. Elizabeth considered marriage to two French Valois princes in turn, first Henry, Duke of Anjou, and then from 1572 to 1581 his brother Francis, Duke of Anjou, formerly Duke of Alençon. This last proposal was tied to a planned alliance against Spanish control of the Southern Netherlands. Elizabeth seems to have taken the courtship seriously for a time, and wore a frog-shaped earring that Francis had sent her.
In 1563, Elizabeth told an imperial envoy: "If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married". Later in the year, following Elizabeth's illness with smallpox, the succession question became a heated issue in Parliament. Members urged the queen to marry or nominate an heir, to prevent a civil war upon her death. She refused to do either. In April she prorogued the Parliament, which did not reconvene until she needed its support to raise taxes in 1566.
Having previously promised to marry, she told an unruly House:
I will never break the word of a prince spoken in public place, for my honour's sake. And therefore I say again, I will marry as soon as I can conveniently, if God take not him away with whom I mind to marry, or myself, or else some other great let [obstruction] happen.
By 1570, senior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem. For her failure to marry, Elizabeth was often accused of irresponsibility. Her silence, however, strengthened her own political security: she knew that if she named an heir, her throne would be vulnerable to a coup; she remembered the way that "a second person, as I have been" had been used as the focus of plots against her predecessor.
Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity related to that of the Virgin Mary. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin, a goddess, or both, not as a normal woman. At first, only Elizabeth made a virtue of her ostensible virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, "And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin". Later on, poets and writers took up the theme and developed an iconography that exalted Elizabeth. Public tributes to the Virgin by 1578 acted as a coded assertion of opposition to the queen's marriage negotiations with the Duke of Alençon. Ultimately, Elizabeth would insist she was married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In 1599, she spoke of "all my husbands, my good people".
This claim of virginity was not universally accepted. Catholics accused Elizabeth of engaging in "filthy lust" that symbolically defiled the nation along with her body. Henry IV of France said that one of the great questions of Europe was "whether Queen Elizabeth was a maid or no".
A central issue, when it comes to the question of Elizabeth's virginity, was whether the queen ever consummated her love affair with Robert Dudley. In 1559, she had Dudley's bedchambers moved next to her own apartments. In 1561, she was mysteriously bedridden with an illness that caused her body to swell.
In 1587, a young man calling himself Arthur Dudley was arrested on the coast of Spain under suspicion of being a spy. The man claimed to be the illegitimate son of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, with his age being consistent with birth during the 1561 illness. He was taken to Madrid for investigation, where he was examined by Francis Englefield, a Catholic aristocrat exiled to Spain and secretary to King Philip II. Three letters exist today describing the interview, detailing what Arthur proclaimed to be the story of his life, from birth in the royal palace to the time of his arrival in Spain. However, this failed to convince the Spanish: Englefield admitted to King Philip that Arthur's "claim at present amounts to nothing", but suggested that "he should not be allowed to get away, but [...] kept very secure." The king agreed, and Arthur was never heard from again. Modern scholarship dismisses the story's basic premise as "impossible", and asserts that Elizabeth's life was so closely observed by contemporaries that she could not have hidden a pregnancy.
Elizabeth's first policy toward Scotland was to oppose the French presence there. She feared that the French planned to invade England and put her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne. Mary was considered by many to be the heir to the English crown, being the granddaughter of Henry VIII's elder sister, Margaret. Mary boasted being "the nearest kinswoman she hath". Elizabeth was persuaded to send a force into Scotland to aid the Protestant rebels, and though the campaign was inept, the resulting Treaty of Edinburgh of July 1560 removed the French threat in the north. When Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 to take up the reins of power, the country had an established Protestant church and was run by a council of Protestant nobles supported by Elizabeth. Mary refused to ratify the treaty.
In 1563, Elizabeth proposed her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband for Mary, without asking either of the two people concerned. Both proved unenthusiastic, and in 1565, Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular and was murdered in February 1567 by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. Shortly afterwards, on 15 May 1567, Mary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. Elizabeth confronted Mary about the marriage, writing to her:
How could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry such a subject, who besides other and notorious lacks, public fame has charged with the murder of your late husband, besides the touching of yourself also in some part, though we trust in that behalf falsely.
These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Lochleven Castle. The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James VI, who had been born in June 1566. James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant. Mary escaped in 1568 but after a defeat at Langside sailed to England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch, but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England, where she was imprisoned for the next nineteen years.
Mary was soon the focus for rebellion. In 1569 there was a major Catholic rising in the North; the goal was to free Mary, marry her to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, and put her on the English throne. After the rebels' defeat, over 750 of them were executed on Elizabeth's orders. In the belief that the revolt had been successful, Pope Pius V issued a bull in 1570, titled Regnans in Excelsis, which declared "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be excommunicated and a heretic, releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her. Catholics who obeyed her orders were threatened with excommunication. The papal bull provoked legislative initiatives against Catholics by Parliament, which were, however, mitigated by Elizabeth's intervention. In 1581, to convert English subjects to Catholicism with "the intent" to withdraw them from their allegiance to Elizabeth was made a treasonable offence, carrying the death penalty. From the 1570s missionary priests from continental seminaries went to England secretly in the cause of the "reconversion of England". Many suffered execution, engendering a cult of martyrdom.
Regnans in Excelsis gave English Catholics a strong incentive to look to Mary as the legitimate sovereign of England. Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 (which caused Mary's suitor, the Duke of Norfolk, to lose his head) to the Babington Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her. At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586, she had been persuaded to sanction Mary's trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm diverse things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person." On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire. After the execution, Elizabeth claimed that she had not intended for the signed execution warrant to be dispatched, and blamed her secretary, William Davison, for implementing it without her knowledge. The sincerity of Elizabeth's remorse and whether or not she wanted to delay the warrant have been called into question both by her contemporaries and later historians.
Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the English occupation of Le Havre from October 1562 to June 1563, which ended in failure when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port. Elizabeth's intention had been to exchange Le Havre for Calais, lost to France in January 1558. Only through the activities of her fleets did Elizabeth pursue an aggressive policy. This paid off in the war against Spain, 80% of which was fought at sea. She knighted Francis Drake after his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, and he won fame for his raids on Spanish ports and fleets. An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over whom the queen had little control.
After the occupation and loss of Le Havre in 1562–1563, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent until 1585, when she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. This followed the deaths in 1584 of the queen's allies William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and the Duke of Anjou, and the surrender of a series of Dutch towns to Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Philip's governor of the Spanish Netherlands. In December 1584, an alliance between Philip II and the French Catholic League at Joinville undermined the ability of Anjou's brother, Henry III of France, to counter Spanish domination of the Netherlands. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion. The siege of Antwerp in the summer of 1585 by the Duke of Parma necessitated some reaction on the part of the English and the Dutch. The outcome was the Treaty of Nonsuch of August 1585, in which Elizabeth promised military support to the Dutch. The treaty marked the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish War, which lasted until the Treaty of London in 1604.
The expedition was led by Elizabeth's former suitor, the Earl of Leicester. Elizabeth from the start did not really back this course of action. Her strategy, to support the Dutch on the surface with an English army, while beginning secret peace talks with Spain within days of Leicester's arrival in Holland, had necessarily to be at odds with Leicester's, who had set up a protectorate and was expected by the Dutch to fight an active campaign. Elizabeth, on the other hand, wanted him "to avoid at all costs any decisive action with the enemy". He enraged Elizabeth by accepting the post of Governor-General from the Dutch States General. Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to force her to accept sovereignty over the Netherlands, which so far she had always declined. She wrote to Leicester:
We could never have imagined (had we not seen it fall out in experience) that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us, above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touches us in honour ... And therefore our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently upon the duty of your allegiance obey and fulfill whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your utmost peril.
Elizabeth's "commandment" was that her emissary read out her letters of disapproval publicly before the Dutch Council of State, Leicester having to stand nearby. This public humiliation of her "Lieutenant-General" combined with her continued talks for a separate peace with Spain irreversibly undermined Leicester's standing among the Dutch. The military campaign was severely hampered by Elizabeth's repeated refusals to send promised funds for her starving soldiers. Her unwillingness to commit herself to the cause, Leicester's own shortcomings as a political and military leader, and the faction-ridden and chaotic situation of Dutch politics led to the failure of the campaign. Leicester finally resigned his command in December 1587.
Meanwhile, Francis Drake had undertaken a major voyage against Spanish ports and ships in the Caribbean in 1585 and 1586. In 1587 he made a successful raid on Cádiz, destroying the Spanish fleet of war ships intended for the Enterprise of England, as Philip II had decided to take the war to England.
On 12 July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands. The armada was defeated by a combination of miscalculation, misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships off Gravelines at midnight on 28–29 July (7–8 August New Style), which dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast. The Armada straggled home to Spain in shattered remnants, after disastrous losses on the coast of Ireland (after some ships had tried to struggle back to Spain via the North Sea, and then back south past the west coast of Ireland). Unaware of the Armada's fate, English militias mustered to defend the country under the Earl of Leicester's command. Leicester invited Elizabeth to inspect her troops at Tilbury in Essex on 8 August. Wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, she addressed them in one of her most famous speeches:
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people ... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.
When no invasion came, the nation rejoiced. Elizabeth's procession to a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral rivalled that of her coronation as a spectacle. The defeat of the armada was a potent propaganda victory, both for Elizabeth and for Protestant England. The English took their delivery as a symbol of God's favour and of the nation's inviolability under a virgin queen. However, the victory was not a turning point in the war, which continued and often favoured Spain. The Spanish still controlled the southern provinces of the Netherlands, and the threat of invasion remained. Walter Raleigh claimed after her death that Elizabeth's caution had impeded the war against Spain:
If the late queen would have believed her men of war as she did her scribes, we had in her time beaten that great empire in pieces and made their kings of figs and oranges as in old times. But her Majesty did all by halves, and by petty invasions taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness.
Though some historians have criticised Elizabeth on similar grounds, Raleigh's verdict has more often been judged unfair. Elizabeth had good reason not to place too much trust in her commanders, who once in action tended, as she put it herself, "to be transported with an haviour of vainglory".
In 1589, the year after the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth sent to Spain the English Armada or Counter Armada with 23,375 men and 150 ships, led by Francis Drake as admiral and John Norreys as general. The English fleet suffered a catastrophic defeat with 11,000–15,000 killed, wounded or died of disease and 40 ships sunk or captured. The advantage England had won upon the destruction of the Spanish Armada was lost, and the Spanish victory marked a revival of Philip II's naval power through the next decade.
When the Protestant Henry IV inherited the French throne in 1589, Elizabeth sent him military support. It was her first venture into France since the retreat from Le Havre in 1563. Henry's succession was strongly contested by the Catholic League and by Philip II, and Elizabeth feared a Spanish takeover of the channel ports.
The subsequent English campaigns in France, however, were disorganised and ineffective. Peregrine Bertie, largely ignoring Elizabeth's orders, roamed northern France to little effect, with an army of 4,000 men. He withdrew in disarray in December 1589, having lost half his troops. In 1591, the campaign of John Norreys, who led 3,000 men to Brittany, was even more of a disaster. As for all such expeditions, Elizabeth was unwilling to invest in the supplies and reinforcements requested by the commanders. Norreys left for London to plead in person for more support. In his absence, a Catholic League army almost destroyed the remains of his army at Craon, north-west France, in May 1591.
In July, Elizabeth sent out another force under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, to help Henry IV in besieging Rouen. The result was just as dismal. Essex accomplished nothing and returned home in January 1592. Henry abandoned the siege in April. As usual, Elizabeth lacked control over her commanders once they were abroad. "Where he is, or what he doth, or what he is to do," she wrote of Essex, "we are ignorant".
Although Ireland was one of her two kingdoms, Elizabeth faced a hostile, and in places virtually autonomous, Irish population that adhered to Catholicism and was willing to defy her authority and plot with her enemies. Her policy there was to grant land to her courtiers and prevent the rebels from giving Spain a base from which to attack England. In the course of a series of uprisings, Crown forces pursued scorched-earth tactics, burning the land and slaughtering man, woman and child. During a revolt in Munster led by Gerald FitzGerald, in 1582, an estimated 30,000 Irish people starved to death. The poet and colonist Edmund Spenser wrote that the victims "were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same". Elizabeth advised her commanders that the Irish, "that rude and barbarous nation", be well treated, but she or her commanders showed no remorse when force and bloodshed served their authoritarian purpose.
Between 1594 and 1603, Elizabeth faced her most severe test in Ireland during the Nine Years' War, a revolt that took place at the height of hostilities with Spain, who backed the rebel leader, Hugh O'Neill. In spring 1599, Elizabeth sent Robert Devereux, to put the revolt down. To her frustration, he made little progress and returned to England in defiance of her orders. He was replaced by Charles Blount, who took three years to defeat the rebels. O'Neill finally surrendered in 1603, a few days after Elizabeth's death. Soon afterwards, a peace treaty was signed between England and Spain.
Elizabeth continued to maintain the diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia that were originally established by her half-brother, Edward VI. She often wrote to Tsar Ivan the Terrible on amicable terms, though the Tsar was often annoyed by her focus on commerce rather than on the possibility of a military alliance. Ivan even proposed to her once, and during his later reign, asked for a guarantee to be granted asylum in England should his rule be jeopardised. English merchant and explorer Anthony Jenkinson, who began his career as a representative of the Muscovy Company, became the queen's special ambassador to the court of Tsar Ivan.
Upon his death in 1584, Ivan was succeeded by his son Feodor I. Unlike his father, Feodor had no enthusiasm in maintaining exclusive trading rights with England. He declared his kingdom open to all foreigners, and dismissed the English ambassador Jerome Bowes, whose pomposity had been tolerated by Ivan. Elizabeth sent a new ambassador, Dr. Giles Fletcher, to demand from the regent Boris Godunov that he convince the Tsar to reconsider. The negotiations failed, due to Fletcher addressing Feodor with two of his many titles omitted. Elizabeth continued to appeal to Feodor in half appealing, half reproachful letters. She proposed an alliance, something which she had refused to do when offered one by Feodor's father, but was turned down.
Trade and diplomatic relations developed between England and the Barbary states during the rule of Elizabeth. England established a trading relationship with Morocco in opposition to Spain, selling armour, ammunition, timber, and metal in exchange for Moroccan sugar, in spite of a papal ban. In 1600, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, the principal secretary to the Moroccan ruler Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur, visited England as an ambassador to the English court, to negotiate an Anglo-Moroccan alliance against Spain. Elizabeth "agreed to sell munitions supplies to Morocco, and she and Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur talked on and off about mounting a joint operation against the Spanish". Discussions, however, remained inconclusive, and both rulers died within two years of the embassy.
Diplomatic relations were also established with the Ottoman Empire with the chartering of the Levant Company and the dispatch of the first English ambassador to the Sublime Porte, William Harborne, in 1578. For the first time, a treaty of commerce was signed in 1580. Numerous envoys were dispatched in both directions and epistolar exchanges occurred between Elizabeth and Sultan Murad III. In one correspondence, Murad entertained the notion that Protestantism and Islam had "much more in common than either did with Roman Catholicism, as both rejected the worship of idols", and argued for an alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire. To the dismay of Catholic Europe, England exported tin and lead (for cannon-casting) and ammunitions to the Ottoman Empire, and Elizabeth seriously discussed joint military operations with Murad III during the outbreak of war with Spain in 1585, as Francis Walsingham was lobbying for a direct Ottoman military involvement against the common Spanish enemy.
In 1583, Humphrey Gilbert sailed west to establish a colony in Newfoundland. He never returned to England. Gilbert's half-brother Walter Raleigh explored the Atlantic Coast and claimed the territory of Virginia, perhaps named in honour of Elizabeth, the "Virgin Queen". This territory was much larger than the present-day state of Virginia, extending from New England to the Carolinas. In 1585, Raleigh returned to Virginia with a small group of people. They landed on Roanoke Island, off present-day North Carolina. After the failure of the first colony, Raleigh recruited another group and put John White in command. When Raleigh returned in 1590, there was no trace of the Roanoke Colony he had left, but it was the first English settlement in North America.
The East India Company was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region and China, and received its charter from Queen Elizabeth on 31 December 1600. For a period of 15 years, the company was awarded a monopoly on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. James Lancaster commanded the first expedition in 1601. The Company eventually controlled half of world trade and substantial territory in India in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 brought new difficulties for Elizabeth that lasted until the end of her reign. The conflicts with Spain and in Ireland dragged on, the tax burden grew heavier, and the economy was hit by poor harvests and the cost of war. Prices rose and the standard of living fell. During this time, repression of Catholics intensified, and Elizabeth authorised commissions in 1591 to interrogate and monitor Catholic householders. To maintain the illusion of peace and prosperity, she increasingly relied on internal spies and propaganda. In her last years, mounting criticism reflected a decline in the public's affection for her.
One of the causes for this "second reign" of Elizabeth, as it is sometimes called, was the changed character of Elizabeth's governing body, the privy council in the 1590s. A new generation was in power. With the exception of William Cecil, Baron Burghley, the most important politicians had died around 1590: the Earl of Leicester in 1588; Francis Walsingham in 1590; and Christopher Hatton in 1591. Factional strife in the government, which had not existed in a noteworthy form before the 1590s, now became its hallmark. A bitter rivalry arose between Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, and Robert Cecil, son of Lord Burghley, with both being supported by their respective adherents. The struggle for the most powerful positions in the state marred the kingdom's politics. The queen's personal authority was lessening, as is shown in the 1594 affair of Dr. Lopez, her trusted physician. When he was wrongly accused by the Earl of Essex of treason out of personal pique, she could not prevent the doctor's execution, although she had been angry about his arrest and seems not to have believed in his guilt.
During the last years of her reign, Elizabeth came to rely on the granting of monopolies as a cost-free system of patronage, rather than asking Parliament for more subsidies in a time of war. The practice soon led to price-fixing, the enrichment of courtiers at the public's expense, and widespread resentment. This culminated in agitation in the House of Commons during the parliament of 1601. In her famous "Golden Speech" of 30 November 1601 at Whitehall Palace to a deputation of 140 members, Elizabeth professed ignorance of the abuses, and won the members over with promises and her usual appeal to the emotions:
Who keeps their sovereign from the lapse of error, in which, by ignorance and not by intent they might have fallen, what thank they deserve, we know, though you may guess. And as nothing is more dear to us than the loving conservation of our subjects' hearts, what an undeserved doubt might we have incurred if the abusers of our liberality, the thrallers of our people, the wringers of the poor, had not been told us!
This same period of economic and political uncertainty, however, produced an unsurpassed literary flowering in England. The first signs of a new literary movement had appeared at the end of the second decade of Elizabeth's reign, with John Lyly's Euphues and Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender in 1578. During the 1590s, some of the great names of English literature entered their maturity, including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Continuing into the Jacobean era, the English theatre would reach its peak. The notion of a great Elizabethan era depends largely on the builders, dramatists, poets, and musicians who were active during Elizabeth's reign. They owed little directly to the queen, who was never a major patron of the arts.
As Elizabeth aged, her image gradually changed. She was portrayed as Belphoebe or Astraea, and after the Armada, as Gloriana, the eternally youthful Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser's poem. Elizabeth gave Edmund Spenser a pension; as this was unusual for her, it indicates that she liked his work. Her painted portraits became less realistic and more a set of enigmatic icons that made her look much younger than she was. In fact, her skin had been scarred by smallpox in 1562, leaving her half bald and dependent on wigs and cosmetics. Her love of sweets and fear of dentists contributed to severe tooth decay and loss to such an extent that foreign ambassadors had a hard time understanding her speech. André Hurault de Maisse, Ambassador Extraordinary from Henry IV of France, reported an audience with the queen, during which he noticed, "her teeth are very yellow and unequal ... and on the left side less than on the right. Many of them are missing, so that one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly." Yet he added, "her figure is fair and tall and graceful in whatever she does; so far as may be she keeps her dignity, yet humbly and graciously withal." Walter Raleigh called her "a lady whom time had surprised".
The more Elizabeth's beauty faded, the more her courtiers praised it. Elizabeth was happy to play the part, but it is possible that in the last decade of her life she began to believe her own performance. She became fond and indulgent of the charming but petulant young Earl of Essex, who was Leicester's stepson and took liberties with her for which she forgave him. She repeatedly appointed him to military posts despite his growing record of irresponsibility. After Essex's desertion of his command in Ireland in 1599, Elizabeth had him placed under house arrest and the following year deprived him of his monopolies. In February 1601, Essex tried to raise a rebellion in London. He intended to seize the queen but few rallied to his support, and he was beheaded on 25 February. Elizabeth knew that her own misjudgements were partly to blame for this turn of events. An observer wrote in 1602: "Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes with shedding tears to bewail Essex."
Elizabeth's senior adviser, Lord Burghley, died on 4 August 1598. His political mantle passed to his son Robert, who soon became the leader of the government. One task he addressed was to prepare the way for a smooth succession. Since Elizabeth would never name her successor, Robert Cecil was obliged to proceed in secret. He therefore entered into a coded negotiation with James VI of Scotland, who had a strong but unrecognised claim. Cecil coached the impatient James to humour Elizabeth and "secure the heart of the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either needless expostulations or over much curiosity in her own actions". The advice worked. James's tone delighted Elizabeth, who responded: "So trust I that you will not doubt but that your last letters are so acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield them to you in grateful sort". In historian J. E. Neale's view, Elizabeth may not have declared her wishes openly to James, but she made them known with "unmistakable if veiled phrases".
The queen's health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow. In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a "settled and unremovable melancholy", and sat motionless on a cushion for hours on end. When Robert Cecil told her that she must go to bed, she snapped: "Must is not a word to use to princes, little man." She died on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace, between two and three in the morning. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James King of England.
While it has become normative to record Elizabeth's death as occurring in 1603, following English calendar reform in the 1750s, at the time England observed New Year's Day on 25 March, commonly known as Lady Day. Thus Elizabeth died on the last day of the year 1602 in the old calendar. The modern convention is to use the old style calendar for the day and month while using the new style calendar for the year.
Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall, on a barge lit with torches. At her funeral on 28 April, the coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey on a hearse drawn by four horses hung with black velvet. In the words of the chronicler John Stow:
Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came out to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man.
Elizabeth was interred in Westminster Abbey, in a tomb shared with her half-sister, Mary I. The Latin inscription on their tomb, "Regno consortes & urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis", translates to "Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection".
Elizabeth was lamented by many of her subjects, but others were relieved at her death. Expectations of King James started high but then declined. By the 1620s, there was a nostalgic revival of the cult of Elizabeth. Elizabeth was praised as a heroine of the Protestant cause and the ruler of a golden age. James was depicted as a Catholic sympathiser, presiding over a corrupt court. The triumphalist image that Elizabeth had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, recalled: "When we had experience of a Scottish government, the Queen did seem to revive. Then was her memory much magnified." Elizabeth's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance.
The picture of Elizabeth painted by her Protestant admirers of the early 17th century has proved lasting and influential. Her memory was also revived during the Napoleonic Wars, when the nation again found itself on the brink of invasion. In the Victorian era, the Elizabethan legend was adapted to the imperial ideology of the day, and in the mid-20th century, Elizabeth was a romantic symbol of the national resistance to foreign threat. Historians of that period, such as J. E. Neale (1934) and A. L. Rowse (1950), interpreted Elizabeth's reign as a golden age of progress. Neale and Rowse also idealised the Queen personally: she always did everything right; her more unpleasant traits were ignored or explained as signs of stress.
Recent historians, however, have taken a more complicated view of Elizabeth. Her reign is famous for the defeat of the Armada, and for successful raids against the Spanish, such as those on Cádiz in 1587 and 1596, but some historians point to military failures on land and at sea. In Ireland, Elizabeth's forces ultimately prevailed, but their tactics stain her record. Rather than as a brave defender of the Protestant nations against Spain and the Habsburgs, she is more often regarded as cautious in her foreign policies. She offered very limited aid to foreign Protestants and failed to provide her commanders with the funds to make a difference abroad.
Elizabeth established an English church that helped shape a national identity and remains in place today. Those who praised her later as a Protestant heroine overlooked her refusal to drop all practices of Catholic origin from the Church of England. Historians note that in her day, strict Protestants regarded the Acts of Settlement and Uniformity of 1559 as a compromise. In fact, Elizabeth believed that faith was personal and did not wish, as Francis Bacon put it, to "make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts".
Though Elizabeth followed a largely defensive foreign policy, her reign raised England's status abroad. "She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island," marvelled Pope Sixtus V, "and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all". Under Elizabeth, the nation gained a new self-confidence and sense of sovereignty, as Christendom fragmented. Elizabeth was the first Tudor to recognise that a monarch ruled by popular consent. She therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her Stuart successors failed to follow. Some historians have called her lucky; she believed that God was protecting her. Priding herself on being "mere English", Elizabeth trusted in God, honest advice, and the love of her subjects for the success of her rule. In a prayer, she offered thanks to God that:
[At a time] when wars and seditions with grievous persecutions have vexed almost all kings and countries round about me, my reign hath been peacable, and my realm a receptacle to thy afflicted Church. The love of my people hath appeared firm, and the devices of my enemies frustrate. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last monarch of the House of Tudor.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was two years old. Anne's marriage to Henry was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Henry restored her to the line of succession when she was ten, via the Third Succession Act 1543. After Henry's death in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother Edward VI ruled until his own death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to a Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statutes to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside within weeks of his death and Mary became queen, deposing and executing Jane. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, whom she created Baron Burghley. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did, and because of this she is sometimes referred to as the \"Virgin Queen\". She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings had been. One of her mottoes was video et taceo (\"I see and keep silent\"). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570, which in theory released English Catholics from allegiance to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers' secret service, run by Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth's reign became known as the Elizabethan era. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, the prowess of English maritime adventurers, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, and for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her fair share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer (\"Gloriana\") and a dogged survivor (\"Good Queen Bess\") in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short, disastrous reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped to forge a sense of national identity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533 and was named after her grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Lady Elizabeth Howard. She was the second child of Henry VIII of England born in wedlock to survive infancy. Her mother was Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. At birth, Elizabeth was the heir presumptive to the English throne. Her elder half-sister Mary had lost her position as a legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne, with the intent to sire a male heir and ensure the Tudor succession. She was baptised on 10 September 1533, and her godparents were Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; Henry Courtenay, 1st Marquess of Exeter; Elizabeth Stafford, Duchess of Norfolk; and Margaret Wotton, Dowager Marchioness of Dorset. A canopy was carried at the ceremony over the infant by her uncle George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford; John Hussey, 1st Baron Hussey of Sleaford; Lord Thomas Howard; and William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Elizabeth was two years and eight months old when her mother was beheaded on 19 May 1536, four months after Catherine of Aragon's death from natural causes. Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and deprived of her place in the royal succession. Eleven days after Anne Boleyn's execution, Henry married Jane Seymour. Queen Jane died the next year shortly after the birth of their son, Edward, who was the undisputed heir apparent to the throne. Elizabeth was placed in her half-brother's household and carried the chrisom, or baptismal cloth, at his christening.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Elizabeth's first governess, Margaret Bryan, wrote that she was \"as toward a child and as gentle of conditions as ever I knew any in my life\". Catherine Champernowne, better known by her later, married name of Catherine \"Kat\" Ashley, was appointed as Elizabeth's governess in 1537, and she remained Elizabeth's friend until her death in 1565. Champernowne taught Elizabeth four languages: French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish. By the time William Grindal became her tutor in 1544, Elizabeth could write English, Latin, and Italian. Under Grindal, a talented and skilful tutor, she also progressed in French and Greek. By the age of 12, she was able to translate her stepmother Catherine Parr's religious work Prayers or Meditations from English into Italian, Latin, and French, which she presented to her father as a New Year's gift. From her teenage years and throughout her life, she translated works in Latin and Greek by numerous classical authors, including the Pro Marcello of Cicero, the De consolatione philosophiae of Boethius, a treatise by Plutarch, and the Annals of Tacitus. A translation of Tacitus from Lambeth Palace Library, one of only four surviving English translations from the early modern era, was confirmed as Elizabeth's own in 2019, after a detailed analysis of the handwriting and paper was undertaken.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "After Grindal died in 1548, Elizabeth received her education under her brother Edward's tutor, Roger Ascham, a sympathetic teacher who believed that learning should be engaging. Current knowledge of Elizabeth's schooling and precocity comes largely from Ascham's memoirs. By the time her formal education ended in 1550, Elizabeth was one of the best educated women of her generation. At the end of her life, she was believed to speak the Welsh, Cornish, Scottish and Irish languages in addition to those mentioned above. The Venetian ambassador stated in 1603 that she \"possessed [these] languages so thoroughly that each appeared to be her native tongue\". Historian Mark Stoyle suggests that she was probably taught Cornish by William Killigrew, Groom of the Privy Chamber and later Chamberlain of the Exchequer.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Henry VIII died in 1547 and Elizabeth's half-brother, Edward VI, became king at the age of nine. Catherine Parr, Henry's widow, soon married Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, Edward VI's uncle and the brother of Lord Protector Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset. The couple took Elizabeth into their household at Chelsea. There Elizabeth experienced an emotional crisis that some historians believe affected her for the rest of her life. Thomas Seymour engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth, including entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her, and slapping her on the buttocks. Elizabeth rose early and surrounded herself with maids to avoid his unwelcome morning visits. Parr, rather than confront her husband over his inappropriate activities, joined in. Twice she accompanied him in tickling Elizabeth, and once held her while he cut her black gown \"into a thousand pieces\". However, after Parr discovered the pair in an embrace, she ended this state of affairs. In May 1548, Elizabeth was sent away.",
"title": "Thomas Seymour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Thomas Seymour nevertheless continued scheming to control the royal family and tried to have himself appointed the governor of the King's person. When Parr died after childbirth on 5 September 1548, he renewed his attentions towards Elizabeth, intent on marrying her. Her governess Kat Ashley, who was fond of Seymour, sought to convince Elizabeth to take him as her husband. She tried to convince Elizabeth to write to Seymour and \"comfort him in his sorrow\", but Elizabeth claimed that Thomas was not so saddened by her stepmother's death as to need comfort.",
"title": "Thomas Seymour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In January 1549, Seymour was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of conspiring to depose his brother Somerset as Protector, marry Lady Jane Grey to King Edward VI, and take Elizabeth as his own wife. Elizabeth, living at Hatfield House, would admit nothing. Her stubbornness exasperated her interrogator, Robert Tyrwhitt, who reported, \"I do see it in her face that she is guilty\". Seymour was beheaded on 20 March 1549.",
"title": "Thomas Seymour"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, aged 15. His will ignored the Succession to the Crown Act 1543, excluded both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession, and instead declared as his heir Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary Tudor, Queen of France. Jane was proclaimed queen by the privy council, but her support quickly crumbled, and she was deposed after nine days. On 3 August 1553, Mary rode triumphantly into London, with Elizabeth at her side. The show of solidarity between the sisters did not last long. Mary, a devout Catholic, was determined to crush the Protestant faith in which Elizabeth had been educated, and she ordered that everyone attend Catholic Mass; Elizabeth had to outwardly conform. Mary's initial popularity ebbed away in 1554 when she announced plans to marry Philip of Spain, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and an active Catholic. Discontent spread rapidly through the country, and many looked to Elizabeth as a focus for their opposition to Mary's religious policies.",
"title": "Reign of Mary I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In January and February 1554, Wyatt's rebellion broke out; it was soon suppressed. Elizabeth was brought to court and interrogated regarding her role, and on 18 March, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Elizabeth fervently protested her innocence. Though it is unlikely that she had plotted with the rebels, some of them were known to have approached her. Mary's closest confidant, Emperor Charles's ambassador Simon Renard, argued that her throne would never be safe while Elizabeth lived; and Lord Chancellor Stephen Gardiner, worked to have Elizabeth put on trial. Elizabeth's supporters in the government, including William Paget, 1st Baron Paget, convinced Mary to spare her sister in the absence of hard evidence against her. Instead, on 22 May, Elizabeth was moved from the Tower to Woodstock, where she was to spend almost a year under house arrest in the charge of Henry Bedingfeld. Crowds cheered her all along the way.",
"title": "Reign of Mary I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On 17 April 1555, Elizabeth was recalled to court to attend the final stages of Mary's apparent pregnancy. If Mary and her child died, Elizabeth would become queen, but if Mary gave birth to a healthy child, Elizabeth's chances of becoming queen would recede sharply. When it became clear that Mary was not pregnant, no one believed any longer that she could have a child. Elizabeth's succession seemed assured.",
"title": "Reign of Mary I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "King Philip, who ascended the Spanish throne in 1556, acknowledged the new political reality and cultivated his sister-in-law. She was a better ally than the chief alternative, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had grown up in France and was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. When his wife fell ill in 1558, Philip sent the Count of Feria to consult with Elizabeth. This interview was conducted at Hatfield House, where she had returned to live in October 1555. By October 1558, Elizabeth was already making plans for her government. Mary recognised Elizabeth as her heir on 6 November 1558, and Elizabeth became queen when Mary died on 17 November.",
"title": "Reign of Mary I"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, and declared her intentions to her council and other peers who had come to Hatfield to swear allegiance. The speech contains the first record of her adoption of the medieval political theology of the sovereign's \"two bodies\": the body natural and the body politic:",
"title": "Accession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all ... to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel.",
"title": "Accession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "As her triumphal progress wound through the city on the eve of the coronation ceremony, she was welcomed wholeheartedly by the citizens and greeted by orations and pageants, most with a strong Protestant flavour. Elizabeth's open and gracious responses endeared her to the spectators, who were \"wonderfully ravished\". The following day, 15 January 1559, a date chosen by her astrologer John Dee, Elizabeth was crowned and anointed by Owen Oglethorpe, the Catholic bishop of Carlisle, in Westminster Abbey. She was then presented for the people's acceptance, amidst a deafening noise of organs, fifes, trumpets, drums, and bells. Although Elizabeth was welcomed as queen in England, the country was still in a state of anxiety over the perceived Catholic threat at home and overseas, as well as the choice of whom she would marry.",
"title": "Accession"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Elizabeth's personal religious convictions have been much debated by scholars. She was a Protestant, but kept Catholic symbols (such as the crucifix), and downplayed the role of sermons in defiance of a key Protestant belief.",
"title": "Church settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Elizabeth and her advisers perceived the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. The queen therefore sought a Protestant solution that would not offend Catholics too greatly while addressing the desires of English Protestants, but she would not tolerate the Puritans, who were pushing for far-reaching reforms. As a result, the Parliament of 1559 started to legislate for a church based on the Protestant settlement of Edward VI, with the monarch as its head, but with many Catholic elements, such as vestments.",
"title": "Church settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The House of Commons backed the proposals strongly, but the bill of supremacy met opposition in the House of Lords, particularly from the bishops. Elizabeth was fortunate that many bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury. This enabled supporters amongst peers to outvote the bishops and conservative peers. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. The new Act of Supremacy became law on 8 May 1559. All public officials were forced to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office; the heresy laws were repealed, to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters by Mary. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer (an adapted version of the 1552 prayer book) compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy, or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme.",
"title": "Church settlement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "From the start of Elizabeth's reign it was expected that she would marry, and the question arose to whom. Although she received many offers, she never married and remained childless; the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships. She considered several suitors until she was about fifty. Her last courtship was with Francis, Duke of Anjou, 22 years her junior. While risking possible loss of power like her sister, who played into the hands of King Philip II of Spain, marriage offered the chance of an heir. However, the choice of a husband might also provoke political instability or even insurrection.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "In the spring of 1559, it became evident that Elizabeth was in love with her childhood friend Robert Dudley. It was said that his wife Amy was suffering from a \"malady in one of her breasts\" and that the queen would like to marry Robert if his wife should die. By the autumn of 1559, several foreign suitors were vying for Elizabeth's hand; their impatient envoys engaged in ever more scandalous talk and reported that a marriage with her favourite was not welcome in England: \"There is not a man who does not cry out on him and her with indignation ... she will marry none but the favoured Robert.\" Amy Dudley died in September 1560, from a fall from a flight of stairs and, despite the coroner's inquest finding of accident, many people suspected her husband of having arranged her death so that he could marry the queen. Elizabeth seriously considered marrying Dudley for some time. However, William Cecil, Nicholas Throckmorton, and some conservative peers made their disapproval unmistakably clear. There were even rumours that the nobility would rise if the marriage took place.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Among other marriage candidates being considered for the queen, Robert Dudley continued to be regarded as a possible candidate for nearly another decade. Elizabeth was extremely jealous of his affections, even when she no longer meant to marry him herself. She raised Dudley to the peerage as Earl of Leicester in 1564. In 1578, he finally married Lettice Knollys, to whom the queen reacted with repeated scenes of displeasure and lifelong hatred. Still, Dudley always \"remained at the centre of [Elizabeth's] emotional life\", as historian Susan Doran has described the situation. He died shortly after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. After Elizabeth's own death, a note from him was found among her most personal belongings, marked \"his last letter\" in her handwriting.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Marriage negotiations constituted a key element in Elizabeth's foreign policy. She turned down the hand of Philip, her half-sister's widower, early in 1559 but for several years entertained the proposal of King Eric XIV of Sweden. Earlier in Elizabeth's life a Danish match for her had been discussed; Henry VIII had proposed one with the Danish prince Adolf, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, in 1545, and Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, suggested a marriage with Prince Frederick (later Frederick II) several years later, but the negotiations had abated in 1551. In the years around 1559 a Dano-English Protestant alliance was considered, and to counter Sweden's proposal, King Frederick II proposed to Elizabeth in late 1559.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "For several years she also seriously negotiated to marry Philip's cousin Charles II, Archduke of Austria. By 1569, relations with the Habsburgs had deteriorated. Elizabeth considered marriage to two French Valois princes in turn, first Henry, Duke of Anjou, and then from 1572 to 1581 his brother Francis, Duke of Anjou, formerly Duke of Alençon. This last proposal was tied to a planned alliance against Spanish control of the Southern Netherlands. Elizabeth seems to have taken the courtship seriously for a time, and wore a frog-shaped earring that Francis had sent her.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In 1563, Elizabeth told an imperial envoy: \"If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married\". Later in the year, following Elizabeth's illness with smallpox, the succession question became a heated issue in Parliament. Members urged the queen to marry or nominate an heir, to prevent a civil war upon her death. She refused to do either. In April she prorogued the Parliament, which did not reconvene until she needed its support to raise taxes in 1566.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Having previously promised to marry, she told an unruly House:",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "I will never break the word of a prince spoken in public place, for my honour's sake. And therefore I say again, I will marry as soon as I can conveniently, if God take not him away with whom I mind to marry, or myself, or else some other great let [obstruction] happen.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "By 1570, senior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem. For her failure to marry, Elizabeth was often accused of irresponsibility. Her silence, however, strengthened her own political security: she knew that if she named an heir, her throne would be vulnerable to a coup; she remembered the way that \"a second person, as I have been\" had been used as the focus of plots against her predecessor.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity related to that of the Virgin Mary. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin, a goddess, or both, not as a normal woman. At first, only Elizabeth made a virtue of her ostensible virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, \"And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin\". Later on, poets and writers took up the theme and developed an iconography that exalted Elizabeth. Public tributes to the Virgin by 1578 acted as a coded assertion of opposition to the queen's marriage negotiations with the Duke of Alençon. Ultimately, Elizabeth would insist she was married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In 1599, she spoke of \"all my husbands, my good people\".",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "This claim of virginity was not universally accepted. Catholics accused Elizabeth of engaging in \"filthy lust\" that symbolically defiled the nation along with her body. Henry IV of France said that one of the great questions of Europe was \"whether Queen Elizabeth was a maid or no\".",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "A central issue, when it comes to the question of Elizabeth's virginity, was whether the queen ever consummated her love affair with Robert Dudley. In 1559, she had Dudley's bedchambers moved next to her own apartments. In 1561, she was mysteriously bedridden with an illness that caused her body to swell.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In 1587, a young man calling himself Arthur Dudley was arrested on the coast of Spain under suspicion of being a spy. The man claimed to be the illegitimate son of Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, with his age being consistent with birth during the 1561 illness. He was taken to Madrid for investigation, where he was examined by Francis Englefield, a Catholic aristocrat exiled to Spain and secretary to King Philip II. Three letters exist today describing the interview, detailing what Arthur proclaimed to be the story of his life, from birth in the royal palace to the time of his arrival in Spain. However, this failed to convince the Spanish: Englefield admitted to King Philip that Arthur's \"claim at present amounts to nothing\", but suggested that \"he should not be allowed to get away, but [...] kept very secure.\" The king agreed, and Arthur was never heard from again. Modern scholarship dismisses the story's basic premise as \"impossible\", and asserts that Elizabeth's life was so closely observed by contemporaries that she could not have hidden a pregnancy.",
"title": "Marriage question"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Elizabeth's first policy toward Scotland was to oppose the French presence there. She feared that the French planned to invade England and put her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne. Mary was considered by many to be the heir to the English crown, being the granddaughter of Henry VIII's elder sister, Margaret. Mary boasted being \"the nearest kinswoman she hath\". Elizabeth was persuaded to send a force into Scotland to aid the Protestant rebels, and though the campaign was inept, the resulting Treaty of Edinburgh of July 1560 removed the French threat in the north. When Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 to take up the reins of power, the country had an established Protestant church and was run by a council of Protestant nobles supported by Elizabeth. Mary refused to ratify the treaty.",
"title": "Mary, Queen of Scots"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In 1563, Elizabeth proposed her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband for Mary, without asking either of the two people concerned. Both proved unenthusiastic, and in 1565, Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular and was murdered in February 1567 by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. Shortly afterwards, on 15 May 1567, Mary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. Elizabeth confronted Mary about the marriage, writing to her:",
"title": "Mary, Queen of Scots"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "How could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry such a subject, who besides other and notorious lacks, public fame has charged with the murder of your late husband, besides the touching of yourself also in some part, though we trust in that behalf falsely.",
"title": "Mary, Queen of Scots"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Lochleven Castle. The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James VI, who had been born in June 1566. James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant. Mary escaped in 1568 but after a defeat at Langside sailed to England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch, but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England, where she was imprisoned for the next nineteen years.",
"title": "Mary, Queen of Scots"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Mary was soon the focus for rebellion. In 1569 there was a major Catholic rising in the North; the goal was to free Mary, marry her to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, and put her on the English throne. After the rebels' defeat, over 750 of them were executed on Elizabeth's orders. In the belief that the revolt had been successful, Pope Pius V issued a bull in 1570, titled Regnans in Excelsis, which declared \"Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime\" to be excommunicated and a heretic, releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her. Catholics who obeyed her orders were threatened with excommunication. The papal bull provoked legislative initiatives against Catholics by Parliament, which were, however, mitigated by Elizabeth's intervention. In 1581, to convert English subjects to Catholicism with \"the intent\" to withdraw them from their allegiance to Elizabeth was made a treasonable offence, carrying the death penalty. From the 1570s missionary priests from continental seminaries went to England secretly in the cause of the \"reconversion of England\". Many suffered execution, engendering a cult of martyrdom.",
"title": "Mary, Queen of Scots"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Regnans in Excelsis gave English Catholics a strong incentive to look to Mary as the legitimate sovereign of England. Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 (which caused Mary's suitor, the Duke of Norfolk, to lose his head) to the Babington Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her. At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586, she had been persuaded to sanction Mary's trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that \"the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm diverse things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person.\" On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire. After the execution, Elizabeth claimed that she had not intended for the signed execution warrant to be dispatched, and blamed her secretary, William Davison, for implementing it without her knowledge. The sincerity of Elizabeth's remorse and whether or not she wanted to delay the warrant have been called into question both by her contemporaries and later historians.",
"title": "Mary, Queen of Scots"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the English occupation of Le Havre from October 1562 to June 1563, which ended in failure when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port. Elizabeth's intention had been to exchange Le Havre for Calais, lost to France in January 1558. Only through the activities of her fleets did Elizabeth pursue an aggressive policy. This paid off in the war against Spain, 80% of which was fought at sea. She knighted Francis Drake after his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, and he won fame for his raids on Spanish ports and fleets. An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over whom the queen had little control.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "After the occupation and loss of Le Havre in 1562–1563, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent until 1585, when she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. This followed the deaths in 1584 of the queen's allies William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and the Duke of Anjou, and the surrender of a series of Dutch towns to Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Philip's governor of the Spanish Netherlands. In December 1584, an alliance between Philip II and the French Catholic League at Joinville undermined the ability of Anjou's brother, Henry III of France, to counter Spanish domination of the Netherlands. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion. The siege of Antwerp in the summer of 1585 by the Duke of Parma necessitated some reaction on the part of the English and the Dutch. The outcome was the Treaty of Nonsuch of August 1585, in which Elizabeth promised military support to the Dutch. The treaty marked the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish War, which lasted until the Treaty of London in 1604.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The expedition was led by Elizabeth's former suitor, the Earl of Leicester. Elizabeth from the start did not really back this course of action. Her strategy, to support the Dutch on the surface with an English army, while beginning secret peace talks with Spain within days of Leicester's arrival in Holland, had necessarily to be at odds with Leicester's, who had set up a protectorate and was expected by the Dutch to fight an active campaign. Elizabeth, on the other hand, wanted him \"to avoid at all costs any decisive action with the enemy\". He enraged Elizabeth by accepting the post of Governor-General from the Dutch States General. Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to force her to accept sovereignty over the Netherlands, which so far she had always declined. She wrote to Leicester:",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "We could never have imagined (had we not seen it fall out in experience) that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us, above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touches us in honour ... And therefore our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently upon the duty of your allegiance obey and fulfill whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your utmost peril.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Elizabeth's \"commandment\" was that her emissary read out her letters of disapproval publicly before the Dutch Council of State, Leicester having to stand nearby. This public humiliation of her \"Lieutenant-General\" combined with her continued talks for a separate peace with Spain irreversibly undermined Leicester's standing among the Dutch. The military campaign was severely hampered by Elizabeth's repeated refusals to send promised funds for her starving soldiers. Her unwillingness to commit herself to the cause, Leicester's own shortcomings as a political and military leader, and the faction-ridden and chaotic situation of Dutch politics led to the failure of the campaign. Leicester finally resigned his command in December 1587.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Meanwhile, Francis Drake had undertaken a major voyage against Spanish ports and ships in the Caribbean in 1585 and 1586. In 1587 he made a successful raid on Cádiz, destroying the Spanish fleet of war ships intended for the Enterprise of England, as Philip II had decided to take the war to England.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "On 12 July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands. The armada was defeated by a combination of miscalculation, misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships off Gravelines at midnight on 28–29 July (7–8 August New Style), which dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast. The Armada straggled home to Spain in shattered remnants, after disastrous losses on the coast of Ireland (after some ships had tried to struggle back to Spain via the North Sea, and then back south past the west coast of Ireland). Unaware of the Armada's fate, English militias mustered to defend the country under the Earl of Leicester's command. Leicester invited Elizabeth to inspect her troops at Tilbury in Essex on 8 August. Wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, she addressed them in one of her most famous speeches:",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people ... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "When no invasion came, the nation rejoiced. Elizabeth's procession to a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral rivalled that of her coronation as a spectacle. The defeat of the armada was a potent propaganda victory, both for Elizabeth and for Protestant England. The English took their delivery as a symbol of God's favour and of the nation's inviolability under a virgin queen. However, the victory was not a turning point in the war, which continued and often favoured Spain. The Spanish still controlled the southern provinces of the Netherlands, and the threat of invasion remained. Walter Raleigh claimed after her death that Elizabeth's caution had impeded the war against Spain:",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "If the late queen would have believed her men of war as she did her scribes, we had in her time beaten that great empire in pieces and made their kings of figs and oranges as in old times. But her Majesty did all by halves, and by petty invasions taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Though some historians have criticised Elizabeth on similar grounds, Raleigh's verdict has more often been judged unfair. Elizabeth had good reason not to place too much trust in her commanders, who once in action tended, as she put it herself, \"to be transported with an haviour of vainglory\".",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "In 1589, the year after the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth sent to Spain the English Armada or Counter Armada with 23,375 men and 150 ships, led by Francis Drake as admiral and John Norreys as general. The English fleet suffered a catastrophic defeat with 11,000–15,000 killed, wounded or died of disease and 40 ships sunk or captured. The advantage England had won upon the destruction of the Spanish Armada was lost, and the Spanish victory marked a revival of Philip II's naval power through the next decade.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "When the Protestant Henry IV inherited the French throne in 1589, Elizabeth sent him military support. It was her first venture into France since the retreat from Le Havre in 1563. Henry's succession was strongly contested by the Catholic League and by Philip II, and Elizabeth feared a Spanish takeover of the channel ports.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "The subsequent English campaigns in France, however, were disorganised and ineffective. Peregrine Bertie, largely ignoring Elizabeth's orders, roamed northern France to little effect, with an army of 4,000 men. He withdrew in disarray in December 1589, having lost half his troops. In 1591, the campaign of John Norreys, who led 3,000 men to Brittany, was even more of a disaster. As for all such expeditions, Elizabeth was unwilling to invest in the supplies and reinforcements requested by the commanders. Norreys left for London to plead in person for more support. In his absence, a Catholic League army almost destroyed the remains of his army at Craon, north-west France, in May 1591.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In July, Elizabeth sent out another force under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, to help Henry IV in besieging Rouen. The result was just as dismal. Essex accomplished nothing and returned home in January 1592. Henry abandoned the siege in April. As usual, Elizabeth lacked control over her commanders once they were abroad. \"Where he is, or what he doth, or what he is to do,\" she wrote of Essex, \"we are ignorant\".",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Although Ireland was one of her two kingdoms, Elizabeth faced a hostile, and in places virtually autonomous, Irish population that adhered to Catholicism and was willing to defy her authority and plot with her enemies. Her policy there was to grant land to her courtiers and prevent the rebels from giving Spain a base from which to attack England. In the course of a series of uprisings, Crown forces pursued scorched-earth tactics, burning the land and slaughtering man, woman and child. During a revolt in Munster led by Gerald FitzGerald, in 1582, an estimated 30,000 Irish people starved to death. The poet and colonist Edmund Spenser wrote that the victims \"were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same\". Elizabeth advised her commanders that the Irish, \"that rude and barbarous nation\", be well treated, but she or her commanders showed no remorse when force and bloodshed served their authoritarian purpose.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Between 1594 and 1603, Elizabeth faced her most severe test in Ireland during the Nine Years' War, a revolt that took place at the height of hostilities with Spain, who backed the rebel leader, Hugh O'Neill. In spring 1599, Elizabeth sent Robert Devereux, to put the revolt down. To her frustration, he made little progress and returned to England in defiance of her orders. He was replaced by Charles Blount, who took three years to defeat the rebels. O'Neill finally surrendered in 1603, a few days after Elizabeth's death. Soon afterwards, a peace treaty was signed between England and Spain.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Elizabeth continued to maintain the diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia that were originally established by her half-brother, Edward VI. She often wrote to Tsar Ivan the Terrible on amicable terms, though the Tsar was often annoyed by her focus on commerce rather than on the possibility of a military alliance. Ivan even proposed to her once, and during his later reign, asked for a guarantee to be granted asylum in England should his rule be jeopardised. English merchant and explorer Anthony Jenkinson, who began his career as a representative of the Muscovy Company, became the queen's special ambassador to the court of Tsar Ivan.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Upon his death in 1584, Ivan was succeeded by his son Feodor I. Unlike his father, Feodor had no enthusiasm in maintaining exclusive trading rights with England. He declared his kingdom open to all foreigners, and dismissed the English ambassador Jerome Bowes, whose pomposity had been tolerated by Ivan. Elizabeth sent a new ambassador, Dr. Giles Fletcher, to demand from the regent Boris Godunov that he convince the Tsar to reconsider. The negotiations failed, due to Fletcher addressing Feodor with two of his many titles omitted. Elizabeth continued to appeal to Feodor in half appealing, half reproachful letters. She proposed an alliance, something which she had refused to do when offered one by Feodor's father, but was turned down.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Trade and diplomatic relations developed between England and the Barbary states during the rule of Elizabeth. England established a trading relationship with Morocco in opposition to Spain, selling armour, ammunition, timber, and metal in exchange for Moroccan sugar, in spite of a papal ban. In 1600, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, the principal secretary to the Moroccan ruler Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur, visited England as an ambassador to the English court, to negotiate an Anglo-Moroccan alliance against Spain. Elizabeth \"agreed to sell munitions supplies to Morocco, and she and Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur talked on and off about mounting a joint operation against the Spanish\". Discussions, however, remained inconclusive, and both rulers died within two years of the embassy.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Diplomatic relations were also established with the Ottoman Empire with the chartering of the Levant Company and the dispatch of the first English ambassador to the Sublime Porte, William Harborne, in 1578. For the first time, a treaty of commerce was signed in 1580. Numerous envoys were dispatched in both directions and epistolar exchanges occurred between Elizabeth and Sultan Murad III. In one correspondence, Murad entertained the notion that Protestantism and Islam had \"much more in common than either did with Roman Catholicism, as both rejected the worship of idols\", and argued for an alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire. To the dismay of Catholic Europe, England exported tin and lead (for cannon-casting) and ammunitions to the Ottoman Empire, and Elizabeth seriously discussed joint military operations with Murad III during the outbreak of war with Spain in 1585, as Francis Walsingham was lobbying for a direct Ottoman military involvement against the common Spanish enemy.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In 1583, Humphrey Gilbert sailed west to establish a colony in Newfoundland. He never returned to England. Gilbert's half-brother Walter Raleigh explored the Atlantic Coast and claimed the territory of Virginia, perhaps named in honour of Elizabeth, the \"Virgin Queen\". This territory was much larger than the present-day state of Virginia, extending from New England to the Carolinas. In 1585, Raleigh returned to Virginia with a small group of people. They landed on Roanoke Island, off present-day North Carolina. After the failure of the first colony, Raleigh recruited another group and put John White in command. When Raleigh returned in 1590, there was no trace of the Roanoke Colony he had left, but it was the first English settlement in North America.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The East India Company was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region and China, and received its charter from Queen Elizabeth on 31 December 1600. For a period of 15 years, the company was awarded a monopoly on English trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. James Lancaster commanded the first expedition in 1601. The Company eventually controlled half of world trade and substantial territory in India in the 18th and 19th centuries.",
"title": "Wars and overseas trade"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 brought new difficulties for Elizabeth that lasted until the end of her reign. The conflicts with Spain and in Ireland dragged on, the tax burden grew heavier, and the economy was hit by poor harvests and the cost of war. Prices rose and the standard of living fell. During this time, repression of Catholics intensified, and Elizabeth authorised commissions in 1591 to interrogate and monitor Catholic householders. To maintain the illusion of peace and prosperity, she increasingly relied on internal spies and propaganda. In her last years, mounting criticism reflected a decline in the public's affection for her.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "One of the causes for this \"second reign\" of Elizabeth, as it is sometimes called, was the changed character of Elizabeth's governing body, the privy council in the 1590s. A new generation was in power. With the exception of William Cecil, Baron Burghley, the most important politicians had died around 1590: the Earl of Leicester in 1588; Francis Walsingham in 1590; and Christopher Hatton in 1591. Factional strife in the government, which had not existed in a noteworthy form before the 1590s, now became its hallmark. A bitter rivalry arose between Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, and Robert Cecil, son of Lord Burghley, with both being supported by their respective adherents. The struggle for the most powerful positions in the state marred the kingdom's politics. The queen's personal authority was lessening, as is shown in the 1594 affair of Dr. Lopez, her trusted physician. When he was wrongly accused by the Earl of Essex of treason out of personal pique, she could not prevent the doctor's execution, although she had been angry about his arrest and seems not to have believed in his guilt.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "During the last years of her reign, Elizabeth came to rely on the granting of monopolies as a cost-free system of patronage, rather than asking Parliament for more subsidies in a time of war. The practice soon led to price-fixing, the enrichment of courtiers at the public's expense, and widespread resentment. This culminated in agitation in the House of Commons during the parliament of 1601. In her famous \"Golden Speech\" of 30 November 1601 at Whitehall Palace to a deputation of 140 members, Elizabeth professed ignorance of the abuses, and won the members over with promises and her usual appeal to the emotions:",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Who keeps their sovereign from the lapse of error, in which, by ignorance and not by intent they might have fallen, what thank they deserve, we know, though you may guess. And as nothing is more dear to us than the loving conservation of our subjects' hearts, what an undeserved doubt might we have incurred if the abusers of our liberality, the thrallers of our people, the wringers of the poor, had not been told us!",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "This same period of economic and political uncertainty, however, produced an unsurpassed literary flowering in England. The first signs of a new literary movement had appeared at the end of the second decade of Elizabeth's reign, with John Lyly's Euphues and Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender in 1578. During the 1590s, some of the great names of English literature entered their maturity, including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Continuing into the Jacobean era, the English theatre would reach its peak. The notion of a great Elizabethan era depends largely on the builders, dramatists, poets, and musicians who were active during Elizabeth's reign. They owed little directly to the queen, who was never a major patron of the arts.",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "As Elizabeth aged, her image gradually changed. She was portrayed as Belphoebe or Astraea, and after the Armada, as Gloriana, the eternally youthful Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser's poem. Elizabeth gave Edmund Spenser a pension; as this was unusual for her, it indicates that she liked his work. Her painted portraits became less realistic and more a set of enigmatic icons that made her look much younger than she was. In fact, her skin had been scarred by smallpox in 1562, leaving her half bald and dependent on wigs and cosmetics. Her love of sweets and fear of dentists contributed to severe tooth decay and loss to such an extent that foreign ambassadors had a hard time understanding her speech. André Hurault de Maisse, Ambassador Extraordinary from Henry IV of France, reported an audience with the queen, during which he noticed, \"her teeth are very yellow and unequal ... and on the left side less than on the right. Many of them are missing, so that one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly.\" Yet he added, \"her figure is fair and tall and graceful in whatever she does; so far as may be she keeps her dignity, yet humbly and graciously withal.\" Walter Raleigh called her \"a lady whom time had surprised\".",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The more Elizabeth's beauty faded, the more her courtiers praised it. Elizabeth was happy to play the part, but it is possible that in the last decade of her life she began to believe her own performance. She became fond and indulgent of the charming but petulant young Earl of Essex, who was Leicester's stepson and took liberties with her for which she forgave him. She repeatedly appointed him to military posts despite his growing record of irresponsibility. After Essex's desertion of his command in Ireland in 1599, Elizabeth had him placed under house arrest and the following year deprived him of his monopolies. In February 1601, Essex tried to raise a rebellion in London. He intended to seize the queen but few rallied to his support, and he was beheaded on 25 February. Elizabeth knew that her own misjudgements were partly to blame for this turn of events. An observer wrote in 1602: \"Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes with shedding tears to bewail Essex.\"",
"title": "Later years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Elizabeth's senior adviser, Lord Burghley, died on 4 August 1598. His political mantle passed to his son Robert, who soon became the leader of the government. One task he addressed was to prepare the way for a smooth succession. Since Elizabeth would never name her successor, Robert Cecil was obliged to proceed in secret. He therefore entered into a coded negotiation with James VI of Scotland, who had a strong but unrecognised claim. Cecil coached the impatient James to humour Elizabeth and \"secure the heart of the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either needless expostulations or over much curiosity in her own actions\". The advice worked. James's tone delighted Elizabeth, who responded: \"So trust I that you will not doubt but that your last letters are so acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield them to you in grateful sort\". In historian J. E. Neale's view, Elizabeth may not have declared her wishes openly to James, but she made them known with \"unmistakable if veiled phrases\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The queen's health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow. In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a \"settled and unremovable melancholy\", and sat motionless on a cushion for hours on end. When Robert Cecil told her that she must go to bed, she snapped: \"Must is not a word to use to princes, little man.\" She died on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace, between two and three in the morning. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James King of England.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "While it has become normative to record Elizabeth's death as occurring in 1603, following English calendar reform in the 1750s, at the time England observed New Year's Day on 25 March, commonly known as Lady Day. Thus Elizabeth died on the last day of the year 1602 in the old calendar. The modern convention is to use the old style calendar for the day and month while using the new style calendar for the year.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall, on a barge lit with torches. At her funeral on 28 April, the coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey on a hearse drawn by four horses hung with black velvet. In the words of the chronicler John Stow:",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came out to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Elizabeth was interred in Westminster Abbey, in a tomb shared with her half-sister, Mary I. The Latin inscription on their tomb, \"Regno consortes & urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis\", translates to \"Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection\".",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Elizabeth was lamented by many of her subjects, but others were relieved at her death. Expectations of King James started high but then declined. By the 1620s, there was a nostalgic revival of the cult of Elizabeth. Elizabeth was praised as a heroine of the Protestant cause and the ruler of a golden age. James was depicted as a Catholic sympathiser, presiding over a corrupt court. The triumphalist image that Elizabeth had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties, was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, recalled: \"When we had experience of a Scottish government, the Queen did seem to revive. Then was her memory much magnified.\" Elizabeth's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The picture of Elizabeth painted by her Protestant admirers of the early 17th century has proved lasting and influential. Her memory was also revived during the Napoleonic Wars, when the nation again found itself on the brink of invasion. In the Victorian era, the Elizabethan legend was adapted to the imperial ideology of the day, and in the mid-20th century, Elizabeth was a romantic symbol of the national resistance to foreign threat. Historians of that period, such as J. E. Neale (1934) and A. L. Rowse (1950), interpreted Elizabeth's reign as a golden age of progress. Neale and Rowse also idealised the Queen personally: she always did everything right; her more unpleasant traits were ignored or explained as signs of stress.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Recent historians, however, have taken a more complicated view of Elizabeth. Her reign is famous for the defeat of the Armada, and for successful raids against the Spanish, such as those on Cádiz in 1587 and 1596, but some historians point to military failures on land and at sea. In Ireland, Elizabeth's forces ultimately prevailed, but their tactics stain her record. Rather than as a brave defender of the Protestant nations against Spain and the Habsburgs, she is more often regarded as cautious in her foreign policies. She offered very limited aid to foreign Protestants and failed to provide her commanders with the funds to make a difference abroad.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Elizabeth established an English church that helped shape a national identity and remains in place today. Those who praised her later as a Protestant heroine overlooked her refusal to drop all practices of Catholic origin from the Church of England. Historians note that in her day, strict Protestants regarded the Acts of Settlement and Uniformity of 1559 as a compromise. In fact, Elizabeth believed that faith was personal and did not wish, as Francis Bacon put it, to \"make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts\".",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Though Elizabeth followed a largely defensive foreign policy, her reign raised England's status abroad. \"She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island,\" marvelled Pope Sixtus V, \"and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all\". Under Elizabeth, the nation gained a new self-confidence and sense of sovereignty, as Christendom fragmented. Elizabeth was the first Tudor to recognise that a monarch ruled by popular consent. She therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her Stuart successors failed to follow. Some historians have called her lucky; she believed that God was protecting her. Priding herself on being \"mere English\", Elizabeth trusted in God, honest advice, and the love of her subjects for the success of her rule. In a prayer, she offered thanks to God that:",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "[At a time] when wars and seditions with grievous persecutions have vexed almost all kings and countries round about me, my reign hath been peacable, and my realm a receptacle to thy afflicted Church. The love of my people hath appeared firm, and the devices of my enemies frustrate.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last monarch of the House of Tudor. Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was two years old. Anne's marriage to Henry was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Henry restored her to the line of succession when she was ten, via the Third Succession Act 1543. After Henry's death in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother Edward VI ruled until his own death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to a Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statutes to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside within weeks of his death and Mary became queen, deposing and executing Jane. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels. Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, whom she created Baron Burghley. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did, and because of this she is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings had been. One of her mottoes was video et taceo. In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570, which in theory released English Catholics from allegiance to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers' secret service, run by Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain. As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth's reign became known as the Elizabethan era. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, the prowess of English maritime adventurers, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, and for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her fair share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer ("Gloriana") and a dogged survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short, disastrous reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped to forge a sense of national identity. | 2001-11-22T21:02:32Z | 2023-12-27T17:22:21Z | [
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10,129 | Enceladus (disambiguation) | Enceladus is a moon of Saturn.
Enceladus may also refer to: | [
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"text": "Enceladus is a moon of Saturn.",
"title": ""
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| Enceladus is a moon of Saturn. Enceladus may also refer to: Gaia Enceladus, the remains of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way that was discovered by the Gaia space telescope
Enceladus (giant), one of the Gigantes in Greek mythology
Enceladus, in Greek mythology
USS Enceladus, an American cargo ship
Enceladus Nunataks, Saturn Glacier, Alexander Island, Antarctica; the Enceladus ridge
Enceladus (beetle), a genus of ground beetles in the family Carabidae | 2023-04-22T23:31:56Z | [
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|
10,130 | Emperor Jimmu | Emperor Jimmu (神武天皇, Jinmu-tennō) was the legendary first emperor of Japan according to the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. His ascension is traditionally dated as 660 BC. In Japanese mythology, he was a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, through her grandson Ninigi, as well as a descendant of the storm god Susanoo. He launched a military expedition from Hyūga near the Seto Inland Sea, captured Yamato, and established this as his center of power. In modern Japan, Emperor Jimmu's legendary accession is marked as National Foundation Day on February 11. There is no evidence to suggest that Jimmu existed. However, there is a high probability that there was a powerful dynasty in the vicinity of Miyazaki Prefecture during the Kofun period.
Jimmu is recorded as Japan's first ruler in two early chronicles, Nihon Shoki (721) and Kojiki (712). Nihon Shoki gives the dates of his reign as 660–585 BC. In the reign of Emperor Kanmu (737–806), the eighth-century scholar Ōmi no Mifune designated rulers before Emperor Ōjin as tennō (天皇, "heavenly sovereign"), a Japanese pendant to the Chinese imperial title Tiān-dì (天帝), and gave several of them including Jimmu their canonical names. Prior to this time, these rulers had been known as Sumera no mikoto/Ōkimi. This practice had begun under Empress Suiko, and took root after the Taika Reforms with the ascendancy of the Nakatomi clan.
Both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki give Jimmu's name as Kamu-yamato Iware-biko no Mikoto (神倭伊波礼琵古命) or Kamu-yamato Iware-biko no Sumeramikoto (神日本磐余彦天皇). Iware indicates a toponym (an old place name in the Nara region) whose precise purport is unclear. '-no-Mikoto' is an honorific, indicating divinity, nobility, or royalty.
Among his other names were: Wakamikenu no Mikoto (若御毛沼命), Kamu-yamato Iware-biko hohodemi no Mikoto (神日本磐余彦火火出見尊) and Hikohohodemi (彦火火出見).
The Imperial House of Japan traditionally based its claim to the throne on its putative descent from the sun-goddess Amaterasu via Jimmu's great-grandfather Ninigi.
In Japanese mythology, the Age of the Gods is the period before Jimmu's accession.
The story of Jimmu seems to rework legends associated with the Ōtomo clan (大伴氏), and its function was to establish that clan's links to the ruling family, just as those of Suijin arguably reflect Mononobe tales and the legends in Ōjin's chronicles seem to derive from Soga clan traditions. Jimmu figures as a direct descendant of the sun goddess, Amaterasu via the side of his father, Ugayafukiaezu. Amaterasu had a son called Ame no Oshihomimi no Mikoto and through him a grandson named Ninigi-no-Mikoto. She sent her grandson to the Japanese islands where he eventually married Konohana-Sakuya-hime. Among their three sons was Hikohohodemi no Mikoto, also called Yamasachi-hiko, who married Toyotama-hime. She was the daughter of Ryūjin, the Japanese sea god. They had a single son called Hikonagisa Takeugaya Fukiaezu no Mikoto. The boy was abandoned by his parents at birth and consequently raised by Tamayori-hime, his mother's younger sister. They eventually married and had four sons. The last of these, Hikohohodemi, became Emperor Jimmu.
According to the chronicles Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Jimmu's brothers Itsuse no Mikoto, Inahi no Mikoto, and Mikeiri no Mikoto were born in Takachiho, the southern part of Kyūshū in modern-day Miyazaki Prefecture. They moved eastward to find a location more appropriate for administering the entire country. Jimmu's older brother, Itsuse no Mikoto, originally led the migration, and led the clan eastward through the Seto Inland Sea with the assistance of local chieftain Sao Netsuhiko. As they reached Naniwa (modern-day Osaka), they encountered another local chieftain, Nagasunehiko ("the long-legged man"), and Itsuse was killed in the ensuing battle. Jimmu realized that they had been defeated because they battled eastward against the sun, so he decided to land on the east side of Kii Peninsula and to battle westward. They reached Kumano, and, with the guidance of a three-legged crow, Yatagarasu ("eight-span crow"), they moved to Yamato. There, they once again battled Nagasunehiko and were victorious. The record in the Nihon Shoki of Emperor Jimmu states that his armed forces defeated a group of Emishi (蝦夷, 'shrimp barbarians') before his enthronement. The Emishi were an ethnic group who lived in Honshu, particularly the Tōhoku region.
In Yamato, Nigihayahi, who also claimed descent from the Takamagahara gods, was protected by Nagasunehiko. However, when Nigihayahi met Jimmu, he accepted Jimmu's legitimacy. At this point, Jimmu is said to have ascended to the throne of Japan. Upon scaling a Nara mountain to survey the Seto Inland Sea he now controlled, Jimmu remarked that it was shaped like the "heart" rings made by mating dragonflies, archaically akitsu 秋津. A mosquito then tried to steal Jimmu's royal blood but since Jimmu was a god incarnate Emperor, akitsumikami (現御神), a dragonfly killed the mosquito. Japan thus received its classical name the Dragonfly Islands, akitsushima (秋津島).
According to the Kojiki, Jimmu died when he was 126 years old. The Emperor's posthumous name literally means "divine might" or "god-warrior". It is generally thought that Jimmu's name and character evolved into their present shape just before the time in which legends about the origins of the Yamato dynasty were chronicled in the Kojiki. There are accounts written earlier than either Kojiki and Nihon Shoki that present an alternative version of the story. According to these accounts, Jimmu's dynasty was supplanted by that of Ōjin, whose dynasty was supplanted by that of Keitai. The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki then combined these three legendary dynasties into one long and continuous genealogy.
The traditional site of Jimmu's grave is near Mount Unebi in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.
Veneration of Jimmu was a central component of the imperial cult that formed following the Meiji Restoration. In 1873, a holiday called Kigensetsu was established on February 11. The holiday commemorated the anniversary of Jimmu's ascension to the throne 2,532 years earlier. After World War II, the holiday was criticized as too closely associated with the "emperor system." It was suspended from 1948 to 1966, but later reinstated as National Foundation Day.
Between 1873 and 1945 an imperial envoy sent offerings every year to the supposed site of Jimmu's tomb. In 1890 Kashihara Shrine was established nearby, on the spot where Jimmu was said to have ascended to the throne.
Before and during World War II, expansionist propaganda made frequent use of the phrase hakkō ichiu, a term coined by Tanaka Chigaku based on a passage in the Nihon Shoki discussing Emperor Jimmu. Some media incorrectly attributed the phrase to Emperor Jimmu. For the 1940 Kigensetsu celebration, marking the supposed 2,600th anniversary of Jimmu's enthronement, the Peace Tower was constructed in Miyazaki.
The same year numerous stone monuments relating to key events in Jimmu's life were erected around Japan. The sites at which these monuments were erected are known as Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites.
In 1940 Japan celebrated the 2600th anniversary of Jimmu's ascension and built a monument to Hakkō ichiu despite the fact that all historians knew Jimmu was a mythical figure. In 1941 the Japanese government charged the one historian who dared to challenge Jimmu's existence publicly, Tsuda Sōkichi.
There is no evidence Jimmu existed, except the mention in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. The dates of Jimmu reigning from 660 BC to 585 BC are improbable, and most modern scholars agree that the traditional founding of the Yamato dynasty in 660 BC is a myth and that Jimmu along with the first nine emperors are legendary. The founding of Japan in the year 660 BC was probably created by the writers of Nihon Shoki to put the date on a kanototori year.
However, the stories of Jimmu may reflect real events of the mid to late Yayoi period. According to historian Peter Wetzler, Jimmu’s conquest of Osaka and Nara may reflect an actual event. Still, the dates and many of the details are fictitious. Historian Kenneth G. Henshall stated that Jimmu’s conquest may also reflect a time when the Yayoi people from continental Asia immigrated in masses starting from Kyushu and moving eastward during the Yayoi period.
Since 1945, when the prohibition on questioning the Kojiki and the Nihongi was lifted, documentary research in China and archaeological research in Japan has undermined much of the information in both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. However, some scholars suggest that there may have been a real person behind Jimmu. He could have been a local ruler who conquered the area near Kashihara after 62 BC. If he ever was present in Miyazaki, some scholars believe he was there during the first century BC while others say he was there during the third or fourth century AD.
The legend of Jimmu is a mixture of myth with some plausible history. For example, the sheer complexity of the lineage and mundanity of the legend argues that it could have some basis in reality. If Jimmu was wholly fictional, it would have been easier to describe him as a direct descendant of a god. The three-legged crow Yatagarasu could be a metaphor. The weapons, tactics and route used by Jimmu are plausible. The Japanese monarchy still uses the three sacred treasures, although the original sword was reportedly lost around 1185 and the current one may be a replica. Emperor Sujin's historicity is considered possible by historians, while Emperor Kinmei is the first verifiable historical figure in the Yamato lineage. It could also be that emperors associated themselves with historic or fictional heroic figures in the past to legitimize their reign.
He may have been a composite of Suijin and Kentai. The Japanese historian Ino Okifu identifies Emperor Jimmu with the Chinese alchemist and explorer Xu Fu (255–195 BC), a hypothesis supported by certain traditions in Japan and regarded as possible by some modern scholars. The Yayoi period (300 BC–300 AD), during which significant changes in Japanese metallurgy and pottery occurred, started around the time of his supposed arrival. However, the legend of Xu Fu's voyage also has numerous inconsistencies with the linguistic and anthropological history of Japan. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Emperor Jimmu (神武天皇, Jinmu-tennō) was the legendary first emperor of Japan according to the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. His ascension is traditionally dated as 660 BC. In Japanese mythology, he was a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, through her grandson Ninigi, as well as a descendant of the storm god Susanoo. He launched a military expedition from Hyūga near the Seto Inland Sea, captured Yamato, and established this as his center of power. In modern Japan, Emperor Jimmu's legendary accession is marked as National Foundation Day on February 11. There is no evidence to suggest that Jimmu existed. However, there is a high probability that there was a powerful dynasty in the vicinity of Miyazaki Prefecture during the Kofun period.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Jimmu is recorded as Japan's first ruler in two early chronicles, Nihon Shoki (721) and Kojiki (712). Nihon Shoki gives the dates of his reign as 660–585 BC. In the reign of Emperor Kanmu (737–806), the eighth-century scholar Ōmi no Mifune designated rulers before Emperor Ōjin as tennō (天皇, \"heavenly sovereign\"), a Japanese pendant to the Chinese imperial title Tiān-dì (天帝), and gave several of them including Jimmu their canonical names. Prior to this time, these rulers had been known as Sumera no mikoto/Ōkimi. This practice had begun under Empress Suiko, and took root after the Taika Reforms with the ascendancy of the Nakatomi clan.",
"title": "Name and title"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki give Jimmu's name as Kamu-yamato Iware-biko no Mikoto (神倭伊波礼琵古命) or Kamu-yamato Iware-biko no Sumeramikoto (神日本磐余彦天皇). Iware indicates a toponym (an old place name in the Nara region) whose precise purport is unclear. '-no-Mikoto' is an honorific, indicating divinity, nobility, or royalty.",
"title": "Name and title"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Among his other names were: Wakamikenu no Mikoto (若御毛沼命), Kamu-yamato Iware-biko hohodemi no Mikoto (神日本磐余彦火火出見尊) and Hikohohodemi (彦火火出見).",
"title": "Name and title"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Imperial House of Japan traditionally based its claim to the throne on its putative descent from the sun-goddess Amaterasu via Jimmu's great-grandfather Ninigi.",
"title": "Name and title"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In Japanese mythology, the Age of the Gods is the period before Jimmu's accession.",
"title": "Legendary narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The story of Jimmu seems to rework legends associated with the Ōtomo clan (大伴氏), and its function was to establish that clan's links to the ruling family, just as those of Suijin arguably reflect Mononobe tales and the legends in Ōjin's chronicles seem to derive from Soga clan traditions. Jimmu figures as a direct descendant of the sun goddess, Amaterasu via the side of his father, Ugayafukiaezu. Amaterasu had a son called Ame no Oshihomimi no Mikoto and through him a grandson named Ninigi-no-Mikoto. She sent her grandson to the Japanese islands where he eventually married Konohana-Sakuya-hime. Among their three sons was Hikohohodemi no Mikoto, also called Yamasachi-hiko, who married Toyotama-hime. She was the daughter of Ryūjin, the Japanese sea god. They had a single son called Hikonagisa Takeugaya Fukiaezu no Mikoto. The boy was abandoned by his parents at birth and consequently raised by Tamayori-hime, his mother's younger sister. They eventually married and had four sons. The last of these, Hikohohodemi, became Emperor Jimmu.",
"title": "Legendary narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "According to the chronicles Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Jimmu's brothers Itsuse no Mikoto, Inahi no Mikoto, and Mikeiri no Mikoto were born in Takachiho, the southern part of Kyūshū in modern-day Miyazaki Prefecture. They moved eastward to find a location more appropriate for administering the entire country. Jimmu's older brother, Itsuse no Mikoto, originally led the migration, and led the clan eastward through the Seto Inland Sea with the assistance of local chieftain Sao Netsuhiko. As they reached Naniwa (modern-day Osaka), they encountered another local chieftain, Nagasunehiko (\"the long-legged man\"), and Itsuse was killed in the ensuing battle. Jimmu realized that they had been defeated because they battled eastward against the sun, so he decided to land on the east side of Kii Peninsula and to battle westward. They reached Kumano, and, with the guidance of a three-legged crow, Yatagarasu (\"eight-span crow\"), they moved to Yamato. There, they once again battled Nagasunehiko and were victorious. The record in the Nihon Shoki of Emperor Jimmu states that his armed forces defeated a group of Emishi (蝦夷, 'shrimp barbarians') before his enthronement. The Emishi were an ethnic group who lived in Honshu, particularly the Tōhoku region.",
"title": "Legendary narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In Yamato, Nigihayahi, who also claimed descent from the Takamagahara gods, was protected by Nagasunehiko. However, when Nigihayahi met Jimmu, he accepted Jimmu's legitimacy. At this point, Jimmu is said to have ascended to the throne of Japan. Upon scaling a Nara mountain to survey the Seto Inland Sea he now controlled, Jimmu remarked that it was shaped like the \"heart\" rings made by mating dragonflies, archaically akitsu 秋津. A mosquito then tried to steal Jimmu's royal blood but since Jimmu was a god incarnate Emperor, akitsumikami (現御神), a dragonfly killed the mosquito. Japan thus received its classical name the Dragonfly Islands, akitsushima (秋津島).",
"title": "Legendary narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "According to the Kojiki, Jimmu died when he was 126 years old. The Emperor's posthumous name literally means \"divine might\" or \"god-warrior\". It is generally thought that Jimmu's name and character evolved into their present shape just before the time in which legends about the origins of the Yamato dynasty were chronicled in the Kojiki. There are accounts written earlier than either Kojiki and Nihon Shoki that present an alternative version of the story. According to these accounts, Jimmu's dynasty was supplanted by that of Ōjin, whose dynasty was supplanted by that of Keitai. The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki then combined these three legendary dynasties into one long and continuous genealogy.",
"title": "Legendary narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The traditional site of Jimmu's grave is near Mount Unebi in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.",
"title": "Legendary narrative"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Veneration of Jimmu was a central component of the imperial cult that formed following the Meiji Restoration. In 1873, a holiday called Kigensetsu was established on February 11. The holiday commemorated the anniversary of Jimmu's ascension to the throne 2,532 years earlier. After World War II, the holiday was criticized as too closely associated with the \"emperor system.\" It was suspended from 1948 to 1966, but later reinstated as National Foundation Day.",
"title": "Imperial Era veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Between 1873 and 1945 an imperial envoy sent offerings every year to the supposed site of Jimmu's tomb. In 1890 Kashihara Shrine was established nearby, on the spot where Jimmu was said to have ascended to the throne.",
"title": "Imperial Era veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Before and during World War II, expansionist propaganda made frequent use of the phrase hakkō ichiu, a term coined by Tanaka Chigaku based on a passage in the Nihon Shoki discussing Emperor Jimmu. Some media incorrectly attributed the phrase to Emperor Jimmu. For the 1940 Kigensetsu celebration, marking the supposed 2,600th anniversary of Jimmu's enthronement, the Peace Tower was constructed in Miyazaki.",
"title": "Imperial Era veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "The same year numerous stone monuments relating to key events in Jimmu's life were erected around Japan. The sites at which these monuments were erected are known as Emperor Jimmu Sacred Historical Sites.",
"title": "Imperial Era veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1940 Japan celebrated the 2600th anniversary of Jimmu's ascension and built a monument to Hakkō ichiu despite the fact that all historians knew Jimmu was a mythical figure. In 1941 the Japanese government charged the one historian who dared to challenge Jimmu's existence publicly, Tsuda Sōkichi.",
"title": "Imperial Era veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "There is no evidence Jimmu existed, except the mention in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. The dates of Jimmu reigning from 660 BC to 585 BC are improbable, and most modern scholars agree that the traditional founding of the Yamato dynasty in 660 BC is a myth and that Jimmu along with the first nine emperors are legendary. The founding of Japan in the year 660 BC was probably created by the writers of Nihon Shoki to put the date on a kanototori year.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "However, the stories of Jimmu may reflect real events of the mid to late Yayoi period. According to historian Peter Wetzler, Jimmu’s conquest of Osaka and Nara may reflect an actual event. Still, the dates and many of the details are fictitious. Historian Kenneth G. Henshall stated that Jimmu’s conquest may also reflect a time when the Yayoi people from continental Asia immigrated in masses starting from Kyushu and moving eastward during the Yayoi period.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Since 1945, when the prohibition on questioning the Kojiki and the Nihongi was lifted, documentary research in China and archaeological research in Japan has undermined much of the information in both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. However, some scholars suggest that there may have been a real person behind Jimmu. He could have been a local ruler who conquered the area near Kashihara after 62 BC. If he ever was present in Miyazaki, some scholars believe he was there during the first century BC while others say he was there during the third or fourth century AD.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The legend of Jimmu is a mixture of myth with some plausible history. For example, the sheer complexity of the lineage and mundanity of the legend argues that it could have some basis in reality. If Jimmu was wholly fictional, it would have been easier to describe him as a direct descendant of a god. The three-legged crow Yatagarasu could be a metaphor. The weapons, tactics and route used by Jimmu are plausible. The Japanese monarchy still uses the three sacred treasures, although the original sword was reportedly lost around 1185 and the current one may be a replica. Emperor Sujin's historicity is considered possible by historians, while Emperor Kinmei is the first verifiable historical figure in the Yamato lineage. It could also be that emperors associated themselves with historic or fictional heroic figures in the past to legitimize their reign.",
"title": "Historicity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "He may have been a composite of Suijin and Kentai. The Japanese historian Ino Okifu identifies Emperor Jimmu with the Chinese alchemist and explorer Xu Fu (255–195 BC), a hypothesis supported by certain traditions in Japan and regarded as possible by some modern scholars. The Yayoi period (300 BC–300 AD), during which significant changes in Japanese metallurgy and pottery occurred, started around the time of his supposed arrival. However, the legend of Xu Fu's voyage also has numerous inconsistencies with the linguistic and anthropological history of Japan.",
"title": "Historicity"
}
]
| Emperor Jimmu was the legendary first emperor of Japan according to the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki. His ascension is traditionally dated as 660 BC. In Japanese mythology, he was a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, through her grandson Ninigi, as well as a descendant of the storm god Susanoo. He launched a military expedition from Hyūga near the Seto Inland Sea, captured Yamato, and established this as his center of power. In modern Japan, Emperor Jimmu's legendary accession is marked as National Foundation Day on February 11. There is no evidence to suggest that Jimmu existed. However, there is a high probability that there was a powerful dynasty in the vicinity of Miyazaki Prefecture during the Kofun period. | 2001-11-23T09:35:40Z | 2023-12-07T20:09:29Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Jimmu |
10,133 | Elias Boudinot | Elias Boudinot (/ɪˈlaɪəs buːˈdɪnɒt/ il-EYE-əs boo-DIN-ot; May 2, 1740 – October 24, 1821), a Founding Father of the United States, was a lawyer, statesman, and early abolitionist and women's rights advocate from Elizabeth, New Jersey. During the Revolutionary War, Boudinot was an intelligence officer and prisoner-of-war commissary under general George Washington, working to improve conditions for prisoners on both the American and British sides. In 1779, he was elected to the Continental Congress and then to its successor, the Congress of the Confederation, serving as President of Congress in 1782—1783, the final years of the war.
After being elected to the first, second, and third U.S. Congresses, where he served from 1789—1795, Boudinot was appointed director of the United States Mint by president Washington and held the position through 1805 under the presidencies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. An advocate for women’s rights, he led a Federalist campaign in New Jersey during the early 1790s to encourage women to become active in politics. Boudinot, a devout Presbyterian, spoke out frequently against slavery, both as a member of Congress and as a private citizen. In 1816, he helped found the American Bible Society and served as its first president for five years. Boudinot was also a member of the board of trustees of Princeton College from 1772-1821, the year of his death.
Elias Boudinot was born in Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania on May 2, 1740. His father, Elias Boudinot III, was a merchant and silversmith; he was a neighbor and friend of Benjamin Franklin. His mother, Mary Catherine Williams, was born in the British West Indies; her father was from Wales. Elias' paternal grandfather, Elie (sometimes called Elias) Boudinot, was the son of Jean Boudinot and Marie Suire of Marans, Aunis, France. They were a Huguenot (French Protestant) family who fled to New York about 1687 to avoid the religious persecutions of King Louis XIV.
Mary Catherine Williams and Elias Boudinot Sr. were married on August 8, 1729. Over the next twenty years, they had nine children. The first, John, was born in the British West Indies-Antigua. Of the others, only the younger Elias and his siblings Annis, Mary, and Elisha reached adulthood. Annis became one of the first published women poets in the Thirteen Colonies, and her work appeared in leading newspapers and magazines. Elisha Boudinot became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
After studying and being tutored at home, Elias Boudinot went to Princeton, New Jersey to read the law as a legal apprentice to Richard Stockton, an attorney who married Elias' older sister Annis Boudinot. Stockton would also become a Founding Father as a signatory to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
In 1760, Boudinot was admitted to the bar, and began his practice in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He owned land adjacent to the road from Elizabethtown to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.
After getting established, on April 21, 1762, Boudinot married Hannah Stockton (1736–1808), Richard's younger sister. They had two children, Maria Boudinot, who died at age two, and Susan Vergereau Boudinot.
Susan married William Bradford, who became Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under George Washington. After her husband's death in 1795, Susan Boudinot Bradford returned to her parents' home to live. The young widow edited her father's papers. Now held by Princeton University, these provide significant insight into the events of the Revolutionary era.
In 1805, Elias, Hannah and Susan moved to a new home in Burlington, New Jersey. Hannah died a few years after their move, and Elias lived there for the remainder of his years.
In his later years, Boudinot invested and speculated in land. He owned large tracts in Ohio including most of Green Township in what is now the western suburbs of Cincinnati, where there is a street bearing his surname. At his death, he willed 13,000 acres (53 km) to the city of Philadelphia for parks and city needs. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's Church, Burlington, New Jersey.
Boudinot became a prominent lawyer and his practice prospered. As the revolution drew near, he aligned with the Whigs, and was elected to the New Jersey provincial assembly in 1775. In the early stages of the Revolutionary War, he was active in promoting enlistment; several times he loaned money to field commanders to purchase supplies. Boudinot helped support the activities of rebel spies. After the British occupation of New York City, spies were sent to Staten Island and Long Island, New York to observe and report on movements of specific British garrisons and regiments.
On May 5, 1777, General George Washington asked Boudinot to be appointed as commissary general for prisoners. Congress through the board of war concurred. Boudinot was commissioned as a colonel in the Continental Army for this work. He served until July 1778, when competing responsibilities forced him to resign. The commissary managed enemy prisoners, and also was responsible for supplying American prisoners who were held by the British.
In November 1777, the New Jersey legislature named Boudinot as one of their delegates to the Second Continental Congress. His duties as Commissary prevented his attendance, so in May 1778 he resigned. By early July he had been replaced and attended his first meeting of the Congress on July 7, 1778. As a delegate, he still continued his concerns for the welfare of prisoners of war. His first term ended that year.
In 1781, Boudinot returned to the Congress, for a term lasting through 1783. In November 1782, he was elected as President of the Continental Congress for a one-year term. The President of Congress was a mostly ceremonial position with no real authority, but the office did require him to handle a good deal of correspondence and sign official documents. On April 15, 1783 he signed the Preliminary Articles of Peace. When the United States (US) government was formed in 1789, Boudinot was elected from New Jersey to the US House of Representatives. He was elected to the second and third congresses as well, where he generally supported the administration. He refused to join the expansion of affiliated groups that formed formal political parties. He was one of nine representatives to vote against the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 1794, he declined to serve another term, and left Congress in early 1795. In October 1795, President George Washington appointed him as Director of the United States Mint, a position he held through succeeding administrations until he retired in 1805.
In addition to serving in political office, Elias supported many civic, religious, and educational causes during his life. Boudinot served as one of the trustees of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) for nearly half a century, from 1772 until 1821. When the Continental Congress was forced to leave Philadelphia in 1783 while he was president, he moved the meetings to Princeton, where they met in the College's Nassau Hall.
On September 24, 1789, the House of Representatives voted to recommend the First Amendment of the newly drafted Constitution to the states for ratification. The next day, Congressman Boudinot proposed that the House and Senate jointly request of President Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for "the many signal favors of Almighty God." Boudinot said that he
could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them.
Boudinot was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814.
A devout Presbyterian, Boudinot supported missions and missionary work. He wrote The Age of Revelation in response to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. He was one of the founders of the American Bible Society, and after 1816 served as its President.
He argued for the rights of black and American Indian citizens, and sponsored students to the Board School for Indians in Connecticut. One of these, a young Cherokee named Gallegina Uwatie, also known as Buck Watie, stayed with him in Burlington on his way to the school. The two so impressed each other that Gallegina asked for and was given permission to adopt the statesman's name. Later known as Elias Boudinot, he was an editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the nation's first newspaper, which was published in Cherokee and English.
The Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia has a collection of incoming correspondence and several legal agreements pertaining to land ownership related to Boudinot from 1777–1821 in its holdings. The correspondence dating from 1777–1778 almost exclusively deals with the trading and releasing of prisoners.
Elias Boudinot, "Age of Revelation"—A Refutation of Thomas Paine's deistic "Age of Reason" | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Elias Boudinot (/ɪˈlaɪəs buːˈdɪnɒt/ il-EYE-əs boo-DIN-ot; May 2, 1740 – October 24, 1821), a Founding Father of the United States, was a lawyer, statesman, and early abolitionist and women's rights advocate from Elizabeth, New Jersey. During the Revolutionary War, Boudinot was an intelligence officer and prisoner-of-war commissary under general George Washington, working to improve conditions for prisoners on both the American and British sides. In 1779, he was elected to the Continental Congress and then to its successor, the Congress of the Confederation, serving as President of Congress in 1782—1783, the final years of the war.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "After being elected to the first, second, and third U.S. Congresses, where he served from 1789—1795, Boudinot was appointed director of the United States Mint by president Washington and held the position through 1805 under the presidencies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. An advocate for women’s rights, he led a Federalist campaign in New Jersey during the early 1790s to encourage women to become active in politics. Boudinot, a devout Presbyterian, spoke out frequently against slavery, both as a member of Congress and as a private citizen. In 1816, he helped found the American Bible Society and served as its first president for five years. Boudinot was also a member of the board of trustees of Princeton College from 1772-1821, the year of his death.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Elias Boudinot was born in Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania on May 2, 1740. His father, Elias Boudinot III, was a merchant and silversmith; he was a neighbor and friend of Benjamin Franklin. His mother, Mary Catherine Williams, was born in the British West Indies; her father was from Wales. Elias' paternal grandfather, Elie (sometimes called Elias) Boudinot, was the son of Jean Boudinot and Marie Suire of Marans, Aunis, France. They were a Huguenot (French Protestant) family who fled to New York about 1687 to avoid the religious persecutions of King Louis XIV.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Mary Catherine Williams and Elias Boudinot Sr. were married on August 8, 1729. Over the next twenty years, they had nine children. The first, John, was born in the British West Indies-Antigua. Of the others, only the younger Elias and his siblings Annis, Mary, and Elisha reached adulthood. Annis became one of the first published women poets in the Thirteen Colonies, and her work appeared in leading newspapers and magazines. Elisha Boudinot became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "After studying and being tutored at home, Elias Boudinot went to Princeton, New Jersey to read the law as a legal apprentice to Richard Stockton, an attorney who married Elias' older sister Annis Boudinot. Stockton would also become a Founding Father as a signatory to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.",
"title": "Early life and education"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1760, Boudinot was admitted to the bar, and began his practice in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He owned land adjacent to the road from Elizabethtown to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.",
"title": "Career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "After getting established, on April 21, 1762, Boudinot married Hannah Stockton (1736–1808), Richard's younger sister. They had two children, Maria Boudinot, who died at age two, and Susan Vergereau Boudinot.",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Susan married William Bradford, who became Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under George Washington. After her husband's death in 1795, Susan Boudinot Bradford returned to her parents' home to live. The young widow edited her father's papers. Now held by Princeton University, these provide significant insight into the events of the Revolutionary era.",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1805, Elias, Hannah and Susan moved to a new home in Burlington, New Jersey. Hannah died a few years after their move, and Elias lived there for the remainder of his years.",
"title": "Marriage and family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In his later years, Boudinot invested and speculated in land. He owned large tracts in Ohio including most of Green Township in what is now the western suburbs of Cincinnati, where there is a street bearing his surname. At his death, he willed 13,000 acres (53 km) to the city of Philadelphia for parks and city needs. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's Church, Burlington, New Jersey.",
"title": "Later career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Boudinot became a prominent lawyer and his practice prospered. As the revolution drew near, he aligned with the Whigs, and was elected to the New Jersey provincial assembly in 1775. In the early stages of the Revolutionary War, he was active in promoting enlistment; several times he loaned money to field commanders to purchase supplies. Boudinot helped support the activities of rebel spies. After the British occupation of New York City, spies were sent to Staten Island and Long Island, New York to observe and report on movements of specific British garrisons and regiments.",
"title": "Political career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "On May 5, 1777, General George Washington asked Boudinot to be appointed as commissary general for prisoners. Congress through the board of war concurred. Boudinot was commissioned as a colonel in the Continental Army for this work. He served until July 1778, when competing responsibilities forced him to resign. The commissary managed enemy prisoners, and also was responsible for supplying American prisoners who were held by the British.",
"title": "Political career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In November 1777, the New Jersey legislature named Boudinot as one of their delegates to the Second Continental Congress. His duties as Commissary prevented his attendance, so in May 1778 he resigned. By early July he had been replaced and attended his first meeting of the Congress on July 7, 1778. As a delegate, he still continued his concerns for the welfare of prisoners of war. His first term ended that year.",
"title": "Political career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In 1781, Boudinot returned to the Congress, for a term lasting through 1783. In November 1782, he was elected as President of the Continental Congress for a one-year term. The President of Congress was a mostly ceremonial position with no real authority, but the office did require him to handle a good deal of correspondence and sign official documents. On April 15, 1783 he signed the Preliminary Articles of Peace. When the United States (US) government was formed in 1789, Boudinot was elected from New Jersey to the US House of Representatives. He was elected to the second and third congresses as well, where he generally supported the administration. He refused to join the expansion of affiliated groups that formed formal political parties. He was one of nine representatives to vote against the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution.",
"title": "Political career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1794, he declined to serve another term, and left Congress in early 1795. In October 1795, President George Washington appointed him as Director of the United States Mint, a position he held through succeeding administrations until he retired in 1805.",
"title": "Political career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In addition to serving in political office, Elias supported many civic, religious, and educational causes during his life. Boudinot served as one of the trustees of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) for nearly half a century, from 1772 until 1821. When the Continental Congress was forced to leave Philadelphia in 1783 while he was president, he moved the meetings to Princeton, where they met in the College's Nassau Hall.",
"title": "Later public service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On September 24, 1789, the House of Representatives voted to recommend the First Amendment of the newly drafted Constitution to the states for ratification. The next day, Congressman Boudinot proposed that the House and Senate jointly request of President Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for \"the many signal favors of Almighty God.\" Boudinot said that he",
"title": "Later public service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them.",
"title": "Later public service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Boudinot was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1814.",
"title": "Later public service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A devout Presbyterian, Boudinot supported missions and missionary work. He wrote The Age of Revelation in response to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. He was one of the founders of the American Bible Society, and after 1816 served as its President.",
"title": "Later public service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "He argued for the rights of black and American Indian citizens, and sponsored students to the Board School for Indians in Connecticut. One of these, a young Cherokee named Gallegina Uwatie, also known as Buck Watie, stayed with him in Burlington on his way to the school. The two so impressed each other that Gallegina asked for and was given permission to adopt the statesman's name. Later known as Elias Boudinot, he was an editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the nation's first newspaper, which was published in Cherokee and English.",
"title": "Later public service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia has a collection of incoming correspondence and several legal agreements pertaining to land ownership related to Boudinot from 1777–1821 in its holdings. The correspondence dating from 1777–1778 almost exclusively deals with the trading and releasing of prisoners.",
"title": "Archival collections"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Elias Boudinot, \"Age of Revelation\"—A Refutation of Thomas Paine's deistic \"Age of Reason\"",
"title": "Further reading"
}
]
| Elias Boudinot, a Founding Father of the United States, was a lawyer, statesman, and early abolitionist and women's rights advocate from Elizabeth, New Jersey. During the Revolutionary War, Boudinot was an intelligence officer and prisoner-of-war commissary under general George Washington, working to improve conditions for prisoners on both the American and British sides. In 1779, he was elected to the Continental Congress and then to its successor, the Congress of the Confederation, serving as President of Congress in 1782—1783, the final years of the war. After being elected to the first, second, and third U.S. Congresses, where he served from 1789—1795, Boudinot was appointed director of the United States Mint by president Washington and held the position through 1805 under the presidencies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. An advocate for women’s rights, he led a Federalist campaign in New Jersey during the early 1790s to encourage women to become active in politics. Boudinot, a devout Presbyterian, spoke out frequently against slavery, both as a member of Congress and as a private citizen. In 1816, he helped found the American Bible Society and served as its first president for five years. Boudinot was also a member of the board of trustees of Princeton College from 1772-1821, the year of his death. | 2001-11-23T16:09:17Z | 2023-12-30T22:22:35Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Boudinot |
10,134 | Electromagnetic spectrum | The electromagnetic spectrum is the full range of electromagnetic radiation, organized by frequency or wavelength. The spectrum is divided into separate bands, with different names for the electromagnetic waves within each band. From low to high frequency these are: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. The electromagnetic waves in each of these bands have different characteristics, such as how they are produced, how they interact with matter, and their practical applications.
Radio waves, at the low-frequency end of the spectrum, have the lowest photon energy and the longest wavelengths—thousands of kilometers, or more.
Gamma rays, at the high-frequency end of the spectrum, have the highest photon energies and the shortest wavelengths—much smaller than an atomic nucleus. Gamma rays, X-rays, and extreme ultraviolet rays are called ionizing radiation because their high photon energy is able to ionize atoms, causing chemical reactions. Visible light and radiation of longer wavelengths are nonionizing; their photons do not have sufficient energy to cause these effects.
Throughout most of the electromagnetic spectrum, spectroscopy can be used to separate waves of different frequencies, so that the intensity of the radiation can be measured as a function of frequency or wavelength. Spectroscopy is used to study the interactions of electromagnetic waves with matter.
Humans have always been aware of visible light and radiant heat but for most of history it was not known that these phenomena were connected or were representatives of a more extensive principle. The ancient Greeks recognized that light traveled in straight lines and studied some of its properties, including reflection and refraction. Light was intensively studied from the beginning of the 17th century leading to the invention of important instruments like the telescope and microscope. Isaac Newton was the first to use the term spectrum for the range of colours that white light could be split into with a prism. Starting in 1666, Newton showed that these colours were intrinsic to light and could be recombined into white light. A debate arose over whether light had a wave nature or a particle nature with René Descartes, Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens favouring a wave description and Newton favouring a particle description. Huygens in particular had a well developed theory from which he was able to derive the laws of reflection and refraction. Around 1801, Thomas Young measured the wavelength of a light beam with his two-slit experiment thus conclusively demonstrating that light was a wave.
In 1800, William Herschel discovered infrared radiation. He was studying the temperature of different colours by moving a thermometer through light split by a prism. He noticed that the highest temperature was beyond red. He theorized that this temperature change was due to "calorific rays", a type of light ray that could not be seen. The next year, Johann Ritter, working at the other end of the spectrum, noticed what he called "chemical rays" (invisible light rays that induced certain chemical reactions). These behaved similarly to visible violet light rays, but were beyond them in the spectrum. They were later renamed ultraviolet radiation.
The study of electromagnetism began in 1820 when Hans Christian Ørsted discovered that electric currents produce magnetic fields (Oersted's law). Light was first linked to electromagnetism in 1845, when Michael Faraday noticed that the polarization of light traveling through a transparent material responded to a magnetic field (see Faraday effect). During the 1860s, James Clerk Maxwell developed four partial differential equations (Maxwell's equations) for the electromagnetic field. Two of these equations predicted the possibility and behavior of waves in the field. Analyzing the speed of these theoretical waves, Maxwell realized that they must travel at a speed that was about the known speed of light. This startling coincidence in value led Maxwell to make the inference that light itself is a type of electromagnetic wave. Maxwell's equations predicted an infinite range of frequencies of electromagnetic waves, all traveling at the speed of light. This was the first indication of the existence of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Maxwell's predicted waves included waves at very low frequencies compared to infrared, which in theory might be created by oscillating charges in an ordinary electrical circuit of a certain type. Attempting to prove Maxwell's equations and detect such low frequency electromagnetic radiation, in 1886, the physicist Heinrich Hertz built an apparatus to generate and detect what are now called radio waves. Hertz found the waves and was able to infer (by measuring their wavelength and multiplying it by their frequency) that they traveled at the speed of light. Hertz also demonstrated that the new radiation could be both reflected and refracted by various dielectric media, in the same manner as light. For example, Hertz was able to focus the waves using a lens made of tree resin. In a later experiment, Hertz similarly produced and measured the properties of microwaves. These new types of waves paved the way for inventions such as the wireless telegraph and the radio.
In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen noticed a new type of radiation emitted during an experiment with an evacuated tube subjected to a high voltage. He called this radiation "x-rays" and found that they were able to travel through parts of the human body but were reflected or stopped by denser matter such as bones. Before long, many uses were found for this radiography.
The last portion of the electromagnetic spectrum was filled in with the discovery of gamma rays. In 1900, Paul Villard was studying the radioactive emissions of radium when he identified a new type of radiation that he at first thought consisted of particles similar to known alpha and beta particles, but with the power of being far more penetrating than either. However, in 1910, British physicist William Henry Bragg demonstrated that gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation, not particles, and in 1914, Ernest Rutherford (who had named them gamma rays in 1903 when he realized that they were fundamentally different from charged alpha and beta particles) and Edward Andrade measured their wavelengths, and found that gamma rays were similar to X-rays, but with shorter wavelengths.
The wave-particle debate was rekindled in 1901 when Max Planck discovered that light is absorbed only in discrete "quanta", now called photons, implying that light has a particle nature. This idea was made explicit by Albert Einstein in 1905, but never accepted by Planck and many other contemporaries. The modern position of science is that electromagnetic radiation has both a wave and a particle nature, the wave-particle duality. The contradictions arising from this position are still being debated by scientists and philosophers.
Electromagnetic waves are typically described by any of the following three physical properties: the frequency f, wavelength λ, or photon energy E. Frequencies observed in astronomy range from 2.4×10 Hz (1 GeV gamma rays) down to the local plasma frequency of the ionized interstellar medium (~1 kHz). Wavelength is inversely proportional to the wave frequency, so gamma rays have very short wavelengths that are fractions of the size of atoms, whereas wavelengths on the opposite end of the spectrum can be indefinitely long. Photon energy is directly proportional to the wave frequency, so gamma ray photons have the highest energy (around a billion electron volts), while radio wave photons have very low energy (around a femtoelectronvolt). These relations are illustrated by the following equations:
where:
Whenever electromagnetic waves travel in a medium with matter, their wavelength is decreased. Wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, whatever medium they are traveling through, are usually quoted in terms of the vacuum wavelength, although this is not always explicitly stated.
Generally, electromagnetic radiation is classified by wavelength into radio wave, microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. The behavior of EM radiation depends on its wavelength. When EM radiation interacts with single atoms and molecules, its behavior also depends on the amount of energy per quantum (photon) it carries.
Spectroscopy can detect a much wider region of the EM spectrum than the visible wavelength range of 400 nm to 700 nm in a vacuum. A common laboratory spectroscope can detect wavelengths from 2 nm to 2500 nm. Detailed information about the physical properties of objects, gases, or even stars can be obtained from this type of device. Spectroscopes are widely used in astrophysics. For example, many hydrogen atoms emit a radio wave photon that has a wavelength of 21.12 cm. Also, frequencies of 30 Hz and below can be produced by and are important in the study of certain stellar nebulae and frequencies as high as 2.9×10 Hz have been detected from astrophysical sources.
The types of electromagnetic radiation are broadly classified into the following classes (regions, bands or types):
This classification goes in the increasing order of wavelength, which is characteristic of the type of radiation.
There are no precisely defined boundaries between the bands of the electromagnetic spectrum; rather they fade into each other like the bands in a rainbow (which is the sub-spectrum of visible light). Radiation of each frequency and wavelength (or in each band) has a mix of properties of the two regions of the spectrum that bound it. For example, red light resembles infrared radiation in that it can excite and add energy to some chemical bonds and indeed must do so to power the chemical mechanisms responsible for photosynthesis and the working of the visual system.
The distinction between X-rays and gamma rays is partly based on sources: the photons generated from nuclear decay or other nuclear and subnuclear/particle process are always termed gamma rays, whereas X-rays are generated by electronic transitions involving highly energetic inner atomic electrons. In general, nuclear transitions are much more energetic than electronic transitions, so gamma rays are more energetic than X-rays, but exceptions exist. By analogy to electronic transitions, muonic atom transitions are also said to produce X-rays, even though their energy may exceed 6 megaelectronvolts (0.96 pJ), whereas there are many (77 known to be less than 10 keV (1.6 fJ)) low-energy nuclear transitions (e.g., the 7.6 eV (1.22 aJ) nuclear transition of thorium-229m), and, despite being one million-fold less energetic than some muonic X-rays, the emitted photons are still called gamma rays due to their nuclear origin.
The convention that EM radiation that is known to come from the nucleus is always called "gamma ray" radiation is the only convention that is universally respected, however. Many astronomical gamma ray sources (such as gamma ray bursts) are known to be too energetic (in both intensity and wavelength) to be of nuclear origin. Quite often, in high-energy physics and in medical radiotherapy, very high energy EMR (in the > 10 MeV region)—which is of higher energy than any nuclear gamma ray—is not called X-ray or gamma ray, but instead by the generic term of "high-energy photons".
The region of the spectrum where a particular observed electromagnetic radiation falls is reference frame-dependent (due to the Doppler shift for light), so EM radiation that one observer would say is in one region of the spectrum could appear to an observer moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light with respect to the first to be in another part of the spectrum. For example, consider the cosmic microwave background. It was produced when matter and radiation decoupled, by the de-excitation of hydrogen atoms to the ground state. These photons were from Lyman series transitions, putting them in the ultraviolet (UV) part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now this radiation has undergone enough cosmological red shift to put it into the microwave region of the spectrum for observers moving slowly (compared to the speed of light) with respect to the cosmos.
Electromagnetic radiation interacts with matter in different ways across the spectrum. These types of interaction are so different that historically different names have been applied to different parts of the spectrum, as though these were different types of radiation. Thus, although these "different kinds" of electromagnetic radiation form a quantitatively continuous spectrum of frequencies and wavelengths, the spectrum remains divided for practical reasons arising from these qualitative interaction differences.
Radio waves are emitted and received by antennas, which consist of conductors such as metal rod resonators. In artificial generation of radio waves, an electronic device called a transmitter generates an alternating electric current which is applied to an antenna. The oscillating electrons in the antenna generate oscillating electric and magnetic fields that radiate away from the antenna as radio waves. In reception of radio waves, the oscillating electric and magnetic fields of a radio wave couple to the electrons in an antenna, pushing them back and forth, creating oscillating currents which are applied to a radio receiver. Earth's atmosphere is mainly transparent to radio waves, except for layers of charged particles in the ionosphere which can reflect certain frequencies.
Radio waves are extremely widely used to transmit information across distances in radio communication systems such as radio broadcasting, television, two way radios, mobile phones, communication satellites, and wireless networking. In a radio communication system, a radio frequency current is modulated with an information-bearing signal in a transmitter by varying either the amplitude, frequency or phase, and applied to an antenna. The radio waves carry the information across space to a receiver, where they are received by an antenna and the information extracted by demodulation in the receiver. Radio waves are also used for navigation in systems like Global Positioning System (GPS) and navigational beacons, and locating distant objects in radiolocation and radar. They are also used for remote control, and for industrial heating.
The use of the radio spectrum is strictly regulated by governments, coordinated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which allocates frequencies to different users for different uses.
Microwaves are radio waves of short wavelength, from about 10 centimeters to one millimeter, in the SHF and EHF frequency bands. Microwave energy is produced with klystron and magnetron tubes, and with solid state devices such as Gunn and IMPATT diodes. Although they are emitted and absorbed by short antennas, they are also absorbed by polar molecules, coupling to vibrational and rotational modes, resulting in bulk heating. Unlike higher frequency waves such as infrared and visible light which are absorbed mainly at surfaces, microwaves can penetrate into materials and deposit their energy below the surface. This effect is used to heat food in microwave ovens, and for industrial heating and medical diathermy. Microwaves are the main wavelengths used in radar, and are used for satellite communication, and wireless networking technologies such as Wi-Fi. The copper cables (transmission lines) which are used to carry lower-frequency radio waves to antennas have excessive power losses at microwave frequencies, and metal pipes called waveguides are used to carry them. Although at the low end of the band the atmosphere is mainly transparent, at the upper end of the band absorption of microwaves by atmospheric gases limits practical propagation distances to a few kilometers.
Terahertz radiation or sub-millimeter radiation is a region of the spectrum from about 100 GHz to 30 terahertz (THz) between microwaves and far infrared which can be regarded as belonging to either band. Until recently, the range was rarely studied and few sources existed for microwave energy in the so-called terahertz gap, but applications such as imaging and communications are now appearing. Scientists are also looking to apply terahertz technology in the armed forces, where high-frequency waves might be directed at enemy troops to incapacitate their electronic equipment. Terahertz radiation is strongly absorbed by atmospheric gases, making this frequency range useless for long-distance communication.
The infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum covers the range from roughly 300 GHz to 400 THz (1 mm – 750 nm). It can be divided into three parts:
Above infrared in frequency comes visible light. The Sun emits its peak power in the visible region, although integrating the entire emission power spectrum through all wavelengths shows that the Sun emits slightly more infrared than visible light. By definition, visible light is the part of the EM spectrum the human eye is the most sensitive to. Visible light (and near-infrared light) is typically absorbed and emitted by electrons in molecules and atoms that move from one energy level to another. This action allows the chemical mechanisms that underlie human vision and plant photosynthesis. The light that excites the human visual system is a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. A rainbow shows the optical (visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum; infrared (if it could be seen) would be located just beyond the red side of the rainbow whilst ultraviolet would appear just beyond the opposite violet end.
Electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 380 nm and 760 nm (400–790 terahertz) is detected by the human eye and perceived as visible light. Other wavelengths, especially near infrared (longer than 760 nm) and ultraviolet (shorter than 380 nm) are also sometimes referred to as light, especially when the visibility to humans is not relevant. White light is a combination of lights of different wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Passing white light through a prism splits it up into the several colours of light observed in the visible spectrum between 400 nm and 780 nm.
If radiation having a frequency in the visible region of the EM spectrum reflects off an object, say, a bowl of fruit, and then strikes the eyes, this results in visual perception of the scene. The brain's visual system processes the multitude of reflected frequencies into different shades and hues, and through this insufficiently-understood psychophysical phenomenon, most people perceive a bowl of fruit.
At most wavelengths, however, the information carried by electromagnetic radiation is not directly detected by human senses. Natural sources produce EM radiation across the spectrum, and technology can also manipulate a broad range of wavelengths. Optical fiber transmits light that, although not necessarily in the visible part of the spectrum (it is usually infrared), can carry information. The modulation is similar to that used with radio waves.
Next in frequency comes ultraviolet (UV). The wavelength of UV rays is shorter than the violet end of the visible spectrum but longer than the X-ray.
UV is the longest wavelength radiation whose photons are energetic enough to ionize atoms, separating electrons from them, and thus causing chemical reactions. Short wavelength UV and the shorter wavelength radiation above it (X-rays and gamma rays) are called ionizing radiation, and exposure to them can damage living tissue, making them a health hazard. UV can also cause many substances to glow with visible light; this is called fluorescence.
At the middle range of UV, UV rays cannot ionize but can break chemical bonds, making molecules unusually reactive. Sunburn, for example, is caused by the disruptive effects of middle range UV radiation on skin cells, which is the main cause of skin cancer. UV rays in the middle range can irreparably damage the complex DNA molecules in the cells producing thymine dimers making it a very potent mutagen.
The Sun emits UV radiation (about 10% of its total power), including extremely short wavelength UV that could potentially destroy most life on land (ocean water would provide some protection for life there). However, most of the Sun's damaging UV wavelengths are absorbed by the atmosphere before they reach the surface. The higher energy (shortest wavelength) ranges of UV (called "vacuum UV") are absorbed by nitrogen and, at longer wavelengths, by simple diatomic oxygen in the air. Most of the UV in the mid-range of energy is blocked by the ozone layer, which absorbs strongly in the important 200–315 nm range, the lower energy part of which is too long for ordinary dioxygen in air to absorb. This leaves less than 3% of sunlight at sea level in UV, with all of this remainder at the lower energies. The remainder is UV-A, along with some UV-B. The very lowest energy range of UV between 315 nm and visible light (called UV-A) is not blocked well by the atmosphere, but does not cause sunburn and does less biological damage. However, it is not harmless and does create oxygen radicals, mutations and skin damage.
After UV come X-rays, which, like the upper ranges of UV are also ionizing. However, due to their higher energies, X-rays can also interact with matter by means of the Compton effect. Hard X-rays have shorter wavelengths than soft X-rays and as they can pass through many substances with little absorption, they can be used to 'see through' objects with 'thicknesses' less than that equivalent to a few meters of water. One notable use is diagnostic X-ray imaging in medicine (a process known as radiography). X-rays are useful as probes in high-energy physics. In astronomy, the accretion disks around neutron stars and black holes emit X-rays, enabling studies of these phenomena. X-rays are also emitted by stellar corona and are strongly emitted by some types of nebulae. However, X-ray telescopes must be placed outside the Earth's atmosphere to see astronomical X-rays, since the great depth of the atmosphere of Earth is opaque to X-rays (with areal density of 1000 g/cm), equivalent to 10 meters thickness of water. This is an amount sufficient to block almost all astronomical X-rays (and also astronomical gamma rays—see below).
After hard X-rays come gamma rays, which were discovered by Paul Ulrich Villard in 1900. These are the most energetic photons, having no defined lower limit to their wavelength. In astronomy they are valuable for studying high-energy objects or regions, however as with X-rays this can only be done with telescopes outside the Earth's atmosphere. Gamma rays are used experimentally by physicists for their penetrating ability and are produced by a number of radioisotopes. They are used for irradiation of foods and seeds for sterilization, and in medicine they are occasionally used in radiation cancer therapy. More commonly, gamma rays are used for diagnostic imaging in nuclear medicine, an example being PET scans. The wavelength of gamma rays can be measured with high accuracy through the effects of Compton scattering. | [
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"text": "Gamma rays, at the high-frequency end of the spectrum, have the highest photon energies and the shortest wavelengths—much smaller than an atomic nucleus. Gamma rays, X-rays, and extreme ultraviolet rays are called ionizing radiation because their high photon energy is able to ionize atoms, causing chemical reactions. Visible light and radiation of longer wavelengths are nonionizing; their photons do not have sufficient energy to cause these effects.",
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"text": "Throughout most of the electromagnetic spectrum, spectroscopy can be used to separate waves of different frequencies, so that the intensity of the radiation can be measured as a function of frequency or wavelength. Spectroscopy is used to study the interactions of electromagnetic waves with matter.",
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{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Humans have always been aware of visible light and radiant heat but for most of history it was not known that these phenomena were connected or were representatives of a more extensive principle. The ancient Greeks recognized that light traveled in straight lines and studied some of its properties, including reflection and refraction. Light was intensively studied from the beginning of the 17th century leading to the invention of important instruments like the telescope and microscope. Isaac Newton was the first to use the term spectrum for the range of colours that white light could be split into with a prism. Starting in 1666, Newton showed that these colours were intrinsic to light and could be recombined into white light. A debate arose over whether light had a wave nature or a particle nature with René Descartes, Robert Hooke and Christiaan Huygens favouring a wave description and Newton favouring a particle description. Huygens in particular had a well developed theory from which he was able to derive the laws of reflection and refraction. Around 1801, Thomas Young measured the wavelength of a light beam with his two-slit experiment thus conclusively demonstrating that light was a wave.",
"title": "History and discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1800, William Herschel discovered infrared radiation. He was studying the temperature of different colours by moving a thermometer through light split by a prism. He noticed that the highest temperature was beyond red. He theorized that this temperature change was due to \"calorific rays\", a type of light ray that could not be seen. The next year, Johann Ritter, working at the other end of the spectrum, noticed what he called \"chemical rays\" (invisible light rays that induced certain chemical reactions). These behaved similarly to visible violet light rays, but were beyond them in the spectrum. They were later renamed ultraviolet radiation.",
"title": "History and discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The study of electromagnetism began in 1820 when Hans Christian Ørsted discovered that electric currents produce magnetic fields (Oersted's law). Light was first linked to electromagnetism in 1845, when Michael Faraday noticed that the polarization of light traveling through a transparent material responded to a magnetic field (see Faraday effect). During the 1860s, James Clerk Maxwell developed four partial differential equations (Maxwell's equations) for the electromagnetic field. Two of these equations predicted the possibility and behavior of waves in the field. Analyzing the speed of these theoretical waves, Maxwell realized that they must travel at a speed that was about the known speed of light. This startling coincidence in value led Maxwell to make the inference that light itself is a type of electromagnetic wave. Maxwell's equations predicted an infinite range of frequencies of electromagnetic waves, all traveling at the speed of light. This was the first indication of the existence of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.",
"title": "History and discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Maxwell's predicted waves included waves at very low frequencies compared to infrared, which in theory might be created by oscillating charges in an ordinary electrical circuit of a certain type. Attempting to prove Maxwell's equations and detect such low frequency electromagnetic radiation, in 1886, the physicist Heinrich Hertz built an apparatus to generate and detect what are now called radio waves. Hertz found the waves and was able to infer (by measuring their wavelength and multiplying it by their frequency) that they traveled at the speed of light. Hertz also demonstrated that the new radiation could be both reflected and refracted by various dielectric media, in the same manner as light. For example, Hertz was able to focus the waves using a lens made of tree resin. In a later experiment, Hertz similarly produced and measured the properties of microwaves. These new types of waves paved the way for inventions such as the wireless telegraph and the radio.",
"title": "History and discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen noticed a new type of radiation emitted during an experiment with an evacuated tube subjected to a high voltage. He called this radiation \"x-rays\" and found that they were able to travel through parts of the human body but were reflected or stopped by denser matter such as bones. Before long, many uses were found for this radiography.",
"title": "History and discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The last portion of the electromagnetic spectrum was filled in with the discovery of gamma rays. In 1900, Paul Villard was studying the radioactive emissions of radium when he identified a new type of radiation that he at first thought consisted of particles similar to known alpha and beta particles, but with the power of being far more penetrating than either. However, in 1910, British physicist William Henry Bragg demonstrated that gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation, not particles, and in 1914, Ernest Rutherford (who had named them gamma rays in 1903 when he realized that they were fundamentally different from charged alpha and beta particles) and Edward Andrade measured their wavelengths, and found that gamma rays were similar to X-rays, but with shorter wavelengths.",
"title": "History and discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The wave-particle debate was rekindled in 1901 when Max Planck discovered that light is absorbed only in discrete \"quanta\", now called photons, implying that light has a particle nature. This idea was made explicit by Albert Einstein in 1905, but never accepted by Planck and many other contemporaries. The modern position of science is that electromagnetic radiation has both a wave and a particle nature, the wave-particle duality. The contradictions arising from this position are still being debated by scientists and philosophers.",
"title": "History and discovery"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Electromagnetic waves are typically described by any of the following three physical properties: the frequency f, wavelength λ, or photon energy E. Frequencies observed in astronomy range from 2.4×10 Hz (1 GeV gamma rays) down to the local plasma frequency of the ionized interstellar medium (~1 kHz). Wavelength is inversely proportional to the wave frequency, so gamma rays have very short wavelengths that are fractions of the size of atoms, whereas wavelengths on the opposite end of the spectrum can be indefinitely long. Photon energy is directly proportional to the wave frequency, so gamma ray photons have the highest energy (around a billion electron volts), while radio wave photons have very low energy (around a femtoelectronvolt). These relations are illustrated by the following equations:",
"title": "Range"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "where:",
"title": "Range"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Whenever electromagnetic waves travel in a medium with matter, their wavelength is decreased. Wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, whatever medium they are traveling through, are usually quoted in terms of the vacuum wavelength, although this is not always explicitly stated.",
"title": "Range"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Generally, electromagnetic radiation is classified by wavelength into radio wave, microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. The behavior of EM radiation depends on its wavelength. When EM radiation interacts with single atoms and molecules, its behavior also depends on the amount of energy per quantum (photon) it carries.",
"title": "Range"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Spectroscopy can detect a much wider region of the EM spectrum than the visible wavelength range of 400 nm to 700 nm in a vacuum. A common laboratory spectroscope can detect wavelengths from 2 nm to 2500 nm. Detailed information about the physical properties of objects, gases, or even stars can be obtained from this type of device. Spectroscopes are widely used in astrophysics. For example, many hydrogen atoms emit a radio wave photon that has a wavelength of 21.12 cm. Also, frequencies of 30 Hz and below can be produced by and are important in the study of certain stellar nebulae and frequencies as high as 2.9×10 Hz have been detected from astrophysical sources.",
"title": "Range"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The types of electromagnetic radiation are broadly classified into the following classes (regions, bands or types):",
"title": "Regions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "This classification goes in the increasing order of wavelength, which is characteristic of the type of radiation.",
"title": "Regions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "There are no precisely defined boundaries between the bands of the electromagnetic spectrum; rather they fade into each other like the bands in a rainbow (which is the sub-spectrum of visible light). Radiation of each frequency and wavelength (or in each band) has a mix of properties of the two regions of the spectrum that bound it. For example, red light resembles infrared radiation in that it can excite and add energy to some chemical bonds and indeed must do so to power the chemical mechanisms responsible for photosynthesis and the working of the visual system.",
"title": "Regions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The distinction between X-rays and gamma rays is partly based on sources: the photons generated from nuclear decay or other nuclear and subnuclear/particle process are always termed gamma rays, whereas X-rays are generated by electronic transitions involving highly energetic inner atomic electrons. In general, nuclear transitions are much more energetic than electronic transitions, so gamma rays are more energetic than X-rays, but exceptions exist. By analogy to electronic transitions, muonic atom transitions are also said to produce X-rays, even though their energy may exceed 6 megaelectronvolts (0.96 pJ), whereas there are many (77 known to be less than 10 keV (1.6 fJ)) low-energy nuclear transitions (e.g., the 7.6 eV (1.22 aJ) nuclear transition of thorium-229m), and, despite being one million-fold less energetic than some muonic X-rays, the emitted photons are still called gamma rays due to their nuclear origin.",
"title": "Regions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The convention that EM radiation that is known to come from the nucleus is always called \"gamma ray\" radiation is the only convention that is universally respected, however. Many astronomical gamma ray sources (such as gamma ray bursts) are known to be too energetic (in both intensity and wavelength) to be of nuclear origin. Quite often, in high-energy physics and in medical radiotherapy, very high energy EMR (in the > 10 MeV region)—which is of higher energy than any nuclear gamma ray—is not called X-ray or gamma ray, but instead by the generic term of \"high-energy photons\".",
"title": "Regions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The region of the spectrum where a particular observed electromagnetic radiation falls is reference frame-dependent (due to the Doppler shift for light), so EM radiation that one observer would say is in one region of the spectrum could appear to an observer moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light with respect to the first to be in another part of the spectrum. For example, consider the cosmic microwave background. It was produced when matter and radiation decoupled, by the de-excitation of hydrogen atoms to the ground state. These photons were from Lyman series transitions, putting them in the ultraviolet (UV) part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now this radiation has undergone enough cosmological red shift to put it into the microwave region of the spectrum for observers moving slowly (compared to the speed of light) with respect to the cosmos.",
"title": "Regions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Electromagnetic radiation interacts with matter in different ways across the spectrum. These types of interaction are so different that historically different names have been applied to different parts of the spectrum, as though these were different types of radiation. Thus, although these \"different kinds\" of electromagnetic radiation form a quantitatively continuous spectrum of frequencies and wavelengths, the spectrum remains divided for practical reasons arising from these qualitative interaction differences.",
"title": "Regions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Radio waves are emitted and received by antennas, which consist of conductors such as metal rod resonators. In artificial generation of radio waves, an electronic device called a transmitter generates an alternating electric current which is applied to an antenna. The oscillating electrons in the antenna generate oscillating electric and magnetic fields that radiate away from the antenna as radio waves. In reception of radio waves, the oscillating electric and magnetic fields of a radio wave couple to the electrons in an antenna, pushing them back and forth, creating oscillating currents which are applied to a radio receiver. Earth's atmosphere is mainly transparent to radio waves, except for layers of charged particles in the ionosphere which can reflect certain frequencies.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Radio waves are extremely widely used to transmit information across distances in radio communication systems such as radio broadcasting, television, two way radios, mobile phones, communication satellites, and wireless networking. In a radio communication system, a radio frequency current is modulated with an information-bearing signal in a transmitter by varying either the amplitude, frequency or phase, and applied to an antenna. The radio waves carry the information across space to a receiver, where they are received by an antenna and the information extracted by demodulation in the receiver. Radio waves are also used for navigation in systems like Global Positioning System (GPS) and navigational beacons, and locating distant objects in radiolocation and radar. They are also used for remote control, and for industrial heating.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The use of the radio spectrum is strictly regulated by governments, coordinated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which allocates frequencies to different users for different uses.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Microwaves are radio waves of short wavelength, from about 10 centimeters to one millimeter, in the SHF and EHF frequency bands. Microwave energy is produced with klystron and magnetron tubes, and with solid state devices such as Gunn and IMPATT diodes. Although they are emitted and absorbed by short antennas, they are also absorbed by polar molecules, coupling to vibrational and rotational modes, resulting in bulk heating. Unlike higher frequency waves such as infrared and visible light which are absorbed mainly at surfaces, microwaves can penetrate into materials and deposit their energy below the surface. This effect is used to heat food in microwave ovens, and for industrial heating and medical diathermy. Microwaves are the main wavelengths used in radar, and are used for satellite communication, and wireless networking technologies such as Wi-Fi. The copper cables (transmission lines) which are used to carry lower-frequency radio waves to antennas have excessive power losses at microwave frequencies, and metal pipes called waveguides are used to carry them. Although at the low end of the band the atmosphere is mainly transparent, at the upper end of the band absorption of microwaves by atmospheric gases limits practical propagation distances to a few kilometers.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Terahertz radiation or sub-millimeter radiation is a region of the spectrum from about 100 GHz to 30 terahertz (THz) between microwaves and far infrared which can be regarded as belonging to either band. Until recently, the range was rarely studied and few sources existed for microwave energy in the so-called terahertz gap, but applications such as imaging and communications are now appearing. Scientists are also looking to apply terahertz technology in the armed forces, where high-frequency waves might be directed at enemy troops to incapacitate their electronic equipment. Terahertz radiation is strongly absorbed by atmospheric gases, making this frequency range useless for long-distance communication.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum covers the range from roughly 300 GHz to 400 THz (1 mm – 750 nm). It can be divided into three parts:",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Above infrared in frequency comes visible light. The Sun emits its peak power in the visible region, although integrating the entire emission power spectrum through all wavelengths shows that the Sun emits slightly more infrared than visible light. By definition, visible light is the part of the EM spectrum the human eye is the most sensitive to. Visible light (and near-infrared light) is typically absorbed and emitted by electrons in molecules and atoms that move from one energy level to another. This action allows the chemical mechanisms that underlie human vision and plant photosynthesis. The light that excites the human visual system is a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. A rainbow shows the optical (visible) part of the electromagnetic spectrum; infrared (if it could be seen) would be located just beyond the red side of the rainbow whilst ultraviolet would appear just beyond the opposite violet end.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 380 nm and 760 nm (400–790 terahertz) is detected by the human eye and perceived as visible light. Other wavelengths, especially near infrared (longer than 760 nm) and ultraviolet (shorter than 380 nm) are also sometimes referred to as light, especially when the visibility to humans is not relevant. White light is a combination of lights of different wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Passing white light through a prism splits it up into the several colours of light observed in the visible spectrum between 400 nm and 780 nm.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "If radiation having a frequency in the visible region of the EM spectrum reflects off an object, say, a bowl of fruit, and then strikes the eyes, this results in visual perception of the scene. The brain's visual system processes the multitude of reflected frequencies into different shades and hues, and through this insufficiently-understood psychophysical phenomenon, most people perceive a bowl of fruit.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "At most wavelengths, however, the information carried by electromagnetic radiation is not directly detected by human senses. Natural sources produce EM radiation across the spectrum, and technology can also manipulate a broad range of wavelengths. Optical fiber transmits light that, although not necessarily in the visible part of the spectrum (it is usually infrared), can carry information. The modulation is similar to that used with radio waves.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Next in frequency comes ultraviolet (UV). The wavelength of UV rays is shorter than the violet end of the visible spectrum but longer than the X-ray.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "UV is the longest wavelength radiation whose photons are energetic enough to ionize atoms, separating electrons from them, and thus causing chemical reactions. Short wavelength UV and the shorter wavelength radiation above it (X-rays and gamma rays) are called ionizing radiation, and exposure to them can damage living tissue, making them a health hazard. UV can also cause many substances to glow with visible light; this is called fluorescence.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "At the middle range of UV, UV rays cannot ionize but can break chemical bonds, making molecules unusually reactive. Sunburn, for example, is caused by the disruptive effects of middle range UV radiation on skin cells, which is the main cause of skin cancer. UV rays in the middle range can irreparably damage the complex DNA molecules in the cells producing thymine dimers making it a very potent mutagen.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The Sun emits UV radiation (about 10% of its total power), including extremely short wavelength UV that could potentially destroy most life on land (ocean water would provide some protection for life there). However, most of the Sun's damaging UV wavelengths are absorbed by the atmosphere before they reach the surface. The higher energy (shortest wavelength) ranges of UV (called \"vacuum UV\") are absorbed by nitrogen and, at longer wavelengths, by simple diatomic oxygen in the air. Most of the UV in the mid-range of energy is blocked by the ozone layer, which absorbs strongly in the important 200–315 nm range, the lower energy part of which is too long for ordinary dioxygen in air to absorb. This leaves less than 3% of sunlight at sea level in UV, with all of this remainder at the lower energies. The remainder is UV-A, along with some UV-B. The very lowest energy range of UV between 315 nm and visible light (called UV-A) is not blocked well by the atmosphere, but does not cause sunburn and does less biological damage. However, it is not harmless and does create oxygen radicals, mutations and skin damage.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "After UV come X-rays, which, like the upper ranges of UV are also ionizing. However, due to their higher energies, X-rays can also interact with matter by means of the Compton effect. Hard X-rays have shorter wavelengths than soft X-rays and as they can pass through many substances with little absorption, they can be used to 'see through' objects with 'thicknesses' less than that equivalent to a few meters of water. One notable use is diagnostic X-ray imaging in medicine (a process known as radiography). X-rays are useful as probes in high-energy physics. In astronomy, the accretion disks around neutron stars and black holes emit X-rays, enabling studies of these phenomena. X-rays are also emitted by stellar corona and are strongly emitted by some types of nebulae. However, X-ray telescopes must be placed outside the Earth's atmosphere to see astronomical X-rays, since the great depth of the atmosphere of Earth is opaque to X-rays (with areal density of 1000 g/cm), equivalent to 10 meters thickness of water. This is an amount sufficient to block almost all astronomical X-rays (and also astronomical gamma rays—see below).",
"title": "Types of radiation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "After hard X-rays come gamma rays, which were discovered by Paul Ulrich Villard in 1900. These are the most energetic photons, having no defined lower limit to their wavelength. In astronomy they are valuable for studying high-energy objects or regions, however as with X-rays this can only be done with telescopes outside the Earth's atmosphere. Gamma rays are used experimentally by physicists for their penetrating ability and are produced by a number of radioisotopes. They are used for irradiation of foods and seeds for sterilization, and in medicine they are occasionally used in radiation cancer therapy. More commonly, gamma rays are used for diagnostic imaging in nuclear medicine, an example being PET scans. The wavelength of gamma rays can be measured with high accuracy through the effects of Compton scattering.",
"title": "Types of radiation"
}
]
| The electromagnetic spectrum is the full range of electromagnetic radiation, organized by frequency or wavelength. The spectrum is divided into separate bands, with different names for the electromagnetic waves within each band. From low to high frequency these are: radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. The electromagnetic waves in each of these bands have different characteristics, such as how they are produced, how they interact with matter, and their practical applications. Radio waves, at the low-frequency end of the spectrum, have the lowest photon energy and the longest wavelengths—thousands of kilometers, or more. Gamma rays, at the high-frequency end of the spectrum, have the highest photon energies and the shortest wavelengths—much smaller than an atomic nucleus. Gamma rays, X-rays, and extreme ultraviolet rays are called ionizing radiation because their high photon energy is able to ionize atoms, causing chemical reactions. Visible light and radiation of longer wavelengths are nonionizing; their photons do not have sufficient energy to cause these effects. Throughout most of the electromagnetic spectrum, spectroscopy can be used to separate waves of different frequencies, so that the intensity of the radiation can be measured as a function of frequency or wavelength. Spectroscopy is used to study the interactions of electromagnetic waves with matter. | 2001-11-24T02:03:28Z | 2023-12-15T04:51:02Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum |
10,136 | Expert system | In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code. The first expert systems were created in the 1970s and then proliferated in the 1980s. Expert systems were among the first truly successful forms of artificial intelligence (AI) software. An expert system is divided into two subsystems: the inference engine and the knowledge base. The knowledge base represents facts and rules. The inference engine applies the rules to the known facts to deduce new facts. Inference engines can also include explanation and debugging abilities.
Soon after the dawn of modern computers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, researchers started realizing the immense potential these machines had for modern society. One of the first challenges was to make such machines capable of “thinking” like humans – in particular, making these machines capable of making important decisions the way humans do. The medical/healthcare field presented the tantalizing challenge of enabling these machines to make medical diagnostic decisions.
Thus, in the late 1950s, right after the information age had fully arrived, researchers started experimenting with the prospect of using computer technology to emulate human decision making. For example, biomedical researchers started creating computer-aided systems for diagnostic applications in medicine and biology. These early diagnostic systems used patients’ symptoms and laboratory test results as inputs to generate a diagnostic outcome. These systems were often described as the early forms of expert systems. However, researchers realized that there were significant limitations when using traditional methods such as flow charts, statistical pattern matching, or probability theory.
This previous situation gradually led to the development of expert systems, which used knowledge-based approaches. These expert systems in medicine were the MYCIN expert system, the Internist-I expert system and later, in the middle of the 1980s, the CADUCEUS.
Expert systems were formally introduced around 1965 by the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project led by Edward Feigenbaum, who is sometimes termed the "father of expert systems"; other key early contributors were Bruce Buchanan and Randall Davis. The Stanford researchers tried to identify domains where expertise was highly valued and complex, such as diagnosing infectious diseases (Mycin) and identifying unknown organic molecules (Dendral). The idea that "intelligent systems derive their power from the knowledge they possess rather than from the specific formalisms and inference schemes they use" – as Feigenbaum said – was at the time a significant step forward, since the past research had been focused on heuristic computational methods, culminating in attempts to develop very general-purpose problem solvers (foremostly the conjunct work of Allen Newell and Herbert Simon). Expert systems became some of the first truly successful forms of artificial intelligence (AI) software.
Research on expert systems was also active in France. While in the US the focus tended to be on rules-based systems, first on systems hard coded on top of LISP programming environments and then on expert system shells developed by vendors such as Intellicorp, in France research focused more on systems developed in Prolog. The advantage of expert system shells was that they were somewhat easier for nonprogrammers to use. The advantage of Prolog environments was that they were not focused only on if-then rules; Prolog environments provided a much better realization of a complete first-order logic environment.
In the 1980s, expert systems proliferated. Universities offered expert system courses and two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies applied the technology in daily business activities. Interest was international with the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project in Japan and increased research funding in Europe.
In 1981, the first IBM PC, with the PC DOS operating system, was introduced. The imbalance between the high affordability of the relatively powerful chips in the PC, compared to the much more expensive cost of processing power in the mainframes that dominated the corporate IT world at the time, created a new type of architecture for corporate computing, termed the client–server model. Calculations and reasoning could be performed at a fraction of the price of a mainframe using a PC. This model also enabled business units to bypass corporate IT departments and directly build their own applications. As a result, client-server had a tremendous impact on the expert systems market. Expert systems were already outliers in much of the business world, requiring new skills that many IT departments did not have and were not eager to develop. They were a natural fit for new PC-based shells that promised to put application development into the hands of end users and experts. Until then, the main development environment for expert systems had been high end Lisp machines from Xerox, Symbolics, and Texas Instruments. With the rise of the PC and client-server computing, vendors such as Intellicorp and Inference Corporation shifted their priorities to developing PC-based tools. Also, new vendors, often financed by venture capital (such as Aion Corporation, Neuron Data, Exsys, and many others), started appearing regularly.
The first expert system to be used in a design capacity for a large-scale product was the SID (Synthesis of Integral Design) software program, developed in 1982. Written in LISP, SID generated 93% of the VAX 9000 CPU logic gates. Input to the software was a set of rules created by several expert logic designers. SID expanded the rules and generated software logic synthesis routines many times the size of the rules themselves. Surprisingly, the combination of these rules resulted in an overall design that exceeded the capabilities of the experts themselves, and in many cases out-performed the human counterparts. While some rules contradicted others, top-level control parameters for speed and area provided the tie-breaker. The program was highly controversial but used nevertheless due to project budget constraints. It was terminated by logic designers after the VAX 9000 project completion.
During the years before the middle of the 1970s, the expectations of what expert systems can accomplish in many fields tended to be extremely optimistic. At the beginning of these early studies, researchers were hoping to develop entirely automatic (i.e., completely computerized) expert systems. The expectations of people of what computers can do were frequently too idealistic. This situation radically changed after Richard M. Karp published his breakthrough paper: “Reducibility among Combinatorial Problems” in the early 1970s. Thanks to Karp's work, together with other scholars, like Hubert L. Dreyfus, it became clear that there are certain limitations and possibilities when one designs computer algorithms. His findings describe what computers can do and what they cannot do. Many of the computational problems related to this type of expert systems have certain pragmatic limitations. These findings laid down the groundwork that led to the next developments in the field.
In the 1990s and beyond, the term expert system and the idea of a standalone AI system mostly dropped from the IT lexicon. There are two interpretations of this. One is that "expert systems failed": the IT world moved on because expert systems did not deliver on their over hyped promise. The other is the mirror opposite, that expert systems were simply victims of their success: as IT professionals grasped concepts such as rule engines, such tools migrated from being standalone tools for developing special purpose expert systems, to being one of many standard tools. Other researchers suggest that Expert Systems caused inter-company power struggles when the IT organization lost its exclusivity in software modifications to users or Knowledge Engineers.
In the first decade of the 2000s, there was a "resurrection" for the technology, while using the term Rule Based Systems, with significant success stories and adoption. Many of the leading major business application suite vendors (such as SAP, Siebel, and Oracle) integrated expert system abilities into their suite of products as a way of specifying business logic – rule engines are no longer simply for defining the rules an expert would use but for any type of complex, volatile, and critical business logic; they often go hand in hand with business process automation and integration environments.
The limitations of the previous type of expert systems have urged researchers to develop new types of approaches. They have developed more efficient, flexible, and powerful approaches in order to simulate the human decision-making process. Some of the approaches that researchers have developed are based on new methods of artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular in machine learning and data mining approaches with a feedback mechanism. Recurrent neural networks often take advantage of such mechanisms. Related is the discussion on the disadvantages section.
Modern systems can incorporate new knowledge more easily and thus update themselves easily. Such systems can generalize from existing knowledge better and deal with vast amounts of complex data. Related is the subject of big data here. Sometimes these type of expert systems are called "intelligent systems."
An expert system is an example of a knowledge-based system. Expert systems were the first commercial systems to use a knowledge-based architecture. In general view, an expert system includes the following components: a knowledge base, an inference engine, an explanation facility, a knowledge acquisition facility, and a user interface.
The knowledge base represents facts about the world. In early expert systems such as Mycin and Dendral, these facts were represented mainly as flat assertions about variables. In later expert systems developed with commercial shells, the knowledge base took on more structure and used concepts from object-oriented programming. The world was represented as classes, subclasses, and instances and assertions were replaced by values of object instances. The rules worked by querying and asserting values of the objects.
The inference engine is an automated reasoning system that evaluates the current state of the knowledge-base, applies relevant rules, and then asserts new knowledge into the knowledge base. The inference engine may also include abilities for explanation, so that it can explain to a user the chain of reasoning used to arrive at a particular conclusion by tracing back over the firing of rules that resulted in the assertion.
There are mainly two modes for an inference engine: forward chaining and backward chaining. The different approaches are dictated by whether the inference engine is being driven by the antecedent (left hand side) or the consequent (right hand side) of the rule. In forward chaining an antecedent fires and asserts the consequent. For example, consider the following rule:
A simple example of forward chaining would be to assert Man(Socrates) to the system and then trigger the inference engine. It would match R1 and assert Mortal(Socrates) into the knowledge base.
Backward chaining is a bit less straight forward. In backward chaining the system looks at possible conclusions and works backward to see if they might be true. So if the system was trying to determine if Mortal(Socrates) is true it would find R1 and query the knowledge base to see if Man(Socrates) is true. One of the early innovations of expert systems shells was to integrate inference engines with a user interface. This could be especially powerful with backward chaining. If the system needs to know a particular fact but does not, then it can simply generate an input screen and ask the user if the information is known. So in this example, it could use R1 to ask the user if Socrates was a Man and then use that new information accordingly.
The use of rules to explicitly represent knowledge also enabled explanation abilities. In the simple example above if the system had used R1 to assert that Socrates was Mortal and a user wished to understand why Socrates was mortal they could query the system and the system would look back at the rules which fired to cause the assertion and present those rules to the user as an explanation. In English, if the user asked "Why is Socrates Mortal?" the system would reply "Because all men are mortal and Socrates is a man". A significant area for research was the generation of explanations from the knowledge base in natural English rather than simply by showing the more formal but less intuitive rules.
As expert systems evolved, many new techniques were incorporated into various types of inference engines. Some of the most important of these were:
The goal of knowledge-based systems is to make the critical information required for the system to work explicit rather than implicit. In a traditional computer program the logic is embedded in code that can typically only be reviewed by an IT specialist. With an expert system the goal was to specify the rules in a format that was intuitive and easily understood, reviewed, and even edited by domain experts rather than IT experts. The benefits of this explicit knowledge representation were rapid development and ease of maintenance.
Ease of maintenance is the most obvious benefit. This was achieved in two ways. First, by removing the need to write conventional code, many of the normal problems that can be caused by even small changes to a system could be avoided with expert systems. Essentially, the logical flow of the program (at least at the highest level) was simply a given for the system, simply invoke the inference engine. This also was a reason for the second benefit: rapid prototyping. With an expert system shell it was possible to enter a few rules and have a prototype developed in days rather than the months or year typically associated with complex IT projects.
A claim for expert system shells that was often made was that they removed the need for trained programmers and that experts could develop systems themselves. In reality, this was seldom if ever true. While the rules for an expert system were more comprehensible than typical computer code, they still had a formal syntax where a misplaced comma or other character could cause havoc as with any other computer language. Also, as expert systems moved from prototypes in the lab to deployment in the business world, issues of integration and maintenance became far more critical. Inevitably demands to integrate with, and take advantage of, large legacy databases and systems arose. To accomplish this, integration required the same skills as any other type of system.
Summing up the benefits of using expert systems, the following can be highlighted:
The most common disadvantage cited for expert systems in the academic literature is the knowledge acquisition problem. Obtaining the time of domain experts for any software application is always difficult, but for expert systems it was especially difficult because the experts were by definition highly valued and in constant demand by the organization. As a result of this problem, a great deal of research in the later years of expert systems was focused on tools for knowledge acquisition, to help automate the process of designing, debugging, and maintaining rules defined by experts. However, when looking at the life-cycle of expert systems in actual use, other problems – essentially the same problems as those of any other large system – seem at least as critical as knowledge acquisition: integration, access to large databases, and performance.
Performance could be especially problematic because early expert systems were built using tools (such as earlier Lisp versions) that interpreted code expressions without first compiling them. This provided a powerful development environment, but with the drawback that it was virtually impossible to match the efficiency of the fastest compiled languages (such as C). System and database integration were difficult for early expert systems because the tools were mostly in languages and platforms that were neither familiar to nor welcome in most corporate IT environments – programming languages such as Lisp and Prolog, and hardware platforms such as Lisp machines and personal computers. As a result, much effort in the later stages of expert system tool development was focused on integrating with legacy environments such as COBOL and large database systems, and on porting to more standard platforms. These issues were resolved mainly by the client–server paradigm shift, as PCs were gradually accepted in the IT environment as a legitimate platform for serious business system development and as affordable minicomputer servers provided the processing power needed for AI applications.
Another major challenge of expert systems emerges when the size of the knowledge base increases. This causes the processing complexity to increase. For instance, when an expert system with 100 million rules was envisioned as the ultimate expert system, it became obvious that such system would be too complex and it would face too many computational problems. An inference engine would have to be able to process huge numbers of rules to reach a decision.
How to verify that decision rules are consistent with each other is also a challenge when there are too many rules. Usually such problem leads to a satisfiability (SAT) formulation. This is a well-known NP-complete problem Boolean satisfiability problem. If we assume only binary variables, say n of them, and then the corresponding search space is of size 2 n {\displaystyle ^{n}} . Thus, the search space can grow exponentially.
There are also questions on how to prioritize the use of the rules in order to operate more efficiently, or how to resolve ambiguities (for instance, if there are too many else-if sub-structures within a single rule) and so on.
Other problems are related to the overfitting and overgeneralization effects when using known facts and trying to generalize to other cases not described explicitly in the knowledge base. Such problems exist with methods that employ machine learning approaches too.
Another problem related to the knowledge base is how to make updates of its knowledge quickly and effectively. Also how to add a new piece of knowledge (i.e., where to add it among many rules) is challenging. Modern approaches that rely on machine learning methods are easier in this regard.
Because of the above challenges, it became clear that new approaches to AI were required instead of rule-based technologies. These new approaches are based on the use of machine learning techniques, along with the use of feedback mechanisms.
The key challenges that expert systems in medicine (if one considers computer-aided diagnostic systems as modern expert systems), and perhaps in other application domains, include issues related to aspects such as: big data, existing regulations, healthcare practice, various algorithmic issues, and system assessment.
Finally, the following disadvantages of using expert systems can be summarized:
Hayes-Roth divides expert systems applications into 10 categories illustrated in the following table. The example applications were not in the original Hayes-Roth table, and some of them arose well afterward. Any application that is not footnoted is described in the Hayes-Roth book. Also, while these categories provide an intuitive framework to describe the space of expert systems applications, they are not rigid categories, and in some cases an application may show traits of more than one category.
Hearsay was an early attempt at solving voice recognition through an expert systems approach. For the most part this category of expert systems was not all that successful. Hearsay and all interpretation systems are essentially pattern recognition systems—looking for patterns in noisy data. In the case of Hearsay recognizing phonemes in an audio stream. Other early examples were analyzing sonar data to detect Russian submarines. These kinds of systems proved much more amenable to a neural network AI solution than a rule-based approach.
CADUCEUS and MYCIN were medical diagnosis systems. The user describes their symptoms to the computer as they would to a doctor and the computer returns a medical diagnosis.
Dendral was a tool to study hypothesis formation in the identification of organic molecules. The general problem it solved—designing a solution given a set of constraints—was one of the most successful areas for early expert systems applied to business domains such as salespeople configuring Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX computers and mortgage loan application development.
SMH.PAL is an expert system for the assessment of students with multiple disabilities.
GARVAN-ES1 was a medical expert system, developed at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, that provided automated clinical diagnostic comments on endocrine reports from a pathology laboratory. It was one of the first medical expert systems to go into routine clinical use internationally and the first expert system to be used for diagnosis daily in Australia. The system was written in "C" and ran on a PDP-11 in 64K of memory. It had 661 rules that were compiled; not interpreted.
Mistral is an expert system to monitor dam safety, developed in the 1990s by Ismes (Italy). It gets data from an automatic monitoring system and performs a diagnosis of the state of the dam. Its first copy, installed in 1992 on the Ridracoli Dam (Italy), is still operational 24/7/365. It has been installed on several dams in Italy and abroad (e.g., Itaipu Dam in Brazil), and on landslide sites under the name of Eydenet, and on monuments under the name of Kaleidos. Mistral is a registered trade mark of CESI. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code. The first expert systems were created in the 1970s and then proliferated in the 1980s. Expert systems were among the first truly successful forms of artificial intelligence (AI) software. An expert system is divided into two subsystems: the inference engine and the knowledge base. The knowledge base represents facts and rules. The inference engine applies the rules to the known facts to deduce new facts. Inference engines can also include explanation and debugging abilities.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Soon after the dawn of modern computers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, researchers started realizing the immense potential these machines had for modern society. One of the first challenges was to make such machines capable of “thinking” like humans – in particular, making these machines capable of making important decisions the way humans do. The medical/healthcare field presented the tantalizing challenge of enabling these machines to make medical diagnostic decisions.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Thus, in the late 1950s, right after the information age had fully arrived, researchers started experimenting with the prospect of using computer technology to emulate human decision making. For example, biomedical researchers started creating computer-aided systems for diagnostic applications in medicine and biology. These early diagnostic systems used patients’ symptoms and laboratory test results as inputs to generate a diagnostic outcome. These systems were often described as the early forms of expert systems. However, researchers realized that there were significant limitations when using traditional methods such as flow charts, statistical pattern matching, or probability theory.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "This previous situation gradually led to the development of expert systems, which used knowledge-based approaches. These expert systems in medicine were the MYCIN expert system, the Internist-I expert system and later, in the middle of the 1980s, the CADUCEUS.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Expert systems were formally introduced around 1965 by the Stanford Heuristic Programming Project led by Edward Feigenbaum, who is sometimes termed the \"father of expert systems\"; other key early contributors were Bruce Buchanan and Randall Davis. The Stanford researchers tried to identify domains where expertise was highly valued and complex, such as diagnosing infectious diseases (Mycin) and identifying unknown organic molecules (Dendral). The idea that \"intelligent systems derive their power from the knowledge they possess rather than from the specific formalisms and inference schemes they use\" – as Feigenbaum said – was at the time a significant step forward, since the past research had been focused on heuristic computational methods, culminating in attempts to develop very general-purpose problem solvers (foremostly the conjunct work of Allen Newell and Herbert Simon). Expert systems became some of the first truly successful forms of artificial intelligence (AI) software.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Research on expert systems was also active in France. While in the US the focus tended to be on rules-based systems, first on systems hard coded on top of LISP programming environments and then on expert system shells developed by vendors such as Intellicorp, in France research focused more on systems developed in Prolog. The advantage of expert system shells was that they were somewhat easier for nonprogrammers to use. The advantage of Prolog environments was that they were not focused only on if-then rules; Prolog environments provided a much better realization of a complete first-order logic environment.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the 1980s, expert systems proliferated. Universities offered expert system courses and two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies applied the technology in daily business activities. Interest was international with the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project in Japan and increased research funding in Europe.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1981, the first IBM PC, with the PC DOS operating system, was introduced. The imbalance between the high affordability of the relatively powerful chips in the PC, compared to the much more expensive cost of processing power in the mainframes that dominated the corporate IT world at the time, created a new type of architecture for corporate computing, termed the client–server model. Calculations and reasoning could be performed at a fraction of the price of a mainframe using a PC. This model also enabled business units to bypass corporate IT departments and directly build their own applications. As a result, client-server had a tremendous impact on the expert systems market. Expert systems were already outliers in much of the business world, requiring new skills that many IT departments did not have and were not eager to develop. They were a natural fit for new PC-based shells that promised to put application development into the hands of end users and experts. Until then, the main development environment for expert systems had been high end Lisp machines from Xerox, Symbolics, and Texas Instruments. With the rise of the PC and client-server computing, vendors such as Intellicorp and Inference Corporation shifted their priorities to developing PC-based tools. Also, new vendors, often financed by venture capital (such as Aion Corporation, Neuron Data, Exsys, and many others), started appearing regularly.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The first expert system to be used in a design capacity for a large-scale product was the SID (Synthesis of Integral Design) software program, developed in 1982. Written in LISP, SID generated 93% of the VAX 9000 CPU logic gates. Input to the software was a set of rules created by several expert logic designers. SID expanded the rules and generated software logic synthesis routines many times the size of the rules themselves. Surprisingly, the combination of these rules resulted in an overall design that exceeded the capabilities of the experts themselves, and in many cases out-performed the human counterparts. While some rules contradicted others, top-level control parameters for speed and area provided the tie-breaker. The program was highly controversial but used nevertheless due to project budget constraints. It was terminated by logic designers after the VAX 9000 project completion.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "During the years before the middle of the 1970s, the expectations of what expert systems can accomplish in many fields tended to be extremely optimistic. At the beginning of these early studies, researchers were hoping to develop entirely automatic (i.e., completely computerized) expert systems. The expectations of people of what computers can do were frequently too idealistic. This situation radically changed after Richard M. Karp published his breakthrough paper: “Reducibility among Combinatorial Problems” in the early 1970s. Thanks to Karp's work, together with other scholars, like Hubert L. Dreyfus, it became clear that there are certain limitations and possibilities when one designs computer algorithms. His findings describe what computers can do and what they cannot do. Many of the computational problems related to this type of expert systems have certain pragmatic limitations. These findings laid down the groundwork that led to the next developments in the field.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In the 1990s and beyond, the term expert system and the idea of a standalone AI system mostly dropped from the IT lexicon. There are two interpretations of this. One is that \"expert systems failed\": the IT world moved on because expert systems did not deliver on their over hyped promise. The other is the mirror opposite, that expert systems were simply victims of their success: as IT professionals grasped concepts such as rule engines, such tools migrated from being standalone tools for developing special purpose expert systems, to being one of many standard tools. Other researchers suggest that Expert Systems caused inter-company power struggles when the IT organization lost its exclusivity in software modifications to users or Knowledge Engineers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In the first decade of the 2000s, there was a \"resurrection\" for the technology, while using the term Rule Based Systems, with significant success stories and adoption. Many of the leading major business application suite vendors (such as SAP, Siebel, and Oracle) integrated expert system abilities into their suite of products as a way of specifying business logic – rule engines are no longer simply for defining the rules an expert would use but for any type of complex, volatile, and critical business logic; they often go hand in hand with business process automation and integration environments.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The limitations of the previous type of expert systems have urged researchers to develop new types of approaches. They have developed more efficient, flexible, and powerful approaches in order to simulate the human decision-making process. Some of the approaches that researchers have developed are based on new methods of artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular in machine learning and data mining approaches with a feedback mechanism. Recurrent neural networks often take advantage of such mechanisms. Related is the discussion on the disadvantages section.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Modern systems can incorporate new knowledge more easily and thus update themselves easily. Such systems can generalize from existing knowledge better and deal with vast amounts of complex data. Related is the subject of big data here. Sometimes these type of expert systems are called \"intelligent systems.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "An expert system is an example of a knowledge-based system. Expert systems were the first commercial systems to use a knowledge-based architecture. In general view, an expert system includes the following components: a knowledge base, an inference engine, an explanation facility, a knowledge acquisition facility, and a user interface.",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The knowledge base represents facts about the world. In early expert systems such as Mycin and Dendral, these facts were represented mainly as flat assertions about variables. In later expert systems developed with commercial shells, the knowledge base took on more structure and used concepts from object-oriented programming. The world was represented as classes, subclasses, and instances and assertions were replaced by values of object instances. The rules worked by querying and asserting values of the objects.",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The inference engine is an automated reasoning system that evaluates the current state of the knowledge-base, applies relevant rules, and then asserts new knowledge into the knowledge base. The inference engine may also include abilities for explanation, so that it can explain to a user the chain of reasoning used to arrive at a particular conclusion by tracing back over the firing of rules that resulted in the assertion.",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There are mainly two modes for an inference engine: forward chaining and backward chaining. The different approaches are dictated by whether the inference engine is being driven by the antecedent (left hand side) or the consequent (right hand side) of the rule. In forward chaining an antecedent fires and asserts the consequent. For example, consider the following rule:",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "A simple example of forward chaining would be to assert Man(Socrates) to the system and then trigger the inference engine. It would match R1 and assert Mortal(Socrates) into the knowledge base.",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Backward chaining is a bit less straight forward. In backward chaining the system looks at possible conclusions and works backward to see if they might be true. So if the system was trying to determine if Mortal(Socrates) is true it would find R1 and query the knowledge base to see if Man(Socrates) is true. One of the early innovations of expert systems shells was to integrate inference engines with a user interface. This could be especially powerful with backward chaining. If the system needs to know a particular fact but does not, then it can simply generate an input screen and ask the user if the information is known. So in this example, it could use R1 to ask the user if Socrates was a Man and then use that new information accordingly.",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The use of rules to explicitly represent knowledge also enabled explanation abilities. In the simple example above if the system had used R1 to assert that Socrates was Mortal and a user wished to understand why Socrates was mortal they could query the system and the system would look back at the rules which fired to cause the assertion and present those rules to the user as an explanation. In English, if the user asked \"Why is Socrates Mortal?\" the system would reply \"Because all men are mortal and Socrates is a man\". A significant area for research was the generation of explanations from the knowledge base in natural English rather than simply by showing the more formal but less intuitive rules.",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "As expert systems evolved, many new techniques were incorporated into various types of inference engines. Some of the most important of these were:",
"title": "Software architecture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The goal of knowledge-based systems is to make the critical information required for the system to work explicit rather than implicit. In a traditional computer program the logic is embedded in code that can typically only be reviewed by an IT specialist. With an expert system the goal was to specify the rules in a format that was intuitive and easily understood, reviewed, and even edited by domain experts rather than IT experts. The benefits of this explicit knowledge representation were rapid development and ease of maintenance.",
"title": "Advantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Ease of maintenance is the most obvious benefit. This was achieved in two ways. First, by removing the need to write conventional code, many of the normal problems that can be caused by even small changes to a system could be avoided with expert systems. Essentially, the logical flow of the program (at least at the highest level) was simply a given for the system, simply invoke the inference engine. This also was a reason for the second benefit: rapid prototyping. With an expert system shell it was possible to enter a few rules and have a prototype developed in days rather than the months or year typically associated with complex IT projects.",
"title": "Advantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "A claim for expert system shells that was often made was that they removed the need for trained programmers and that experts could develop systems themselves. In reality, this was seldom if ever true. While the rules for an expert system were more comprehensible than typical computer code, they still had a formal syntax where a misplaced comma or other character could cause havoc as with any other computer language. Also, as expert systems moved from prototypes in the lab to deployment in the business world, issues of integration and maintenance became far more critical. Inevitably demands to integrate with, and take advantage of, large legacy databases and systems arose. To accomplish this, integration required the same skills as any other type of system.",
"title": "Advantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Summing up the benefits of using expert systems, the following can be highlighted:",
"title": "Advantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The most common disadvantage cited for expert systems in the academic literature is the knowledge acquisition problem. Obtaining the time of domain experts for any software application is always difficult, but for expert systems it was especially difficult because the experts were by definition highly valued and in constant demand by the organization. As a result of this problem, a great deal of research in the later years of expert systems was focused on tools for knowledge acquisition, to help automate the process of designing, debugging, and maintaining rules defined by experts. However, when looking at the life-cycle of expert systems in actual use, other problems – essentially the same problems as those of any other large system – seem at least as critical as knowledge acquisition: integration, access to large databases, and performance.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Performance could be especially problematic because early expert systems were built using tools (such as earlier Lisp versions) that interpreted code expressions without first compiling them. This provided a powerful development environment, but with the drawback that it was virtually impossible to match the efficiency of the fastest compiled languages (such as C). System and database integration were difficult for early expert systems because the tools were mostly in languages and platforms that were neither familiar to nor welcome in most corporate IT environments – programming languages such as Lisp and Prolog, and hardware platforms such as Lisp machines and personal computers. As a result, much effort in the later stages of expert system tool development was focused on integrating with legacy environments such as COBOL and large database systems, and on porting to more standard platforms. These issues were resolved mainly by the client–server paradigm shift, as PCs were gradually accepted in the IT environment as a legitimate platform for serious business system development and as affordable minicomputer servers provided the processing power needed for AI applications.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Another major challenge of expert systems emerges when the size of the knowledge base increases. This causes the processing complexity to increase. For instance, when an expert system with 100 million rules was envisioned as the ultimate expert system, it became obvious that such system would be too complex and it would face too many computational problems. An inference engine would have to be able to process huge numbers of rules to reach a decision.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "How to verify that decision rules are consistent with each other is also a challenge when there are too many rules. Usually such problem leads to a satisfiability (SAT) formulation. This is a well-known NP-complete problem Boolean satisfiability problem. If we assume only binary variables, say n of them, and then the corresponding search space is of size 2 n {\\displaystyle ^{n}} . Thus, the search space can grow exponentially.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "There are also questions on how to prioritize the use of the rules in order to operate more efficiently, or how to resolve ambiguities (for instance, if there are too many else-if sub-structures within a single rule) and so on.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Other problems are related to the overfitting and overgeneralization effects when using known facts and trying to generalize to other cases not described explicitly in the knowledge base. Such problems exist with methods that employ machine learning approaches too.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Another problem related to the knowledge base is how to make updates of its knowledge quickly and effectively. Also how to add a new piece of knowledge (i.e., where to add it among many rules) is challenging. Modern approaches that rely on machine learning methods are easier in this regard.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Because of the above challenges, it became clear that new approaches to AI were required instead of rule-based technologies. These new approaches are based on the use of machine learning techniques, along with the use of feedback mechanisms.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The key challenges that expert systems in medicine (if one considers computer-aided diagnostic systems as modern expert systems), and perhaps in other application domains, include issues related to aspects such as: big data, existing regulations, healthcare practice, various algorithmic issues, and system assessment.",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Finally, the following disadvantages of using expert systems can be summarized:",
"title": "Disadvantages"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Hayes-Roth divides expert systems applications into 10 categories illustrated in the following table. The example applications were not in the original Hayes-Roth table, and some of them arose well afterward. Any application that is not footnoted is described in the Hayes-Roth book. Also, while these categories provide an intuitive framework to describe the space of expert systems applications, they are not rigid categories, and in some cases an application may show traits of more than one category.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Hearsay was an early attempt at solving voice recognition through an expert systems approach. For the most part this category of expert systems was not all that successful. Hearsay and all interpretation systems are essentially pattern recognition systems—looking for patterns in noisy data. In the case of Hearsay recognizing phonemes in an audio stream. Other early examples were analyzing sonar data to detect Russian submarines. These kinds of systems proved much more amenable to a neural network AI solution than a rule-based approach.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "CADUCEUS and MYCIN were medical diagnosis systems. The user describes their symptoms to the computer as they would to a doctor and the computer returns a medical diagnosis.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Dendral was a tool to study hypothesis formation in the identification of organic molecules. The general problem it solved—designing a solution given a set of constraints—was one of the most successful areas for early expert systems applied to business domains such as salespeople configuring Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX computers and mortgage loan application development.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "SMH.PAL is an expert system for the assessment of students with multiple disabilities.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "GARVAN-ES1 was a medical expert system, developed at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, that provided automated clinical diagnostic comments on endocrine reports from a pathology laboratory. It was one of the first medical expert systems to go into routine clinical use internationally and the first expert system to be used for diagnosis daily in Australia. The system was written in \"C\" and ran on a PDP-11 in 64K of memory. It had 661 rules that were compiled; not interpreted.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Mistral is an expert system to monitor dam safety, developed in the 1990s by Ismes (Italy). It gets data from an automatic monitoring system and performs a diagnosis of the state of the dam. Its first copy, installed in 1992 on the Ridracoli Dam (Italy), is still operational 24/7/365. It has been installed on several dams in Italy and abroad (e.g., Itaipu Dam in Brazil), and on landslide sites under the name of Eydenet, and on monuments under the name of Kaleidos. Mistral is a registered trade mark of CESI.",
"title": "Applications"
}
]
| In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code. The first expert systems were created in the 1970s and then proliferated in the 1980s. Expert systems were among the first truly successful forms of artificial intelligence (AI) software. An expert system is divided into two subsystems: the inference engine and the knowledge base. The knowledge base represents facts and rules. The inference engine applies the rules to the known facts to deduce new facts. Inference engines can also include explanation and debugging abilities. | 2001-11-25T23:17:58Z | 2023-12-25T09:20:13Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system |
10,139 | Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford | Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (/də ˈvɪər/; 12 April 1550 – 24 June 1604) was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibility and contributed to the dissipation of his estate.
Edward de Vere was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and Margery Golding. After the death of his father in 1562, he became a ward of Queen Elizabeth I and was sent to live in the household of her principal advisor, Sir William Cecil. He married Cecil's daughter, Anne, with whom he had five children. Oxford was estranged from her for five years and refused to acknowledge he was the father of their first child.
A champion jouster, Oxford travelled widely throughout France and the many states of Italy. He was among the first to compose love poetry at the Elizabethan court and was praised as a playwright, though none of the plays known as his survive. A stream of dedications praised Oxford for his generous patronage of literary, religious, musical, and medical works, and he patronised both adult and boy acting companies, as well as musicians, tumblers, acrobats and performing animals.
He fell out of favour with the Queen in the early 1580s and was exiled from court and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London when his mistress Anne Vavasour, one of Elizabeth's maids of honour, gave birth to his son in the palace. Vavasour, too, was incarcerated, and the affair instigated violent street brawls between Oxford and her kinsmen. He was reconciled to the Queen in May 1583 at Theobalds, but all opportunities for advancement had been lost. In 1586, the Queen granted Oxford £1,000 annually ($483,607 in 2020 US dollars) to relieve the financial distress caused by his extravagance and the sale of his income-producing lands for ready money. After the death of his first wife, Anne Cecil, Oxford married Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's maids of honour, with whom he had an heir, Henry de Vere, Viscount Bulbeck (later 18th Earl of Oxford). Oxford died in 1604, having spent the entirety of his inherited estates.
Since the 1920s, Oxford has been among the most prominent alternative candidates proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's works.
Edward de Vere was born heir to the second-oldest extant earldom in England at the de Vere ancestral home, Hedingham Castle, in Essex, northeast of London. He was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife, Margery Golding and was probably named to honour Edward VI, from whom he received a gilded christening cup. He had an older half-sister, Katherine, the child of his father's first marriage to Dorothy Neville, and a younger sister, Mary de Vere. Both his parents had established court connections: the 16th Earl accompanying Princess Elizabeth from her house arrest at Hatfield to the throne, and the countess being appointed a maid of honour in 1559.
Before his father's death, Edward de Vere was styled Viscount Bulbeck, or Bolebec, and was raised in the Protestant reformed faith. Like many children of the nobility, he was raised by surrogate parents, in his case in the household of Sir Thomas Smith. At eight he entered Queens' College, Cambridge, as an impubes, or immature fellow-commoner, later transferring to St John's. Thomas Fowle, a former fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, was paid £10 annually as de Vere's tutor.
His father died on 3 August 1562, shortly after making his will. Because he held lands from the Crown by knight service, his son became a royal ward of the Queen and was placed in the household of Sir William Cecil, her secretary of state and chief advisor. At 12, de Vere had become the 17th Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, and heir to an estate whose annual income, though assessed at approximately £2,500, may have run as high as £3,500 (£1.25 million as of 2023).
While living at the Cecil House, Oxford's daily studies consisted of dancing instruction, French, Latin, cosmography, writing exercises, drawing, and common prayers. During his first year at Cecil House, he was briefly tutored by Laurence Nowell, the antiquarian and Anglo-Saxon scholar. In a letter to Cecil, Nowell explains: "I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required", and his departure after eight months has been interpreted as either a sign of the thirteen-year-old Oxford's intractability as a pupil, or an indication that his precocity surpassed Nowell's ability to instruct him. In May 1564 Arthur Golding, in his dedication to his Th' Abridgement of the Histories of Trogus Pompeius, attributed to his young nephew an interest in ancient history and contemporary events.
In 1563, Oxford's older half-sister, Katherine, then Lady Windsor, challenged the legitimacy of the marriage of de Vere's parents in the Ecclesiastical court. His uncle Golding argued that the Archbishop of Canterbury should halt the proceedings since a proceeding against a ward of the Queen could not be brought without prior licence from the Court of Wards and Liveries.
Some time before October 1563, Oxford's mother married secondly Charles Tyrrell, a Gentleman Pensioner. In May 1565 she wrote to Cecil, urging that the money from family properties set aside by Oxford's father's will for his use during his minority should be entrusted to herself and other family friends, to protect it and to ensure that Oxford would be able to meet the expenses of furnishing his household and suing his livery when he reached his majority; this last would end his wardship, through cancelling his debt with the Court of Wards, and convey to him the powers attached to his titles. There is no evidence that Cecil ever replied to her request. She died three years later, and was buried beside her first husband at Earls Colne. Oxford's stepfather, Charles Tyrrell, died in March 1570.
In August 1564 Oxford was among 17 noblemen, knights, and esquires in the Queen's entourage who were awarded the honorary degree of Master of Arts by the University of Cambridge, and he was awarded another by the University of Oxford on a Royal progress in 1566. His future father-in-law, William Cecil, also received honorary degrees of Master of Arts on the same progresses. There is no evidence that Oxford ever received a Bachelor of Arts degree. In February 1567 he was admitted to Gray's Inn to study law.
On 23 July 1567, while practising fencing in the backyard of Cecil House in the Strand, the seventeen-year-old Oxford killed Thomas Brincknell, an under-cook in the Cecil household. At the coroner's inquest the next day, the jury, which included Oxford's servant, and Cecil's protégé, the future historian Raphael Holinshed, found that Brincknell, drunk, had deliberately committed suicide by running onto Oxford's blade. As a suicide, he was not buried in consecrated ground, and all his worldly possessions were confiscated, leaving his pregnant wife destitute. She delivered a stillborn child shortly after Brinknell's death. Cecil later wrote that he attempted to have the jury find that Oxford had acted in self-defence.
Records of books purchased for Oxford in 1569 attest to his continued interest in history, as well as literature and philosophy. Among them were editions of a gilt Geneva Bible, Chaucer, Plutarch, two books in Italian, and folio editions of Cicero and Plato. In the same year Thomas Underdown dedicated his translation of the Æthiopian History of Heliodorus to Oxford, praising his 'haughty courage', 'great skill' and 'sufficiency of learning'. In the winter of 1570, Oxford made the acquaintance of the mathematician and astrologer John Dee and became interested in occultism, studying magic and conjuring.
In 1569, Oxford received his first vote for membership in the Order of the Garter, but never attained the honour in spite of his high rank and office. In November of that year, Oxford petitioned Cecil for a foreign military posting. Although the Roman Catholic Revolt of the Northern Earls had broken out that year, Elizabeth refused to grant the request. Cecil eventually obtained a position for Oxford under the Earl of Sussex in a Scottish campaign the following spring. He and Sussex became staunch mutual supporters at court.
On 12 April 1571, Oxford attained his majority and took his seat in the House of Lords. Great expectations attended his coming of age; Sir George Buck recalled predictions that 'he was much more like ... to acquire a new erldome then to wast & lose an old erldom', a prophecy that was never fulfilled.
Although formal certification of his freedom from Burghley's control was deferred until May 1572, Oxford was finally granted the income of £666 which his father had intended him to have earlier, but properties set aside to pay his father's debts would not come his way for another decade. During his minority as the Queen's ward, one-third of his estate had already reverted to the Crown, much of which Elizabeth had long since settled on Robert Dudley. Elizabeth demanded a further payment of £3,000 for overseeing the wardship and a further £4,000 for suing his livery. Oxford pledged double the amount if he failed to pay when it fell due, effectively risking a total obligation of £21,000.
By 1571, Oxford was a court favourite of Elizabeth's. In May, he participated in the three-day tilt, tourney and barrier at which, although he did not win, he was given chief honours in celebration of the attainment of his majority, his prowess winning admiring comments from spectators. In August, Oxford attended Paul de Foix, who had come to England to negotiate a marriage between the Protestant Queen Elizabeth and the Catholic Prince François de France, duc d'Anjou, the youngest brother of King Henry III of France of the House of Valois-Angoulême. The marriage had been proposed in 1572 as part of the negotiations between England and France to break the power of Spain. In November 1579 the husband of Oxford's first cousin Anne Vere, John Stubbs, and William Page had their right hand publicly cut off for the pamphlet critical of the Queen's proposed marriage to Prince François and therefore judged seditious.
Oxford's published poetry dates from this period and, along with Edward Dyer he was one of the first courtiers to introduce vernacular verse to the court.
In 1562, the 16th Earl of Oxford had contracted with Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, for his son Edward to marry one of Huntingdon's sisters; when he reached the age of eighteen, he was to choose either Elizabeth or Mary Hastings. However, after the death of the 16th Earl, the indenture was allowed to lapse. Elizabeth Hastings later married Edward Somerset, while Mary Hastings died unmarried.
In the summer of 1571, Oxford declared an interest in Cecil's 14 year-old daughter, Anne, and received the queen's consent to the marriage. Anne had been pledged to Philip Sidney two years earlier, but after a year of negotiations Sidney's father, Sir Henry, was declining in the Queen's favour and Cecil suspected financial difficulties. In addition, Cecil had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Burghley in February 1571, thus elevating his daughter's rank, so the negotiations were cancelled. Cecil was displeased with the arrangement, given his daughter's age compared to Oxford's, and had entertained the idea of marrying her to the Earl of Rutland instead. The marriage was deferred until Anne was fifteen and finally took place at the Palace of Whitehall on 16 December 1571, in a triple wedding with that of Lady Elizabeth Hastings and Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, and Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley and bride, Mary Howard, with the Queen in attendance. The tying of two young English noblemen of great fortune into Protestant families was not lost on Elizabeth's Catholic enemies. Burghley gave Oxford for his daughter's dowry land worth £800, and a cash settlement of £3,000. This amount was equal to Oxford's livery fees and was probably intended to be used as such, but the money vanished without a trace.
Oxford assigned Anne a jointure of some £669, but even though he was of age and a married man, he was still not in possession of his inheritance. After finally paying the Crown the £4,000 it demanded for his livery, he was finally licensed to enter on his lands in May 1572. He was entitled to yearly revenues from his estates and the office of Lord Great Chamberlain of approximately £2,250, but he was not entitled to the income from his mother's jointure until after her death, nor to the income from certain estates set aside until 1583 to pay his father's debts. In addition, the fines assessed against Oxford in the Court of Wards for his wardship, marriage, and livery already totalled some £3,306. To guarantee payment, he entered into bonds to the Court totalling £11,000, and two further private bonds for £6,000 apiece.
In 1572, Oxford's first cousin and closest relative, the Duke of Norfolk, was found guilty of a Catholic conspiracy against Elizabeth and was executed for treason. Oxford had earlier petitioned both the Queen and Burghley on the condemned Norfolk's behalf, to no avail, and it was claimed in a "murky petition from an unidentified woman" that he had plotted to provide a ship to assist his cousin's escape attempt to Spain.
The following summer, Oxford planned to travel to Ireland; at this point, his debts were estimated at a minimum of £6,000.
In the summer of 1574, Elizabeth admonished Oxford "for his unthriftyness", and on 1 July he bolted to the continent without permission, travelling to Calais with Lord Edward Seymour, and then to Flanders, "carrying a great sum of money with him". Coming as it did during a time of expected hostilities with Spain, Mary, Queen of Scots, interpreted his flight as an indication of his Catholic sympathies, as did the Catholic rebels then living on the continent. Burghley, however, assured the queen that Oxford was loyal, and she sent two Gentlemen Pensioners to summon him back, under threat of heavy penalties. Oxford returned to England by the end of the month and was in London on the 28th. His request for a place on the Privy Council was rejected, but the queen's anger was abated and she promised him a licence to travel to Paris, Germany, and Italy on his pledge of good behaviour.
In January 1575 Elizabeth issued a licence to Oxford to travel, and provided him with letters of introduction to foreign monarchs. Prior to his departure, he entered into two indentures. In the first contract, he sold his manors in Cornwall, Staffordshire and Wiltshire to three trustees for £6,000. In the second, to prevent his estates passing by default to his sister Mary in the event of his dying abroad without heirs, he entailed the lands of the earldom on his first cousin, Hugh Vere. The indenture also provided for payment of debts amounting to £9,096, £3,457 of which was still owed to the Queen as expenses for his wardship.
Oxford left England in the first week of February 1575, and a month later was presented to the King and Queen of France. News that his new wife, Anne, was pregnant had reached him in Paris, and he sent her many extravagant presents in the coming months. But somewhere along the way, his mind was poisoned against Anne and the Cecils, and he became convinced that the expected child was not his. The elder Cecils loudly voiced their outrage at the rumours, which probably worsened the situation. In mid-March he travelled to Strasbourg, and then made his way to Venice, via Milan. Although his daughter, Elizabeth, was born at the beginning of July, for unexplained reasons Oxford did not learn of her birth until late September.
Oxford remained in Italy for a year, during which he was evidently captivated by Italian fashions in clothing, jewellery and cosmetics. He is recorded by John Stow as having introduced various Italian luxury items to the English court which immediately became fashionable, such as embroidered or trimmed scented gloves. Elizabeth had a pair of decorated gloves scented with perfume that for many years was known as the "Earl of Oxford's perfume". Lacking evidence, his interest in higher Italian culture, its literature, music and visual art, is less sure. His only recorded judgement about the country itself was unenthusiastic. In a letter to Burghley he wrote, "...for my lekinge of Italy, my lord I am glad I haue sene it, and I care not euer to see it any more vnles it be to serue my prince or contrie."
In January 1576 Oxford wrote to Lord Burghley from Siena about complaints that had reached him about his creditors' demands, which included the Queen and his sister, and directing that more of his land be sold to pay them. He left Venice in March, intending to return home by way of Lyons and Paris; although one later report has him as far south as Palermo in Sicily. At this point the Italian financier Benedict Spinola had lent Oxford over £4,000 for his 15-month-long continental tour, while in England over a hundred tradesmen were seeking settlement of debts totalling thousands of pounds.
On Oxford's return across the Channel in April 1576, his ship was seized by pirates from Flushing, who took his possessions, stripped him to his shirt, and might have murdered him had not one of them recognized him.
On his return, Oxford refused to live with his wife and took rooms at Charing Cross. Aside from the unspoken suspicion that Elizabeth was not his child, Burghley's papers reveal a flood of bitter complaints by Oxford against the Cecil family. Upon the Queen's request, he allowed his wife to attend the Queen at court, but only when he was not present, and he insisted that she not attempt to speak to him. He also stipulated that Burghley must make no further appeals to him on Anne's behalf. He was estranged from Anne for five years.
In February 1577 it was rumoured that Oxford's sister Mary would marry Lord Gerald Fitzgerald (1559–1580), but by 2 July her name was linked with that of Peregrine Bertie, later Lord Willoughby d'Eresby. Bertie's mother, the Duchess of Suffolk, wrote to Lord Burghley that "my wise son has gone very far with my Lady Mary Vere, I fear too far to turn". Both the Duchess and her husband Richard Bertie first opposed the marriage, and the Queen initially withheld her consent. Oxford's own opposition to the match was so vehement that for some time Mary's prospective husband feared for his life. On 15 December the Duchess of Suffolk wrote to Burghley describing a plan she and Mary had devised to arrange a meeting between Oxford and his daughter. Whether the scheme came to fruition is unknown. Mary and Bertie were married sometime before March of the following year.
Oxford had sold his inherited lands in Cornwall, Staffordshire, and Wiltshire prior to his continental tour. On his return to England in 1576 he sold his manors in Devonshire; by the end of 1578 he had sold at least seven more.
In 1577 Oxford invested £25 in the second of Martin Frobisher's expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. In July 1577, he asked the Crown for the grant of Castle Rising, which had been forfeited to the Crown due to his cousin Norfolk's attainder in 1572. As soon as it was granted to him, he sold it, along with two other manors, and sank some £3,000 into Frobisher's third expedition. The 'gold' ore brought back turned out to be worthless, and Oxford lost the entire investment.
In the summer of 1578, Oxford attended the Queen's progress through East Anglia. The royal party stayed at Lord Henry Howard's residence at Audley End. A contretemps occurred during the progress in mid-August when the Queen twice asked Oxford to dance before the French ambassadors, who were in England to negotiate a marriage between the 46-year-old English queen and the younger brother of Henri III of France, the 24 year-old Duke of Anjou. Oxford refused, on the grounds that he "would not give pleasure to Frenchmen".
In April 1578, the Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, had written to King Philip II of Spain that it had been proposed that if Anjou were to travel to England to negotiate his marriage to the Queen, Oxford, Surrey, and Windsor should be hostages for his safe return. Anjou himself did not arrive in England until the end of August, but his ambassadors were already in England. Oxford was sympathetic to the proposed marriage; Leicester and his nephew Philip Sidney were adamantly opposed to it. This antagonism may have triggered the famous quarrel between Oxford and Sidney on the tennis court at Whitehall. It is not entirely clear who was playing on the court when the fight erupted; what is undisputed is that Oxford called Sidney a 'puppy', while Sidney responded that "all the world knows puppies are gotten by dogs, and children by men". The French ambassadors, whose private galleries overlooked the tennis court, were witness to the display. Whether it was Sidney who next challenged Oxford to a duel or the other way around, the matter was not taken further, and the Queen personally took Sidney to task for not recognizing the difference between his status and Oxford's. Christopher Hatton and Sidney's friend Hubert Languet also tried to dissuade Sidney from pursuing the matter, and it was eventually dropped. The specific cause is not known, but in January 1580 Oxford wrote and challenged Sidney; by the end of the month Oxford was confined by the Queen to his chambers, and was not released until early February.
Oxford openly quarrelled with the Earl of Leicester at about this time; he was confined to his chamber at Greenwich for some time 'about the libelling between him and my Lord of Leicester'. In the summer of 1580, Gabriel Harvey, apparently motivated by a desire to ingratiate himself with Leicester, satirized Oxford's love for things Italian in verses entitled Speculum Tuscanismi and in Three Proper and Witty Familiar Letters.
Although details are unclear, there is evidence that in 1577 Oxford attempted to leave England to see service in the French Wars of Religion on the side of King Henry III. Like many members of older established aristocratic families in England, he inclined to Roman Catholicism; and after his return from Italy, he was reported to have embraced the religion, perhaps after a distant kinsman, Charles Arundell, introduced him to a seminary priest named Richard Stephens. But just as quickly, by late in 1580 he had denounced a group of Catholics, among them Arundell, Francis Southwell, and Henry Howard, for treasonous activities and asking the Queen's mercy for his own, now repudiated, Catholicism. Elizabeth characteristically delayed in acting on the matter and Oxford was detained under house arrest for a short time.
Leicester is credited by author Alan H. Nelson with having "dislodged Oxford from the pro-French group", i.e., the group at court which favoured Elizabeth's marriage to the Duke of Anjou. The Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, was also of the view that Leicester was behind Oxford's informing on his fellow Catholics in an attempt to prevent the French marriage. Peck concurs, stating that Leicester was "intent upon rendering Sussex's allies politically useless".
The Privy Council ordered the arrest of both Howard and Arundel; Oxford immediately met secretly with Arundell to convince him to support his allegations against Howard and Southwell, offering him money and a pardon from the Queen. Arundell refused this offer, and he and Howard initially sought asylum with Mendoza. Only after being assured that they would be placed under house arrest in the home of a Privy Councillor, did the pair give themselves up. During the first weeks after their arrest they pursued a threefold strategy: they would admit to minor crimes, attempt to prove Oxford a liar by his offers of money to testify to his accusations, and try to demonstrate that their accuser posed the real danger to the Crown. Their allegations against Oxford included atheism, lying, heresy, disobedience to the crown, treason, murder for hire, sexual perversion, habitual drunkenness, vowing to murder various courtiers, and criticizing the Queen for doing "everything with the worst grace that ever woman did."
Most seriously, Howard and Arundell charged Oxford with serial child rape, claiming he'd abused "so many boyes it must nedes come out." Detailed testimony from nearly a dozen victims and witnesses substantiated the charge and included names, dates, and places. Two of the six boys named had sought help from adults after Oxford raped them violently and denied them medical care. A young cook named Powers reported being subjected to multiple assaults at Hampton Court in the winter of 1577-78, at Whitehall, and in Oxford's Broad Street home. Orazio Coquo's account is well documented outside the Howard-Arundel report. In testimony to the Venetian Inquisition dated 27 August 1577, Coquo explained that he was singing in the choir at Venice's Santa Maria Formosa on 1 March 1576 when Oxford invited him to work in England as his page. Then 15, the boy sought his parents' advice and departed Venice just 4 days later. Coquo arrived with Oxford in Dover on 20 April 1576 and fled 11 months later on 20 March 1577, aided by a Milanese merchant who gave him 25 ducats for the journey: He "told me that I would be corrupted if I remained," Orazio testified, "and he didn't want me to stay there any longer." When asked whether he sought Oxford's permission before leaving, the boy replied, "Sirs, no, because he would not have allowed me to leave."
Arundell and Howard cleared themselves of Oxford's accusations, although Howard remained under house arrest into August, while Arundell was not freed until October or November. None of the three was ever indicted or tried. Neither Arundell nor Howard ever returned to court favour, and after the Throckmorton Plot of 1583 in support of Mary, Queen of Scots, Arundell fled to Paris with Thomas, Lord Paget, the elder brother of the conspirator Charles Paget. In the meantime, Oxford won a tournament at Westminster on 22 January. His page's speech at the tournament, describing Oxford's appearance as the Knight of the Tree of the Sun, was published in 1592 in a pamphlet entitled Plato, Axiochus.
On 14 April 1589 Oxford was among the peers who found Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, the eldest son and heir of Oxford's cousin, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, guilty of treason; Arundel later died in prison. Oxford later insisted that "the Howards were the most treacherous race under heaven" and that "my Lord Howard [was] the worst villain that lived in this earth."
During the early 1580s, it is likely that the Earl of Oxford lived mainly at one of his Essex country houses, Wivenhoe, which was sold in 1584. In June 1580 he purchased a tenement and seven acres of land near Aldgate in London from the Italian merchant Benedict Spinola for £2,500. The property, located in the parish of St Botolphs, was known as the Great Garden of Christchurch and had formerly belonged to Magdalene College, Cambridge. He also purchased a London residence, a mansion in Bishopsgate known as Fisher's Folly. According to Henry Howard, Oxford paid a large sum for the property and renovations to it.
On 23 March 1581 Sir Francis Walsingham advised the Earl of Huntingdon that two days earlier Anne Vavasour, one of the Queen's maids of honour, had given birth to a son, and that "the Earl of Oxford is avowed to be the father, who hath withdrawn himself with intent, as it is thought, to pass the seas". Oxford was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, as was Anne and her infant, who would later be known as Sir Edward Vere. Burghley interceded for Oxford, and he was released from the Tower on 8 June, but he remained under house arrest until some time in July.
While Oxford was under house arrest in May, Thomas Stocker dedicated to him his Divers Sermons of Master John Calvin, stating in the dedication that he had been "brought up in your Lordship's father's house".
Oxford was still under house arrest in mid-July, but took part in an Accession Day tournament at Whitehall on 17 November 1581. He was then banished from court until June 1583. He appealed to Burghley to intervene with the Queen on his behalf, but his father-in-law repeatedly put the matter in the hands of Sir Christopher Hatton.
At Christmas 1581, Oxford was reconciled with his wife, Anne, but his affair with Anne Vavasour continued to have repercussions. In March 1582 there was a skirmish in the streets of London between Oxford and Anne's uncle, Sir Thomas Knyvet. Oxford was wounded, and his servant killed; reports conflict as to whether Kynvet was also injured. There was another fray between Knyvet's and Oxford's retinues on 18 June, and a third six days later, when it was reported that Knyvet had "slain a man of the Earl of Oxford's in fight". In a letter to Burghley three years later Oxford offered to attend his father-in-law at his house "as well as a lame man might"; it is possible his lameness was a result of injuries from that encounter. On 19 January 1585 Anne Vavasour's brother Thomas sent Oxford a written challenge; it appears to have been ignored.
Meanwhile, the street brawling between factions continued. Another of Oxford's men was killed in January, and in March Burghley wrote to Sir Christopher Hatton about the death of one of Knyvet's men, thanking Hatton for his efforts "to bring some good end to these troublesome matters betwixt my Lord Oxford and Mr Thomas Knyvet".
On 6 May 1583, eighteen months after their reconciliation, Edward and Anne's only son was born, but died the same day. The infant was buried at Castle Hedingham three days later.
After intervention by Burghley and Sir Walter Raleigh, Oxford was reconciled to the Queen, and his two-year exile from court ended at the end of May on condition of his guarantee of good behaviour. However, he never regained his position as a courtier of the first magnitude.
The previous Earl of Oxford had maintained a company of players known as Oxford's Men, which was discontinued by the 17th Earl two years after his father's death. Beginning in 1580, Oxford patronised both adult and boy companies and a company of musicians, and also sponsored performances by tumblers, acrobats, and performing animals. The new Oxford's Men toured the provinces between 1580 and 1587. Sometime after November 1583, Oxford bought a sublease of the premises used by the boy companies in the Blackfriars, and then gave it to his secretary, the writer John Lyly. Lyly installed Henry Evans, a Welsh scrivener and theatrical affectionado, as the manager of the new company of Oxford's Boys, composed of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's, and turned his talents to playwriting until the end of June 1584, when the original playhouse lease was voided by its owner. In 1584–1585, "the Earl of Oxford's musicians" received payments for performances in the cities of Oxford and Barnstaple. Oxford's Men (also known as Oxford's Players) stayed active until 1602.
On 6 April 1584, Oxford's daughter Bridget was born, and two works were dedicated to him, Robert Greene's Gwydonius; The Card of Fancy, and John Southern's Pandora. Verses in the latter work mention Oxford's knowledge of astronomy, history, languages, and music.
Oxford's financial situation was steadily deteriorating. At this point, he had sold almost all his inherited lands, which cut him off from what had been his principal source of income. Moreover, because the properties were security for his unpaid debt to the Queen in the Court of Wards, he had had to enter into a bond with the purchaser, guaranteeing that he would indemnify them if the Queen were to make a claim against the lands to collect on the debt. To avoid this eventuality, the purchasers of his estates agreed to pay Oxford's debt to the Court of Wards in instalments.
In 1585 negotiations were underway for King James VI of Scotland to come to England to discuss the release of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and in March Oxford was to be sent to Scotland as one of the hostages for James's safety.
In 1586, Oxford petitioned the Queen for an annuity to relieve his distressed financial situation. His father-in-law made him several large loans, and Elizabeth granted him a £1,000 annuity, to be continued at her pleasure or until he could be provided for otherwise. This annuity was later continued by James I. De Vere's widow, Elizabeth, petitioned James I for an annuity of £250 on behalf of her 11-year-old son, Henry, to continue the £1,000 annuity granted to de Vere. Henry was ultimately awarded a £200 annuity for life. James I would continue the grant after her death.
Another daughter, Susan, was born on 26 May 1587. On 12 September, another daughter, Frances, is recorded as buried at Edmonton. Her birthdate is unknown; presumably, she was between one and three years of age.
In July Elizabeth granted the Earl property which had been seized from Edward Jones, who had been executed for his role in the Babington Plot. In order to protect the land from Oxford's creditors, the grant was made in the name of two trustees. At the end of November it was agreed that the purchasers of Oxford's lands would pay his entire debt of some £3,306 due to the Court of Wards over a five-year period, finishing in 1592.
In July and August 1588 England was threatened by the Spanish Armada. On 28 July Leicester, who was in overall command of the English land troops, asked for instructions regarding Oxford, stating that "he seems most willing to hazard his life in this quarrel". The Earl was offered the governorship of the port of Harwich, but he thought it was unworthy and declined the post; Leicester was glad to be rid of him.
In December 1588 Oxford had secretly sold his London mansion Fisher's Folly to Sir William Cornwallis; by January 1591 the author Thomas Churchyard was dealing with rent owing for rooms he had taken in a house on behalf of his patron. Oxford wrote to Burghley outlining a plan to purchase the manorial lands of Denbigh, in Wales, if the Queen would consent, offering to pay for them by commuting his £1,000 annuity and agreeing to abandon his suit to regain the Forest of Essex (Waltham Forest), and to deed over his interests in Hedingham and Brets for the use of his children, who were living with Burghley under his guardianship.
In the spring of 1591, the plan for the purchasers of his land to discharge his debt to the Court of Wards was disrupted by the Queen's taking extents, or writs allowing a creditor to temporarily seize a debtor's property. Oxford complained that his servant Thomas Hampton had taken advantage of these writs by taking money from the tenants for his own use, and had also conspired with another of his servants to pass a fraudulent document under the Great Seal of England. The Lord Mayor, Thomas Skinner, was also involved. In June, Oxford wrote to Burghley reminding him that he had made an agreement with Elizabeth to relinquish his claim to the Forest of Essex for three reasons, one of which was the Queen's reluctance to punish Skinner's felony, which had caused Oxford to forfeit £20,000 in bonds and statutes.
In 1586 Angel Day dedicated The English Secretary, the first epistolary manual for writing model letters in English, to Oxford, and William Webbe praised him as "most excellent among the rest" of our poets in his Discourse of English Poetry. In 1588 Anthony Munday dedicated to Oxford the two parts of his Palmerin d'Oliva. The following year The Arte of English Poesie, attributed to George Puttenham, placed Oxford among a "crew" of courtier poets; Puttenham also considered him among the best comic playwrights of the day. In 1590 Edmund Spenser addressed to Oxford the third of seventeen dedicatory sonnets which preface The Faerie Queene, celebrating his patronage of poets. The composer John Farmer, who was in Oxford's service at the time, dedicated The First Set of Divers & Sundry Ways of Two Parts in One to him in 1591, noting in the dedication his patron's love of music.
On 5 June 1588 Oxford's wife Anne Cecil died at court of a fever; she was 31.
On 4 July 1591 Oxford sold the Great Garden property at Aldgate to John Wolley and Francis Trentham. The arrangement was stated to be for the benefit of Francis's sister, Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, whom Oxford married later that year. On 24 February 1593, at Stoke Newington, she gave birth to his only surviving son, Henry de Vere, Viscount Bulbeck, who was his heir.
Between 1591 and 1592 Oxford disposed of the last of his large estates; Castle Hedingham, the seat of his earldom, went to Lord Burghley; it was held in trust for Oxford's three daughters by his first marriage. He commissioned his servant, Roger Harlakenden, to sell Colne Priory. Harlekenden contrived to undervalue the land, then purchase it (as well as other parcels that were not meant to be sold) under his son's name; the suits Oxford brought against Harlakenden for fraud dragged out for decades and were never settled in his lifetime.
Protracted negotiations to arrange a match between his daughter Elizabeth and Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, did not result in marriage; on 19 November 1594, six weeks after Southampton turned 21, 'the young Earl of Southampton, refusing the Lady Vere, payeth £5000 of present money'. In January Elizabeth married William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Derby had promised Oxford his new bride would have £1,000 a year, but the financial provision for her was slow in materializing.
His father-in-law, Lord Burghley, died on 4 August 1598 at the age of 78, leaving substantial bequests to Oxford's two unmarried daughters, Bridget and Susan. The bequests were structured to prevent Oxford from gaining control of his daughters' inheritances by assuming custody of them.
Earlier negotiations for a marriage to William Herbert having fallen through, in May or June 1599 Oxford's 15 year-old daughter Bridget married Francis Norris. Susan married Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.
From March to August 1595 Oxford actively importuned the Queen, in competition with Lord Buckhurst, to operate the tin mines in Cornwall. He wrote to Burghley, enumerating years of fruitless attempts to amend his financial situation and complained: 'This last year past I have been a suitor to her Majesty that I might farm her tins, giving £3000 a year more than she had made.' Oxford's letters and memoranda indicate that he pursued his suit into 1596, and renewed it again three years later, but was ultimately unsuccessful in obtaining the tin monopoly.
In October 1595, Oxford wrote to his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Cecil, of friction between himself and the ill-fated Earl of Essex, partly over his claim to property, terming him 'the only person that I dare rely upon in the court'. Cecil seems to have done little to further Oxford's interests in the suit.
In March he was unable to go to court due to illness, in August he wrote to Burghley from Byfleet, where he had gone for his health: 'I find comfort in this air, but no fortune in the court.' In September, he again wrote of ill health, regretting he had not been able to pay attendance to the Queen. Two months later Rowland Whyte wrote to Sir Robert Sidney that 'Some say my Lord of Oxford is dead'. Whether the rumour of his death was related to the illness mentioned in his letters earlier in the year is unknown. Oxford attended his last Parliament in December, perhaps another indication of his failing health.
On 28 April 1599 Oxford was sued by the widow of his tailor for a debt of £500 for services rendered some two decades earlier. He claimed that not only had he paid the debt, but that the tailor had absconded with 'cloth of gold and silver and other stuff' belonging to him, worth £800. The outcome of the suit is unknown.
In July 1600 Oxford wrote requesting Sir Robert Cecil's help in securing an appointment as Governor of the Isle of Jersey, once again citing the Queen's unfulfilled promises to him. In February he again wrote for his support, this time for the office of President of Wales. As with his former suits, Oxford was again unsuccessful; during this time he was listed on the Pipe rolls as owing £20 for the subsidy.
After the abortive Essex rebellion in February 1601, Oxford was 'the senior of the twenty-five noblemen' who rendered verdicts at the trials of Essex and Southampton for treason. After Essex's co-conspirator Sir Charles Danvers was executed in March, Oxford became a party to a complicated suit regarding lands which had reverted to the Crown by escheat at Danvers's attainder, a suit opposed by Danvers's kinsmen. De Vere continued to suffer from ill health, which kept him from court. On 4 December, Oxford was shocked that Cecil, who had encouraged him to undertake the Danvers suit on the Crown's behalf, had now withdrawn his support for it. As with all his other suits aimed at improving his financial situation, this last of Oxford's suits to the Queen ended in disappointment.
In the early morning of 24 March 1603, Queen Elizabeth died without naming a successor. A few days beforehand, at his house at Hackney, Oxford had entertained the Earl of Lincoln, a nobleman known for erratic and violent behaviour similar to his host's. Lincoln reported that after dinner Oxford spoke of the Queen's impending death, claiming that the peers of England should decide the succession, and suggested that since Lincoln had 'a nephew of the blood royal ... Lord Hastings', he should be sent to France to find allies to support this claim. Lincoln relayed this conversation to Sir John Peyton, Lieutenant of the Tower, who, knowing how physically and financially infirm Oxford was, refused to take Lincoln's report as a serious threat to King James's accession.
Oxford expressed his grief at the late Queen's death, and his apprehension for the future. These fears were unfounded; in letters to Cecil in May and June 1603 he again pressed his decades-long claim to have Waltham Forest (Forest of Essex) and the house and park of Havering restored to him, and on 18 July the new King granted his suit. On 25 July, Oxford was among those who officiated at the King's coronation, and a month later James confirmed his annuity of £1,000.
Long weakened by poor health, Oxford passed custody of the Forest of Essex to his son-in-law Francis Norris and his cousin Sir Francis Vere on 18 June 1604. He died on 24 June of unknown causes at King's Place, Hackney, and was buried on 6 July in the Hackney churchyard of St Augustine's (now the parish of St. John-at-Hackney). Oxford's death passed without public or private notice. His grave was still unmarked on 25 November 1612 when his widow Elizabeth Trentham signed her will. She asked "to be buried in the Church of Hackney within the Countie of Middlesex, as neare vnto [unto] the bodie of my said late deare and noble lorde and husband as may bee," and she requested that "there bee in the said Church erected for vs [us] a tombe fittinge our degree." The 18th Earl of Oxford failed to fulfil his mother's request, and the location of his parents' graves has been lost to time.
The absence of a grave marker and an unpublished manuscript written fifteen years after Oxford's death have led to questions regarding his burial place. Documentary records including the Hackney registers and the will of Oxford's widow (1612) confirm that he was buried in the church of St Augustine on 4 July 1604. One register lists "Edward Veare earl of Oxford" among burials; the other reads, "Edward deVeare Erle of Oxenford was buryed the 6th daye of Iulye Anno 1604." A manuscript history of the Vere family (c. 1619) written by Oxford's first cousin, Percival Golding (1579-1635), raises the possibility of a re-interment sometime between 1612 and 1619 at Westminster Abbey:
He was a man in minde and body absolutely accomplished with honourable endowments. He died at his house at Hackney in the moneth of June A 1604 and lieth buryed at Westminster.
The same manuscript further suggests that Oxford enjoyed an honorary stewardship of the Privy Council in the last year of his life. While Nelson disputes his membership on the Council, Oxford's signature appears on a letter dated 8 April 1603 from the Privy Council to the Lord High Treasurer of England.
Oxford's manuscript verses circulated widely in courtly circles. Three of his poems, "When wert thou born desire", "My mind to me a kingdom is", and "Sitting alone upon my thought", are among the texts that repeatedly appear in the surviving 16th-century manuscript miscellanies and poetical anthologies. His earliest published poem was "The labouring man that tills the fertile soil" in Thomas Bedingfield's translation of Cardano's Comforte (1573). Bedingfield's dedication to Oxford is dated 1 January 1572. In addition to his poem, Oxford also contributed a commendatory letter setting forth the reasons why Bedingfield should publish the work. In 1576 eight of his poems were published in the poetry miscellany The Paradise of Dainty Devises. According to the introduction, all the poems in the collection were meant to be sung, but Oxford's were almost the only genuine love songs in the collection. Oxford's "What cunning can express" was published in The Phoenix Nest (1593) and republished in England's Helicon (1600). "Who taught thee first to sigh alas my heart" appeared in The Teares of Fancie (1593). Brittons Bowre of Delight (1597) published "If women could be fair and yet not fond" under Oxford's name, but the attribution today is not considered certain.
Contemporary critics praised Oxford as a poet and a playwright. William Webbe names him as "the most excellent" of Elizabeth's courtier poets. Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589), places him first on a list of courtier poets and includes an excerpt from "When wert thou born desire" as an example of "his excellance and wit". Puttenham also says that "highest praise" should be given to Oxford and Richard Edwardes for "Comedy and Enterlude". Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia (1598) names Oxford first by social rank of 17 playwrights listed who are "the best for comedy amongst us", and he also appears first on a list of seven Elizabethan courtly poets "who honoured Poesie with their pens and practice" in Henry Peacham's 1622 The Compleat Gentleman.
Steven W. May writes that the Earl of Oxford was Elizabeth's "first truly prestigious courtier poet ... [whose] precedent did at least confer genuine respectability upon the later efforts of such poets as Sidney, Greville, and Raleigh." He describes de Vere as a "competent, fairly experimental poet working in the established modes of mid-century lyric verse" and his poetry as "examples of the standard varieties of mid-Elizabethan amorous lyric". May says that Oxford's youthful love lyrics, which have been described as experimental and innovative, "create a dramatic break with everything known to have been written at the Elizabethan court up to that time" by virtue of being lighter in tone and metre and more imaginative and free from the moralizing tone of the courtier poetry of the "drab" age, which tended to be occasional and instructive. and describes one poem, in which the author cries out against "this loss of my good name", as a "defiant lyric without precedent in English Renaissance verse".
May says that Oxford's poetry was "one man's contribution to the rhetorical mainstream of an evolving Elizabethan poetic" indistinguishable from "the output of his mediocre mid-century contemporaries". However, C. S. Lewis wrote that his poetry shows "a faint talent", but is "for the most part undistinguished and verbose." Nelson says that "contemporary observers such as Harvey, Webbe, Puttenham, and Meres clearly exaggerated de Vere's talent in deference to his rank. By any measure, his poems pale in comparison with those of Sidney, Lyly, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Jonson." He says that his known poems are "astonishingly uneven" in quality, ranging from the "fine" to the "execrable".
Oxford was sought after for his literary and theatrical patronage; between 1564 and 1599, twenty-eight works were dedicated to him by authors, including Arthur Golding, John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Anthony Munday. Of his 33 dedications, 13 appeared in original or translated works of literature, a higher percentage of literary works than other patrons of similar means. His lifelong patronage of writers, musicians, and actors prompted May to term Oxford "a nobleman with extraordinary intellectual interests and commitments", whose biography exhibits a "lifelong devotion to learning". He goes on to say that "Oxford's genuine commitment to learning throughout his career lends a necessary qualification to Stone's conclusion that de Vere simply squandered the more than 70,000 pounds he derived from selling off his patrimony ... for which some part of this amount de Vere acquired a splendid reputation for nurture of the arts and sciences".
The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship proposes that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Though rejected by nearly all academic Shakespeareans, it has been among the most popular alternative Shakespeare authorship theories since the 1920s. The Oxfordian theory was the central theme of the 2011 drama film Anonymous, directed by Roland Emerich. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (/də ˈvɪər/; 12 April 1550 – 24 June 1604) was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibility and contributed to the dissipation of his estate.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Edward de Vere was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and Margery Golding. After the death of his father in 1562, he became a ward of Queen Elizabeth I and was sent to live in the household of her principal advisor, Sir William Cecil. He married Cecil's daughter, Anne, with whom he had five children. Oxford was estranged from her for five years and refused to acknowledge he was the father of their first child.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A champion jouster, Oxford travelled widely throughout France and the many states of Italy. He was among the first to compose love poetry at the Elizabethan court and was praised as a playwright, though none of the plays known as his survive. A stream of dedications praised Oxford for his generous patronage of literary, religious, musical, and medical works, and he patronised both adult and boy acting companies, as well as musicians, tumblers, acrobats and performing animals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "He fell out of favour with the Queen in the early 1580s and was exiled from court and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London when his mistress Anne Vavasour, one of Elizabeth's maids of honour, gave birth to his son in the palace. Vavasour, too, was incarcerated, and the affair instigated violent street brawls between Oxford and her kinsmen. He was reconciled to the Queen in May 1583 at Theobalds, but all opportunities for advancement had been lost. In 1586, the Queen granted Oxford £1,000 annually ($483,607 in 2020 US dollars) to relieve the financial distress caused by his extravagance and the sale of his income-producing lands for ready money. After the death of his first wife, Anne Cecil, Oxford married Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's maids of honour, with whom he had an heir, Henry de Vere, Viscount Bulbeck (later 18th Earl of Oxford). Oxford died in 1604, having spent the entirety of his inherited estates.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Since the 1920s, Oxford has been among the most prominent alternative candidates proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's works.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Edward de Vere was born heir to the second-oldest extant earldom in England at the de Vere ancestral home, Hedingham Castle, in Essex, northeast of London. He was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife, Margery Golding and was probably named to honour Edward VI, from whom he received a gilded christening cup. He had an older half-sister, Katherine, the child of his father's first marriage to Dorothy Neville, and a younger sister, Mary de Vere. Both his parents had established court connections: the 16th Earl accompanying Princess Elizabeth from her house arrest at Hatfield to the throne, and the countess being appointed a maid of honour in 1559.",
"title": "Family and childhood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Before his father's death, Edward de Vere was styled Viscount Bulbeck, or Bolebec, and was raised in the Protestant reformed faith. Like many children of the nobility, he was raised by surrogate parents, in his case in the household of Sir Thomas Smith. At eight he entered Queens' College, Cambridge, as an impubes, or immature fellow-commoner, later transferring to St John's. Thomas Fowle, a former fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, was paid £10 annually as de Vere's tutor.",
"title": "Family and childhood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "His father died on 3 August 1562, shortly after making his will. Because he held lands from the Crown by knight service, his son became a royal ward of the Queen and was placed in the household of Sir William Cecil, her secretary of state and chief advisor. At 12, de Vere had become the 17th Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, and heir to an estate whose annual income, though assessed at approximately £2,500, may have run as high as £3,500 (£1.25 million as of 2023).",
"title": "Family and childhood"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "While living at the Cecil House, Oxford's daily studies consisted of dancing instruction, French, Latin, cosmography, writing exercises, drawing, and common prayers. During his first year at Cecil House, he was briefly tutored by Laurence Nowell, the antiquarian and Anglo-Saxon scholar. In a letter to Cecil, Nowell explains: \"I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required\", and his departure after eight months has been interpreted as either a sign of the thirteen-year-old Oxford's intractability as a pupil, or an indication that his precocity surpassed Nowell's ability to instruct him. In May 1564 Arthur Golding, in his dedication to his Th' Abridgement of the Histories of Trogus Pompeius, attributed to his young nephew an interest in ancient history and contemporary events.",
"title": "Wardship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1563, Oxford's older half-sister, Katherine, then Lady Windsor, challenged the legitimacy of the marriage of de Vere's parents in the Ecclesiastical court. His uncle Golding argued that the Archbishop of Canterbury should halt the proceedings since a proceeding against a ward of the Queen could not be brought without prior licence from the Court of Wards and Liveries.",
"title": "Wardship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Some time before October 1563, Oxford's mother married secondly Charles Tyrrell, a Gentleman Pensioner. In May 1565 she wrote to Cecil, urging that the money from family properties set aside by Oxford's father's will for his use during his minority should be entrusted to herself and other family friends, to protect it and to ensure that Oxford would be able to meet the expenses of furnishing his household and suing his livery when he reached his majority; this last would end his wardship, through cancelling his debt with the Court of Wards, and convey to him the powers attached to his titles. There is no evidence that Cecil ever replied to her request. She died three years later, and was buried beside her first husband at Earls Colne. Oxford's stepfather, Charles Tyrrell, died in March 1570.",
"title": "Wardship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In August 1564 Oxford was among 17 noblemen, knights, and esquires in the Queen's entourage who were awarded the honorary degree of Master of Arts by the University of Cambridge, and he was awarded another by the University of Oxford on a Royal progress in 1566. His future father-in-law, William Cecil, also received honorary degrees of Master of Arts on the same progresses. There is no evidence that Oxford ever received a Bachelor of Arts degree. In February 1567 he was admitted to Gray's Inn to study law.",
"title": "Wardship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On 23 July 1567, while practising fencing in the backyard of Cecil House in the Strand, the seventeen-year-old Oxford killed Thomas Brincknell, an under-cook in the Cecil household. At the coroner's inquest the next day, the jury, which included Oxford's servant, and Cecil's protégé, the future historian Raphael Holinshed, found that Brincknell, drunk, had deliberately committed suicide by running onto Oxford's blade. As a suicide, he was not buried in consecrated ground, and all his worldly possessions were confiscated, leaving his pregnant wife destitute. She delivered a stillborn child shortly after Brinknell's death. Cecil later wrote that he attempted to have the jury find that Oxford had acted in self-defence.",
"title": "Wardship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Records of books purchased for Oxford in 1569 attest to his continued interest in history, as well as literature and philosophy. Among them were editions of a gilt Geneva Bible, Chaucer, Plutarch, two books in Italian, and folio editions of Cicero and Plato. In the same year Thomas Underdown dedicated his translation of the Æthiopian History of Heliodorus to Oxford, praising his 'haughty courage', 'great skill' and 'sufficiency of learning'. In the winter of 1570, Oxford made the acquaintance of the mathematician and astrologer John Dee and became interested in occultism, studying magic and conjuring.",
"title": "Wardship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 1569, Oxford received his first vote for membership in the Order of the Garter, but never attained the honour in spite of his high rank and office. In November of that year, Oxford petitioned Cecil for a foreign military posting. Although the Roman Catholic Revolt of the Northern Earls had broken out that year, Elizabeth refused to grant the request. Cecil eventually obtained a position for Oxford under the Earl of Sussex in a Scottish campaign the following spring. He and Sussex became staunch mutual supporters at court.",
"title": "Wardship"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "On 12 April 1571, Oxford attained his majority and took his seat in the House of Lords. Great expectations attended his coming of age; Sir George Buck recalled predictions that 'he was much more like ... to acquire a new erldome then to wast & lose an old erldom', a prophecy that was never fulfilled.",
"title": "Coming of age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Although formal certification of his freedom from Burghley's control was deferred until May 1572, Oxford was finally granted the income of £666 which his father had intended him to have earlier, but properties set aside to pay his father's debts would not come his way for another decade. During his minority as the Queen's ward, one-third of his estate had already reverted to the Crown, much of which Elizabeth had long since settled on Robert Dudley. Elizabeth demanded a further payment of £3,000 for overseeing the wardship and a further £4,000 for suing his livery. Oxford pledged double the amount if he failed to pay when it fell due, effectively risking a total obligation of £21,000.",
"title": "Coming of age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "By 1571, Oxford was a court favourite of Elizabeth's. In May, he participated in the three-day tilt, tourney and barrier at which, although he did not win, he was given chief honours in celebration of the attainment of his majority, his prowess winning admiring comments from spectators. In August, Oxford attended Paul de Foix, who had come to England to negotiate a marriage between the Protestant Queen Elizabeth and the Catholic Prince François de France, duc d'Anjou, the youngest brother of King Henry III of France of the House of Valois-Angoulême. The marriage had been proposed in 1572 as part of the negotiations between England and France to break the power of Spain. In November 1579 the husband of Oxford's first cousin Anne Vere, John Stubbs, and William Page had their right hand publicly cut off for the pamphlet critical of the Queen's proposed marriage to Prince François and therefore judged seditious.",
"title": "Coming of age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Oxford's published poetry dates from this period and, along with Edward Dyer he was one of the first courtiers to introduce vernacular verse to the court.",
"title": "Coming of age"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1562, the 16th Earl of Oxford had contracted with Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, for his son Edward to marry one of Huntingdon's sisters; when he reached the age of eighteen, he was to choose either Elizabeth or Mary Hastings. However, after the death of the 16th Earl, the indenture was allowed to lapse. Elizabeth Hastings later married Edward Somerset, while Mary Hastings died unmarried.",
"title": "Marriage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In the summer of 1571, Oxford declared an interest in Cecil's 14 year-old daughter, Anne, and received the queen's consent to the marriage. Anne had been pledged to Philip Sidney two years earlier, but after a year of negotiations Sidney's father, Sir Henry, was declining in the Queen's favour and Cecil suspected financial difficulties. In addition, Cecil had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Burghley in February 1571, thus elevating his daughter's rank, so the negotiations were cancelled. Cecil was displeased with the arrangement, given his daughter's age compared to Oxford's, and had entertained the idea of marrying her to the Earl of Rutland instead. The marriage was deferred until Anne was fifteen and finally took place at the Palace of Whitehall on 16 December 1571, in a triple wedding with that of Lady Elizabeth Hastings and Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, and Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley and bride, Mary Howard, with the Queen in attendance. The tying of two young English noblemen of great fortune into Protestant families was not lost on Elizabeth's Catholic enemies. Burghley gave Oxford for his daughter's dowry land worth £800, and a cash settlement of £3,000. This amount was equal to Oxford's livery fees and was probably intended to be used as such, but the money vanished without a trace.",
"title": "Marriage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Oxford assigned Anne a jointure of some £669, but even though he was of age and a married man, he was still not in possession of his inheritance. After finally paying the Crown the £4,000 it demanded for his livery, he was finally licensed to enter on his lands in May 1572. He was entitled to yearly revenues from his estates and the office of Lord Great Chamberlain of approximately £2,250, but he was not entitled to the income from his mother's jointure until after her death, nor to the income from certain estates set aside until 1583 to pay his father's debts. In addition, the fines assessed against Oxford in the Court of Wards for his wardship, marriage, and livery already totalled some £3,306. To guarantee payment, he entered into bonds to the Court totalling £11,000, and two further private bonds for £6,000 apiece.",
"title": "Marriage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1572, Oxford's first cousin and closest relative, the Duke of Norfolk, was found guilty of a Catholic conspiracy against Elizabeth and was executed for treason. Oxford had earlier petitioned both the Queen and Burghley on the condemned Norfolk's behalf, to no avail, and it was claimed in a \"murky petition from an unidentified woman\" that he had plotted to provide a ship to assist his cousin's escape attempt to Spain.",
"title": "Marriage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The following summer, Oxford planned to travel to Ireland; at this point, his debts were estimated at a minimum of £6,000.",
"title": "Marriage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the summer of 1574, Elizabeth admonished Oxford \"for his unthriftyness\", and on 1 July he bolted to the continent without permission, travelling to Calais with Lord Edward Seymour, and then to Flanders, \"carrying a great sum of money with him\". Coming as it did during a time of expected hostilities with Spain, Mary, Queen of Scots, interpreted his flight as an indication of his Catholic sympathies, as did the Catholic rebels then living on the continent. Burghley, however, assured the queen that Oxford was loyal, and she sent two Gentlemen Pensioners to summon him back, under threat of heavy penalties. Oxford returned to England by the end of the month and was in London on the 28th. His request for a place on the Privy Council was rejected, but the queen's anger was abated and she promised him a licence to travel to Paris, Germany, and Italy on his pledge of good behaviour.",
"title": "Marriage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In January 1575 Elizabeth issued a licence to Oxford to travel, and provided him with letters of introduction to foreign monarchs. Prior to his departure, he entered into two indentures. In the first contract, he sold his manors in Cornwall, Staffordshire and Wiltshire to three trustees for £6,000. In the second, to prevent his estates passing by default to his sister Mary in the event of his dying abroad without heirs, he entailed the lands of the earldom on his first cousin, Hugh Vere. The indenture also provided for payment of debts amounting to £9,096, £3,457 of which was still owed to the Queen as expenses for his wardship.",
"title": "Foreign travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Oxford left England in the first week of February 1575, and a month later was presented to the King and Queen of France. News that his new wife, Anne, was pregnant had reached him in Paris, and he sent her many extravagant presents in the coming months. But somewhere along the way, his mind was poisoned against Anne and the Cecils, and he became convinced that the expected child was not his. The elder Cecils loudly voiced their outrage at the rumours, which probably worsened the situation. In mid-March he travelled to Strasbourg, and then made his way to Venice, via Milan. Although his daughter, Elizabeth, was born at the beginning of July, for unexplained reasons Oxford did not learn of her birth until late September.",
"title": "Foreign travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Oxford remained in Italy for a year, during which he was evidently captivated by Italian fashions in clothing, jewellery and cosmetics. He is recorded by John Stow as having introduced various Italian luxury items to the English court which immediately became fashionable, such as embroidered or trimmed scented gloves. Elizabeth had a pair of decorated gloves scented with perfume that for many years was known as the \"Earl of Oxford's perfume\". Lacking evidence, his interest in higher Italian culture, its literature, music and visual art, is less sure. His only recorded judgement about the country itself was unenthusiastic. In a letter to Burghley he wrote, \"...for my lekinge of Italy, my lord I am glad I haue sene it, and I care not euer to see it any more vnles it be to serue my prince or contrie.\"",
"title": "Foreign travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In January 1576 Oxford wrote to Lord Burghley from Siena about complaints that had reached him about his creditors' demands, which included the Queen and his sister, and directing that more of his land be sold to pay them. He left Venice in March, intending to return home by way of Lyons and Paris; although one later report has him as far south as Palermo in Sicily. At this point the Italian financier Benedict Spinola had lent Oxford over £4,000 for his 15-month-long continental tour, while in England over a hundred tradesmen were seeking settlement of debts totalling thousands of pounds.",
"title": "Foreign travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "On Oxford's return across the Channel in April 1576, his ship was seized by pirates from Flushing, who took his possessions, stripped him to his shirt, and might have murdered him had not one of them recognized him.",
"title": "Foreign travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "On his return, Oxford refused to live with his wife and took rooms at Charing Cross. Aside from the unspoken suspicion that Elizabeth was not his child, Burghley's papers reveal a flood of bitter complaints by Oxford against the Cecil family. Upon the Queen's request, he allowed his wife to attend the Queen at court, but only when he was not present, and he insisted that she not attempt to speak to him. He also stipulated that Burghley must make no further appeals to him on Anne's behalf. He was estranged from Anne for five years.",
"title": "Foreign travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In February 1577 it was rumoured that Oxford's sister Mary would marry Lord Gerald Fitzgerald (1559–1580), but by 2 July her name was linked with that of Peregrine Bertie, later Lord Willoughby d'Eresby. Bertie's mother, the Duchess of Suffolk, wrote to Lord Burghley that \"my wise son has gone very far with my Lady Mary Vere, I fear too far to turn\". Both the Duchess and her husband Richard Bertie first opposed the marriage, and the Queen initially withheld her consent. Oxford's own opposition to the match was so vehement that for some time Mary's prospective husband feared for his life. On 15 December the Duchess of Suffolk wrote to Burghley describing a plan she and Mary had devised to arrange a meeting between Oxford and his daughter. Whether the scheme came to fruition is unknown. Mary and Bertie were married sometime before March of the following year.",
"title": "Foreign travel"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Oxford had sold his inherited lands in Cornwall, Staffordshire, and Wiltshire prior to his continental tour. On his return to England in 1576 he sold his manors in Devonshire; by the end of 1578 he had sold at least seven more.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In 1577 Oxford invested £25 in the second of Martin Frobisher's expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage. In July 1577, he asked the Crown for the grant of Castle Rising, which had been forfeited to the Crown due to his cousin Norfolk's attainder in 1572. As soon as it was granted to him, he sold it, along with two other manors, and sank some £3,000 into Frobisher's third expedition. The 'gold' ore brought back turned out to be worthless, and Oxford lost the entire investment.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In the summer of 1578, Oxford attended the Queen's progress through East Anglia. The royal party stayed at Lord Henry Howard's residence at Audley End. A contretemps occurred during the progress in mid-August when the Queen twice asked Oxford to dance before the French ambassadors, who were in England to negotiate a marriage between the 46-year-old English queen and the younger brother of Henri III of France, the 24 year-old Duke of Anjou. Oxford refused, on the grounds that he \"would not give pleasure to Frenchmen\".",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In April 1578, the Spanish ambassador, Bernardino de Mendoza, had written to King Philip II of Spain that it had been proposed that if Anjou were to travel to England to negotiate his marriage to the Queen, Oxford, Surrey, and Windsor should be hostages for his safe return. Anjou himself did not arrive in England until the end of August, but his ambassadors were already in England. Oxford was sympathetic to the proposed marriage; Leicester and his nephew Philip Sidney were adamantly opposed to it. This antagonism may have triggered the famous quarrel between Oxford and Sidney on the tennis court at Whitehall. It is not entirely clear who was playing on the court when the fight erupted; what is undisputed is that Oxford called Sidney a 'puppy', while Sidney responded that \"all the world knows puppies are gotten by dogs, and children by men\". The French ambassadors, whose private galleries overlooked the tennis court, were witness to the display. Whether it was Sidney who next challenged Oxford to a duel or the other way around, the matter was not taken further, and the Queen personally took Sidney to task for not recognizing the difference between his status and Oxford's. Christopher Hatton and Sidney's friend Hubert Languet also tried to dissuade Sidney from pursuing the matter, and it was eventually dropped. The specific cause is not known, but in January 1580 Oxford wrote and challenged Sidney; by the end of the month Oxford was confined by the Queen to his chambers, and was not released until early February.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Oxford openly quarrelled with the Earl of Leicester at about this time; he was confined to his chamber at Greenwich for some time 'about the libelling between him and my Lord of Leicester'. In the summer of 1580, Gabriel Harvey, apparently motivated by a desire to ingratiate himself with Leicester, satirized Oxford's love for things Italian in verses entitled Speculum Tuscanismi and in Three Proper and Witty Familiar Letters.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Although details are unclear, there is evidence that in 1577 Oxford attempted to leave England to see service in the French Wars of Religion on the side of King Henry III. Like many members of older established aristocratic families in England, he inclined to Roman Catholicism; and after his return from Italy, he was reported to have embraced the religion, perhaps after a distant kinsman, Charles Arundell, introduced him to a seminary priest named Richard Stephens. But just as quickly, by late in 1580 he had denounced a group of Catholics, among them Arundell, Francis Southwell, and Henry Howard, for treasonous activities and asking the Queen's mercy for his own, now repudiated, Catholicism. Elizabeth characteristically delayed in acting on the matter and Oxford was detained under house arrest for a short time.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Leicester is credited by author Alan H. Nelson with having \"dislodged Oxford from the pro-French group\", i.e., the group at court which favoured Elizabeth's marriage to the Duke of Anjou. The Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, was also of the view that Leicester was behind Oxford's informing on his fellow Catholics in an attempt to prevent the French marriage. Peck concurs, stating that Leicester was \"intent upon rendering Sussex's allies politically useless\".",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Privy Council ordered the arrest of both Howard and Arundel; Oxford immediately met secretly with Arundell to convince him to support his allegations against Howard and Southwell, offering him money and a pardon from the Queen. Arundell refused this offer, and he and Howard initially sought asylum with Mendoza. Only after being assured that they would be placed under house arrest in the home of a Privy Councillor, did the pair give themselves up. During the first weeks after their arrest they pursued a threefold strategy: they would admit to minor crimes, attempt to prove Oxford a liar by his offers of money to testify to his accusations, and try to demonstrate that their accuser posed the real danger to the Crown. Their allegations against Oxford included atheism, lying, heresy, disobedience to the crown, treason, murder for hire, sexual perversion, habitual drunkenness, vowing to murder various courtiers, and criticizing the Queen for doing \"everything with the worst grace that ever woman did.\"",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Most seriously, Howard and Arundell charged Oxford with serial child rape, claiming he'd abused \"so many boyes it must nedes come out.\" Detailed testimony from nearly a dozen victims and witnesses substantiated the charge and included names, dates, and places. Two of the six boys named had sought help from adults after Oxford raped them violently and denied them medical care. A young cook named Powers reported being subjected to multiple assaults at Hampton Court in the winter of 1577-78, at Whitehall, and in Oxford's Broad Street home. Orazio Coquo's account is well documented outside the Howard-Arundel report. In testimony to the Venetian Inquisition dated 27 August 1577, Coquo explained that he was singing in the choir at Venice's Santa Maria Formosa on 1 March 1576 when Oxford invited him to work in England as his page. Then 15, the boy sought his parents' advice and departed Venice just 4 days later. Coquo arrived with Oxford in Dover on 20 April 1576 and fled 11 months later on 20 March 1577, aided by a Milanese merchant who gave him 25 ducats for the journey: He \"told me that I would be corrupted if I remained,\" Orazio testified, \"and he didn't want me to stay there any longer.\" When asked whether he sought Oxford's permission before leaving, the boy replied, \"Sirs, no, because he would not have allowed me to leave.\"",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Arundell and Howard cleared themselves of Oxford's accusations, although Howard remained under house arrest into August, while Arundell was not freed until October or November. None of the three was ever indicted or tried. Neither Arundell nor Howard ever returned to court favour, and after the Throckmorton Plot of 1583 in support of Mary, Queen of Scots, Arundell fled to Paris with Thomas, Lord Paget, the elder brother of the conspirator Charles Paget. In the meantime, Oxford won a tournament at Westminster on 22 January. His page's speech at the tournament, describing Oxford's appearance as the Knight of the Tree of the Sun, was published in 1592 in a pamphlet entitled Plato, Axiochus.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "On 14 April 1589 Oxford was among the peers who found Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, the eldest son and heir of Oxford's cousin, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, guilty of treason; Arundel later died in prison. Oxford later insisted that \"the Howards were the most treacherous race under heaven\" and that \"my Lord Howard [was] the worst villain that lived in this earth.\"",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "During the early 1580s, it is likely that the Earl of Oxford lived mainly at one of his Essex country houses, Wivenhoe, which was sold in 1584. In June 1580 he purchased a tenement and seven acres of land near Aldgate in London from the Italian merchant Benedict Spinola for £2,500. The property, located in the parish of St Botolphs, was known as the Great Garden of Christchurch and had formerly belonged to Magdalene College, Cambridge. He also purchased a London residence, a mansion in Bishopsgate known as Fisher's Folly. According to Henry Howard, Oxford paid a large sum for the property and renovations to it.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "On 23 March 1581 Sir Francis Walsingham advised the Earl of Huntingdon that two days earlier Anne Vavasour, one of the Queen's maids of honour, had given birth to a son, and that \"the Earl of Oxford is avowed to be the father, who hath withdrawn himself with intent, as it is thought, to pass the seas\". Oxford was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London, as was Anne and her infant, who would later be known as Sir Edward Vere. Burghley interceded for Oxford, and he was released from the Tower on 8 June, but he remained under house arrest until some time in July.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "While Oxford was under house arrest in May, Thomas Stocker dedicated to him his Divers Sermons of Master John Calvin, stating in the dedication that he had been \"brought up in your Lordship's father's house\".",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Oxford was still under house arrest in mid-July, but took part in an Accession Day tournament at Whitehall on 17 November 1581. He was then banished from court until June 1583. He appealed to Burghley to intervene with the Queen on his behalf, but his father-in-law repeatedly put the matter in the hands of Sir Christopher Hatton.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "At Christmas 1581, Oxford was reconciled with his wife, Anne, but his affair with Anne Vavasour continued to have repercussions. In March 1582 there was a skirmish in the streets of London between Oxford and Anne's uncle, Sir Thomas Knyvet. Oxford was wounded, and his servant killed; reports conflict as to whether Kynvet was also injured. There was another fray between Knyvet's and Oxford's retinues on 18 June, and a third six days later, when it was reported that Knyvet had \"slain a man of the Earl of Oxford's in fight\". In a letter to Burghley three years later Oxford offered to attend his father-in-law at his house \"as well as a lame man might\"; it is possible his lameness was a result of injuries from that encounter. On 19 January 1585 Anne Vavasour's brother Thomas sent Oxford a written challenge; it appears to have been ignored.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Meanwhile, the street brawling between factions continued. Another of Oxford's men was killed in January, and in March Burghley wrote to Sir Christopher Hatton about the death of one of Knyvet's men, thanking Hatton for his efforts \"to bring some good end to these troublesome matters betwixt my Lord Oxford and Mr Thomas Knyvet\".",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "On 6 May 1583, eighteen months after their reconciliation, Edward and Anne's only son was born, but died the same day. The infant was buried at Castle Hedingham three days later.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "After intervention by Burghley and Sir Walter Raleigh, Oxford was reconciled to the Queen, and his two-year exile from court ended at the end of May on condition of his guarantee of good behaviour. However, he never regained his position as a courtier of the first magnitude.",
"title": "Quarrels, plots and scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The previous Earl of Oxford had maintained a company of players known as Oxford's Men, which was discontinued by the 17th Earl two years after his father's death. Beginning in 1580, Oxford patronised both adult and boy companies and a company of musicians, and also sponsored performances by tumblers, acrobats, and performing animals. The new Oxford's Men toured the provinces between 1580 and 1587. Sometime after November 1583, Oxford bought a sublease of the premises used by the boy companies in the Blackfriars, and then gave it to his secretary, the writer John Lyly. Lyly installed Henry Evans, a Welsh scrivener and theatrical affectionado, as the manager of the new company of Oxford's Boys, composed of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's, and turned his talents to playwriting until the end of June 1584, when the original playhouse lease was voided by its owner. In 1584–1585, \"the Earl of Oxford's musicians\" received payments for performances in the cities of Oxford and Barnstaple. Oxford's Men (also known as Oxford's Players) stayed active until 1602.",
"title": "Theatrical enterprises"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "On 6 April 1584, Oxford's daughter Bridget was born, and two works were dedicated to him, Robert Greene's Gwydonius; The Card of Fancy, and John Southern's Pandora. Verses in the latter work mention Oxford's knowledge of astronomy, history, languages, and music.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Oxford's financial situation was steadily deteriorating. At this point, he had sold almost all his inherited lands, which cut him off from what had been his principal source of income. Moreover, because the properties were security for his unpaid debt to the Queen in the Court of Wards, he had had to enter into a bond with the purchaser, guaranteeing that he would indemnify them if the Queen were to make a claim against the lands to collect on the debt. To avoid this eventuality, the purchasers of his estates agreed to pay Oxford's debt to the Court of Wards in instalments.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "In 1585 negotiations were underway for King James VI of Scotland to come to England to discuss the release of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and in March Oxford was to be sent to Scotland as one of the hostages for James's safety.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In 1586, Oxford petitioned the Queen for an annuity to relieve his distressed financial situation. His father-in-law made him several large loans, and Elizabeth granted him a £1,000 annuity, to be continued at her pleasure or until he could be provided for otherwise. This annuity was later continued by James I. De Vere's widow, Elizabeth, petitioned James I for an annuity of £250 on behalf of her 11-year-old son, Henry, to continue the £1,000 annuity granted to de Vere. Henry was ultimately awarded a £200 annuity for life. James I would continue the grant after her death.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Another daughter, Susan, was born on 26 May 1587. On 12 September, another daughter, Frances, is recorded as buried at Edmonton. Her birthdate is unknown; presumably, she was between one and three years of age.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In July Elizabeth granted the Earl property which had been seized from Edward Jones, who had been executed for his role in the Babington Plot. In order to protect the land from Oxford's creditors, the grant was made in the name of two trustees. At the end of November it was agreed that the purchasers of Oxford's lands would pay his entire debt of some £3,306 due to the Court of Wards over a five-year period, finishing in 1592.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "In July and August 1588 England was threatened by the Spanish Armada. On 28 July Leicester, who was in overall command of the English land troops, asked for instructions regarding Oxford, stating that \"he seems most willing to hazard his life in this quarrel\". The Earl was offered the governorship of the port of Harwich, but he thought it was unworthy and declined the post; Leicester was glad to be rid of him.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "In December 1588 Oxford had secretly sold his London mansion Fisher's Folly to Sir William Cornwallis; by January 1591 the author Thomas Churchyard was dealing with rent owing for rooms he had taken in a house on behalf of his patron. Oxford wrote to Burghley outlining a plan to purchase the manorial lands of Denbigh, in Wales, if the Queen would consent, offering to pay for them by commuting his £1,000 annuity and agreeing to abandon his suit to regain the Forest of Essex (Waltham Forest), and to deed over his interests in Hedingham and Brets for the use of his children, who were living with Burghley under his guardianship.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "In the spring of 1591, the plan for the purchasers of his land to discharge his debt to the Court of Wards was disrupted by the Queen's taking extents, or writs allowing a creditor to temporarily seize a debtor's property. Oxford complained that his servant Thomas Hampton had taken advantage of these writs by taking money from the tenants for his own use, and had also conspired with another of his servants to pass a fraudulent document under the Great Seal of England. The Lord Mayor, Thomas Skinner, was also involved. In June, Oxford wrote to Burghley reminding him that he had made an agreement with Elizabeth to relinquish his claim to the Forest of Essex for three reasons, one of which was the Queen's reluctance to punish Skinner's felony, which had caused Oxford to forfeit £20,000 in bonds and statutes.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In 1586 Angel Day dedicated The English Secretary, the first epistolary manual for writing model letters in English, to Oxford, and William Webbe praised him as \"most excellent among the rest\" of our poets in his Discourse of English Poetry. In 1588 Anthony Munday dedicated to Oxford the two parts of his Palmerin d'Oliva. The following year The Arte of English Poesie, attributed to George Puttenham, placed Oxford among a \"crew\" of courtier poets; Puttenham also considered him among the best comic playwrights of the day. In 1590 Edmund Spenser addressed to Oxford the third of seventeen dedicatory sonnets which preface The Faerie Queene, celebrating his patronage of poets. The composer John Farmer, who was in Oxford's service at the time, dedicated The First Set of Divers & Sundry Ways of Two Parts in One to him in 1591, noting in the dedication his patron's love of music.",
"title": "Royal annuity"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "On 5 June 1588 Oxford's wife Anne Cecil died at court of a fever; she was 31.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "On 4 July 1591 Oxford sold the Great Garden property at Aldgate to John Wolley and Francis Trentham. The arrangement was stated to be for the benefit of Francis's sister, Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, whom Oxford married later that year. On 24 February 1593, at Stoke Newington, she gave birth to his only surviving son, Henry de Vere, Viscount Bulbeck, who was his heir.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Between 1591 and 1592 Oxford disposed of the last of his large estates; Castle Hedingham, the seat of his earldom, went to Lord Burghley; it was held in trust for Oxford's three daughters by his first marriage. He commissioned his servant, Roger Harlakenden, to sell Colne Priory. Harlekenden contrived to undervalue the land, then purchase it (as well as other parcels that were not meant to be sold) under his son's name; the suits Oxford brought against Harlakenden for fraud dragged out for decades and were never settled in his lifetime.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Protracted negotiations to arrange a match between his daughter Elizabeth and Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, did not result in marriage; on 19 November 1594, six weeks after Southampton turned 21, 'the young Earl of Southampton, refusing the Lady Vere, payeth £5000 of present money'. In January Elizabeth married William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Derby had promised Oxford his new bride would have £1,000 a year, but the financial provision for her was slow in materializing.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "His father-in-law, Lord Burghley, died on 4 August 1598 at the age of 78, leaving substantial bequests to Oxford's two unmarried daughters, Bridget and Susan. The bequests were structured to prevent Oxford from gaining control of his daughters' inheritances by assuming custody of them.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Earlier negotiations for a marriage to William Herbert having fallen through, in May or June 1599 Oxford's 15 year-old daughter Bridget married Francis Norris. Susan married Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "From March to August 1595 Oxford actively importuned the Queen, in competition with Lord Buckhurst, to operate the tin mines in Cornwall. He wrote to Burghley, enumerating years of fruitless attempts to amend his financial situation and complained: 'This last year past I have been a suitor to her Majesty that I might farm her tins, giving £3000 a year more than she had made.' Oxford's letters and memoranda indicate that he pursued his suit into 1596, and renewed it again three years later, but was ultimately unsuccessful in obtaining the tin monopoly.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "In October 1595, Oxford wrote to his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Cecil, of friction between himself and the ill-fated Earl of Essex, partly over his claim to property, terming him 'the only person that I dare rely upon in the court'. Cecil seems to have done little to further Oxford's interests in the suit.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "In March he was unable to go to court due to illness, in August he wrote to Burghley from Byfleet, where he had gone for his health: 'I find comfort in this air, but no fortune in the court.' In September, he again wrote of ill health, regretting he had not been able to pay attendance to the Queen. Two months later Rowland Whyte wrote to Sir Robert Sidney that 'Some say my Lord of Oxford is dead'. Whether the rumour of his death was related to the illness mentioned in his letters earlier in the year is unknown. Oxford attended his last Parliament in December, perhaps another indication of his failing health.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "On 28 April 1599 Oxford was sued by the widow of his tailor for a debt of £500 for services rendered some two decades earlier. He claimed that not only had he paid the debt, but that the tailor had absconded with 'cloth of gold and silver and other stuff' belonging to him, worth £800. The outcome of the suit is unknown.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "In July 1600 Oxford wrote requesting Sir Robert Cecil's help in securing an appointment as Governor of the Isle of Jersey, once again citing the Queen's unfulfilled promises to him. In February he again wrote for his support, this time for the office of President of Wales. As with his former suits, Oxford was again unsuccessful; during this time he was listed on the Pipe rolls as owing £20 for the subsidy.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "After the abortive Essex rebellion in February 1601, Oxford was 'the senior of the twenty-five noblemen' who rendered verdicts at the trials of Essex and Southampton for treason. After Essex's co-conspirator Sir Charles Danvers was executed in March, Oxford became a party to a complicated suit regarding lands which had reverted to the Crown by escheat at Danvers's attainder, a suit opposed by Danvers's kinsmen. De Vere continued to suffer from ill health, which kept him from court. On 4 December, Oxford was shocked that Cecil, who had encouraged him to undertake the Danvers suit on the Crown's behalf, had now withdrawn his support for it. As with all his other suits aimed at improving his financial situation, this last of Oxford's suits to the Queen ended in disappointment.",
"title": "Remarriage and later life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "In the early morning of 24 March 1603, Queen Elizabeth died without naming a successor. A few days beforehand, at his house at Hackney, Oxford had entertained the Earl of Lincoln, a nobleman known for erratic and violent behaviour similar to his host's. Lincoln reported that after dinner Oxford spoke of the Queen's impending death, claiming that the peers of England should decide the succession, and suggested that since Lincoln had 'a nephew of the blood royal ... Lord Hastings', he should be sent to France to find allies to support this claim. Lincoln relayed this conversation to Sir John Peyton, Lieutenant of the Tower, who, knowing how physically and financially infirm Oxford was, refused to take Lincoln's report as a serious threat to King James's accession.",
"title": "Last years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Oxford expressed his grief at the late Queen's death, and his apprehension for the future. These fears were unfounded; in letters to Cecil in May and June 1603 he again pressed his decades-long claim to have Waltham Forest (Forest of Essex) and the house and park of Havering restored to him, and on 18 July the new King granted his suit. On 25 July, Oxford was among those who officiated at the King's coronation, and a month later James confirmed his annuity of £1,000.",
"title": "Last years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Long weakened by poor health, Oxford passed custody of the Forest of Essex to his son-in-law Francis Norris and his cousin Sir Francis Vere on 18 June 1604. He died on 24 June of unknown causes at King's Place, Hackney, and was buried on 6 July in the Hackney churchyard of St Augustine's (now the parish of St. John-at-Hackney). Oxford's death passed without public or private notice. His grave was still unmarked on 25 November 1612 when his widow Elizabeth Trentham signed her will. She asked \"to be buried in the Church of Hackney within the Countie of Middlesex, as neare vnto [unto] the bodie of my said late deare and noble lorde and husband as may bee,\" and she requested that \"there bee in the said Church erected for vs [us] a tombe fittinge our degree.\" The 18th Earl of Oxford failed to fulfil his mother's request, and the location of his parents' graves has been lost to time.",
"title": "Last years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "The absence of a grave marker and an unpublished manuscript written fifteen years after Oxford's death have led to questions regarding his burial place. Documentary records including the Hackney registers and the will of Oxford's widow (1612) confirm that he was buried in the church of St Augustine on 4 July 1604. One register lists \"Edward Veare earl of Oxford\" among burials; the other reads, \"Edward deVeare Erle of Oxenford was buryed the 6th daye of Iulye Anno 1604.\" A manuscript history of the Vere family (c. 1619) written by Oxford's first cousin, Percival Golding (1579-1635), raises the possibility of a re-interment sometime between 1612 and 1619 at Westminster Abbey:",
"title": "Last years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "He was a man in minde and body absolutely accomplished with honourable endowments. He died at his house at Hackney in the moneth of June A 1604 and lieth buryed at Westminster.",
"title": "Last years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "The same manuscript further suggests that Oxford enjoyed an honorary stewardship of the Privy Council in the last year of his life. While Nelson disputes his membership on the Council, Oxford's signature appears on a letter dated 8 April 1603 from the Privy Council to the Lord High Treasurer of England.",
"title": "Last years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Oxford's manuscript verses circulated widely in courtly circles. Three of his poems, \"When wert thou born desire\", \"My mind to me a kingdom is\", and \"Sitting alone upon my thought\", are among the texts that repeatedly appear in the surviving 16th-century manuscript miscellanies and poetical anthologies. His earliest published poem was \"The labouring man that tills the fertile soil\" in Thomas Bedingfield's translation of Cardano's Comforte (1573). Bedingfield's dedication to Oxford is dated 1 January 1572. In addition to his poem, Oxford also contributed a commendatory letter setting forth the reasons why Bedingfield should publish the work. In 1576 eight of his poems were published in the poetry miscellany The Paradise of Dainty Devises. According to the introduction, all the poems in the collection were meant to be sung, but Oxford's were almost the only genuine love songs in the collection. Oxford's \"What cunning can express\" was published in The Phoenix Nest (1593) and republished in England's Helicon (1600). \"Who taught thee first to sigh alas my heart\" appeared in The Teares of Fancie (1593). Brittons Bowre of Delight (1597) published \"If women could be fair and yet not fond\" under Oxford's name, but the attribution today is not considered certain.",
"title": "Literary reputation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "Contemporary critics praised Oxford as a poet and a playwright. William Webbe names him as \"the most excellent\" of Elizabeth's courtier poets. Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589), places him first on a list of courtier poets and includes an excerpt from \"When wert thou born desire\" as an example of \"his excellance and wit\". Puttenham also says that \"highest praise\" should be given to Oxford and Richard Edwardes for \"Comedy and Enterlude\". Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia (1598) names Oxford first by social rank of 17 playwrights listed who are \"the best for comedy amongst us\", and he also appears first on a list of seven Elizabethan courtly poets \"who honoured Poesie with their pens and practice\" in Henry Peacham's 1622 The Compleat Gentleman.",
"title": "Literary reputation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Steven W. May writes that the Earl of Oxford was Elizabeth's \"first truly prestigious courtier poet ... [whose] precedent did at least confer genuine respectability upon the later efforts of such poets as Sidney, Greville, and Raleigh.\" He describes de Vere as a \"competent, fairly experimental poet working in the established modes of mid-century lyric verse\" and his poetry as \"examples of the standard varieties of mid-Elizabethan amorous lyric\". May says that Oxford's youthful love lyrics, which have been described as experimental and innovative, \"create a dramatic break with everything known to have been written at the Elizabethan court up to that time\" by virtue of being lighter in tone and metre and more imaginative and free from the moralizing tone of the courtier poetry of the \"drab\" age, which tended to be occasional and instructive. and describes one poem, in which the author cries out against \"this loss of my good name\", as a \"defiant lyric without precedent in English Renaissance verse\".",
"title": "Literary reputation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "May says that Oxford's poetry was \"one man's contribution to the rhetorical mainstream of an evolving Elizabethan poetic\" indistinguishable from \"the output of his mediocre mid-century contemporaries\". However, C. S. Lewis wrote that his poetry shows \"a faint talent\", but is \"for the most part undistinguished and verbose.\" Nelson says that \"contemporary observers such as Harvey, Webbe, Puttenham, and Meres clearly exaggerated de Vere's talent in deference to his rank. By any measure, his poems pale in comparison with those of Sidney, Lyly, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Jonson.\" He says that his known poems are \"astonishingly uneven\" in quality, ranging from the \"fine\" to the \"execrable\".",
"title": "Literary reputation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Oxford was sought after for his literary and theatrical patronage; between 1564 and 1599, twenty-eight works were dedicated to him by authors, including Arthur Golding, John Lyly, Robert Greene, and Anthony Munday. Of his 33 dedications, 13 appeared in original or translated works of literature, a higher percentage of literary works than other patrons of similar means. His lifelong patronage of writers, musicians, and actors prompted May to term Oxford \"a nobleman with extraordinary intellectual interests and commitments\", whose biography exhibits a \"lifelong devotion to learning\". He goes on to say that \"Oxford's genuine commitment to learning throughout his career lends a necessary qualification to Stone's conclusion that de Vere simply squandered the more than 70,000 pounds he derived from selling off his patrimony ... for which some part of this amount de Vere acquired a splendid reputation for nurture of the arts and sciences\".",
"title": "Literary reputation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship proposes that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Though rejected by nearly all academic Shakespeareans, it has been among the most popular alternative Shakespeare authorship theories since the 1920s. The Oxfordian theory was the central theme of the 2011 drama film Anonymous, directed by Roland Emerich.",
"title": "Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship"
}
]
| Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibility and contributed to the dissipation of his estate. Edward de Vere was the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, and Margery Golding. After the death of his father in 1562, he became a ward of Queen Elizabeth I and was sent to live in the household of her principal advisor, Sir William Cecil. He married Cecil's daughter, Anne, with whom he had five children. Oxford was estranged from her for five years and refused to acknowledge he was the father of their first child. A champion jouster, Oxford travelled widely throughout France and the many states of Italy. He was among the first to compose love poetry at the Elizabethan court and was praised as a playwright, though none of the plays known as his survive. A stream of dedications praised Oxford for his generous patronage of literary, religious, musical, and medical works, and he patronised both adult and boy acting companies, as well as musicians, tumblers, acrobats and performing animals. He fell out of favour with the Queen in the early 1580s and was exiled from court and briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London when his mistress Anne Vavasour, one of Elizabeth's maids of honour, gave birth to his son in the palace. Vavasour, too, was incarcerated, and the affair instigated violent street brawls between Oxford and her kinsmen. He was reconciled to the Queen in May 1583 at Theobalds, but all opportunities for advancement had been lost. In 1586, the Queen granted Oxford £1,000 annually to relieve the financial distress caused by his extravagance and the sale of his income-producing lands for ready money. After the death of his first wife, Anne Cecil, Oxford married Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's maids of honour, with whom he had an heir, Henry de Vere, Viscount Bulbeck. Oxford died in 1604, having spent the entirety of his inherited estates. Since the 1920s, Oxford has been among the most prominent alternative candidates proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare's works. | 2001-11-26T05:13:03Z | 2023-10-16T17:21:46Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Vere,_17th_Earl_of_Oxford |
10,141 | Erinyes | The Erinyes (/ɪˈrɪni.iːz/ ih-RIN-ee-eez; sing. Erinys /ɪˈrɪnɪs, ɪˈraɪnɪs/ ih-RIN-iss, ih-RY-niss; Ancient Greek: Ἐρινύες, pl. of Ἐρινύς), also known as the Eumenides (commonly known in English as the Furies), are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth take vengeance on men, whosoever hath sworn a false oath". Walter Burkert suggests that they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath". They correspond to the Dirae in Roman mythology. The Roman writer Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote (ca. AD 400) that they are called "Eumenides" in hell, "Furiae" on Earth, and "Dirae" in heaven. Erinyes are akin to some other Greek deities, called Poenai.
According to Hesiod's Theogony, when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes (along with the Giants and the Meliae) emerged from the drops of blood which fell on the Earth (Gaia), while Aphrodite was born from the crests of sea foam. Pseudo-Apollodorus also reports this lineage. According to variant accounts they are the daughters of Nyx ("Night"). while in Virgil's Aeneid, they are daughters of Pluto (Hades) and Nox (Nyx). In some accounts, they were the daughters of Euronymè (a name for Earth) and Cronus, or of Earth and Phorcys (i.e. the sea). In Orphic literature, they are the daughters of Hades and Persephone.
Their number is usually left indeterminate. Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three: Alecto or Alekto ("endless anger"), Megaera ("jealous rage"), and Tisiphone or Tilphousia ("vengeful destruction"), all of whom appear in the Aeneid. Dante Alighieri followed Virgil in depicting the same three-character triptych of Erinyes; in Canto IX of the Inferno they confront the poets at the gates of the city of Dis. Whilst the Erinyes were usually described as three maiden goddesses, the Erinys Telphousia was usually a byname for the wrathful goddess Demeter, who was worshipped under the title of Erinys in the Arkadian town of Thelpousa.
The word Erinyes is of uncertain etymology; connections with the verb ὀρίνειν orinein, "to raise, stir, excite", and the noun ἔρις eris, "strife" have been suggested; Beekes, pp. 458–459, has proposed a Pre-Greek origin. The word Erinys in the singular and as a theonym is first attested in Mycenaean Greek, written in Linear B, in the following forms: 𐀁𐀪𐀝, e-ri-nu, and 𐀁𐀪𐀝𐀸, e-ri-nu-we. These words are found on the KN Fp 1, KN V 52, and KN Fh 390 tablets.
The Erinyes live in Erebus and are more ancient than any of the Olympian deities. Their task is to hear complaints brought by mortals against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants—and to punish such crimes by hounding culprits relentlessly. The appearance of the Erinyes differs between sources, though they are frequently described as wearing black. Aesychlus' Eumenides the Priestess of Pythian Apollo compares their monstrosity to that of the gorgon and harpies, but adds that they are wingless, with hatred dripping from their eyes. Euripides, on the other hand, gives them wings, as does Virgil. They are often evisaged as having snakes in their hair.
The Erinyes are commonly associated with night and darkness. With varying accounts claiming that they are the daughters of Nyx, the goddess of night, they're also associated with darkness in the works of Aeschylus and Euripides in both their physical appearance and the time of day that they manifest.
Description of Tishiphone in Statius' Thebaid:
So prayed he, and the cruel goddess turned her grim visage to hearken. By chance she sat beside dismal Cocytus, and had loosed the snakes from her head and suffered them to lap the sulphurous waters. Straightway, faster than fire of Jove or falling stars she leapt up from the gloomy bank: the crowd of phantoms gives way before her, fearing to meet their queen; then, journeying through the shadows and the fields dark with trooping ghosts, she hastens to the gate of Taenarus, whose threshold none may cross and again return. Day felt her presence, Night interposed her pitchy cloud and startled his shining steeds; far off towering Atlas shuddered and shifted the weight of heaven upon his trembling shoulders. Forthwith rising aloft from Malea’s vale she hies her on the well-known way to Thebes: for on no errand is she swifter to go and to return, not kindred Tartarus itself pleases her so well. A hundred horned snakes erect shaded her face, the thronging terror of her awful head; deep within her sunken eyes there glows a light of iron hue, as when Atracian spells make travailing Phoebe redden through the clouds; suffused with venom, her skin distends and swells with corruption; a fiery vapour issues from her evil mouth, bringing upon mankind thirst unquenchable and sickness and famine and universal death. From her shoulders falls a stark and grisly robe, whose dark fastenings meet upon her breast: Atropos and Proserpine herself fashion her this garb anew. Then both her hands are shaken in wrath, the one gleaming with a funeral torch, the other lashing the air with a live water-snake.
Pausanias describes a sanctuary in Athens dedicated to the Erinyes under the name Semnai:
Hard by [the Areopagos the murder court of Athens] is a sanctuary of the goddesses which the Athenians call the August, but Hesiod in the Theogony calls them Erinyes (Furies). It was Aeschylus who first represented them with snakes in their hair. But on the images neither of these nor of any of the under-world deities is there anything terrible. There are images of Pluto, Hermes, and Earth, by which sacrifice those who have received an acquittal on the Hill of Ares; sacrifices are also offered on other occasions by both citizens and aliens.
The Orphic Hymns, a collection of 87 religious poems as translated by Thomas Taylor, contains two stanzas regarding the Erinyes. Hymn 68 refers to them as the Erinyes, while hymn 69 refers to them as the Eumenides.
Hymn 69, to the Erinyes:
Vociferous Bacchanalian Furies [Erinyes], hear! Ye, I invoke, dread pow'rs, whom all revere; Nightly, profound, in secret who retire, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megara dire: Deep in a cavern merg'd, involv'd in night, near where Styx flows impervious to the sight; Ever attendant on mysterious rites, furious and fierce, whom Fate's dread law delights; Revenge and sorrows dire to you belong, hid in a savage veil, severe and strong, Terrific virgins, who forever dwell endu'd with various forms, in deepest hell; Aerial, and unseen by human kind, and swiftly coursing, rapid as the mind. In vain the Sun with wing'd refulgence bright, in vain the Moon, far darting milder light, Wisdom and Virtue may attempt in vain; and pleasing, Art, our transport to obtain Unless with these you readily conspire, and far avert your all-destructive ire. The boundless tribes of mortals you descry, and justly rule with Right's [Dike's] impartial eye. Come, snaky-hair'd, Fates [Moirai] many-form'd, divine, suppress your rage, and to our rites incline.
Hymn 70, to the Eumenides:
Hear me, illustrious Furies [Eumenides], mighty nam'd, terrific pow'rs, for prudent counsel fam'd; Holy and pure, from Jove terrestrial [Zeus Khthonios](Hades) born and Proserpine [Phersephone], whom lovely locks adorn: Whose piercing sight, with vision unconfin'd, surveys the deeds of all the impious kind: On Fate attendant, punishing the race (with wrath severe) of deeds unjust and base. Dark-colour'd queens, whose glittering eyes, are bright with dreadful, radiant, life-destroying, light: Eternal rulers, terrible and strong, to whom revenge, and tortures dire belong; Fatal and horrid to the human sight, with snaky tresses wand'ring in the night; Either approach, and in these rites rejoice, for ye, I call, with holy, suppliant voice.
Myth fragments dealing with the Erinyes are found among the earliest extant records of ancient Greek culture. The Erinyes are featured prominently in the myth of Orestes, which recurs frequently throughout many works of ancient Greek literature.
Featured in ancient Greek literature, from poems to plays, the Erinyes form the Chorus and play a major role in the conclusion of Aeschylus's dramatic trilogy the Oresteia. In the first play, Agamemnon, King Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan War, where he is slain by his wife, Clytemnestra, who wants vengeance for her daughter Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon had sacrificed to obtain favorable winds to sail to Troy. In the second play, The Libation Bearers, their son Orestes has reached manhood and has been commanded by Apollo's oracle to avenge his father's murder at his mother's hand. Returning home and revealing himself to his sister Electra, Orestes pretends to be a messenger bringing the news of his own death to Clytemnestra. He then slays his mother and her lover Aegisthus. Although Orestes' actions were what Apollo had commanded him to do, Orestes has still committed matricide, a grave sacrilege. Because of this, he is pursued and tormented by the terrible Erinyes, who demand yet further blood vengeance.
In The Eumenides, Orestes is told by Apollo at Delphi that he should go to Athens to seek the aid of the goddess Athena. In Athens, Athena arranges for Orestes to be tried by a jury of Athenian citizens, with her presiding. The Erinyes appear as Orestes' accusers, while Apollo speaks in his defense. The trial becomes a debate about the necessity of blood vengeance, the honor that is due to a mother compared to that due to a father, and the respect that must be paid to ancient deities such as the Erinyes compared to the newer generation of Apollo and Athena. The jury vote is evenly split. Athena participates in the vote and chooses for acquittal. Athena declares Orestes acquitted because of the rules she established for the trial. Despite the verdict, the Erinyes threaten to torment all inhabitants of Athens and to poison the surrounding countryside. Athena, however, offers the ancient goddesses a new role, as protectors of justice, rather than vengeance, and of the city. She persuades them to break the cycle of blood for blood (except in the case of war, which is fought for glory, not vengeance). While promising that the goddesses will receive due honor from the Athenians and Athena, she also reminds them that she possesses the key to the storehouse where Zeus keeps the thunderbolts that defeated the other older deities. This mixture of bribes and veiled threats satisfies the Erinyes, who are then led by Athena in a procession to their new abode. In the play, the "Furies" are thereafter addressed as "Semnai" (Venerable Ones), as they will now be honored by the citizens of Athens and ensure the city's prosperity.
In Euripides' Orestes the Erinyes are for the first time "equated" with the Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες, pl. of Εὐμενίς; literally "the gracious ones", but also translated as "Kindly Ones"). This is because it was considered unwise to mention them by name (for fear of attracting their attention); the ironic name is similar to how Hades, god of the dead is styled Pluton, or Pluto, "the Rich One". Using euphemisms for the names of deities serves many religious purposes.
In Sophocles's play, Oedipus at Colonus, it is significant that Oedipus comes to his final resting place in the grove dedicated to the Erinyes. It shows that he has paid his penance for his blood crime, as well as come to integrate the balancing powers to his early over-reliance upon Apollo, the god of the individual, the sun, and reason. He is asked to make an offering to the Erinyes and complies, having made his peace. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Erinyes (/ɪˈrɪni.iːz/ ih-RIN-ee-eez; sing. Erinys /ɪˈrɪnɪs, ɪˈraɪnɪs/ ih-RIN-iss, ih-RY-niss; Ancient Greek: Ἐρινύες, pl. of Ἐρινύς), also known as the Eumenides (commonly known in English as the Furies), are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as \"the Erinyes, that under earth take vengeance on men, whosoever hath sworn a false oath\". Walter Burkert suggests that they are \"an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath\". They correspond to the Dirae in Roman mythology. The Roman writer Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote (ca. AD 400) that they are called \"Eumenides\" in hell, \"Furiae\" on Earth, and \"Dirae\" in heaven. Erinyes are akin to some other Greek deities, called Poenai.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "According to Hesiod's Theogony, when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes (along with the Giants and the Meliae) emerged from the drops of blood which fell on the Earth (Gaia), while Aphrodite was born from the crests of sea foam. Pseudo-Apollodorus also reports this lineage. According to variant accounts they are the daughters of Nyx (\"Night\"). while in Virgil's Aeneid, they are daughters of Pluto (Hades) and Nox (Nyx). In some accounts, they were the daughters of Euronymè (a name for Earth) and Cronus, or of Earth and Phorcys (i.e. the sea). In Orphic literature, they are the daughters of Hades and Persephone.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Their number is usually left indeterminate. Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three: Alecto or Alekto (\"endless anger\"), Megaera (\"jealous rage\"), and Tisiphone or Tilphousia (\"vengeful destruction\"), all of whom appear in the Aeneid. Dante Alighieri followed Virgil in depicting the same three-character triptych of Erinyes; in Canto IX of the Inferno they confront the poets at the gates of the city of Dis. Whilst the Erinyes were usually described as three maiden goddesses, the Erinys Telphousia was usually a byname for the wrathful goddess Demeter, who was worshipped under the title of Erinys in the Arkadian town of Thelpousa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The word Erinyes is of uncertain etymology; connections with the verb ὀρίνειν orinein, \"to raise, stir, excite\", and the noun ἔρις eris, \"strife\" have been suggested; Beekes, pp. 458–459, has proposed a Pre-Greek origin. The word Erinys in the singular and as a theonym is first attested in Mycenaean Greek, written in Linear B, in the following forms: 𐀁𐀪𐀝, e-ri-nu, and 𐀁𐀪𐀝𐀸, e-ri-nu-we. These words are found on the KN Fp 1, KN V 52, and KN Fh 390 tablets.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Erinyes live in Erebus and are more ancient than any of the Olympian deities. Their task is to hear complaints brought by mortals against the insolence of the young to the aged, of children to parents, of hosts to guests, and of householders or city councils to suppliants—and to punish such crimes by hounding culprits relentlessly. The appearance of the Erinyes differs between sources, though they are frequently described as wearing black. Aesychlus' Eumenides the Priestess of Pythian Apollo compares their monstrosity to that of the gorgon and harpies, but adds that they are wingless, with hatred dripping from their eyes. Euripides, on the other hand, gives them wings, as does Virgil. They are often evisaged as having snakes in their hair.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Erinyes are commonly associated with night and darkness. With varying accounts claiming that they are the daughters of Nyx, the goddess of night, they're also associated with darkness in the works of Aeschylus and Euripides in both their physical appearance and the time of day that they manifest.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Description of Tishiphone in Statius' Thebaid:",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "So prayed he, and the cruel goddess turned her grim visage to hearken. By chance she sat beside dismal Cocytus, and had loosed the snakes from her head and suffered them to lap the sulphurous waters. Straightway, faster than fire of Jove or falling stars she leapt up from the gloomy bank: the crowd of phantoms gives way before her, fearing to meet their queen; then, journeying through the shadows and the fields dark with trooping ghosts, she hastens to the gate of Taenarus, whose threshold none may cross and again return. Day felt her presence, Night interposed her pitchy cloud and startled his shining steeds; far off towering Atlas shuddered and shifted the weight of heaven upon his trembling shoulders. Forthwith rising aloft from Malea’s vale she hies her on the well-known way to Thebes: for on no errand is she swifter to go and to return, not kindred Tartarus itself pleases her so well. A hundred horned snakes erect shaded her face, the thronging terror of her awful head; deep within her sunken eyes there glows a light of iron hue, as when Atracian spells make travailing Phoebe redden through the clouds; suffused with venom, her skin distends and swells with corruption; a fiery vapour issues from her evil mouth, bringing upon mankind thirst unquenchable and sickness and famine and universal death. From her shoulders falls a stark and grisly robe, whose dark fastenings meet upon her breast: Atropos and Proserpine herself fashion her this garb anew. Then both her hands are shaken in wrath, the one gleaming with a funeral torch, the other lashing the air with a live water-snake.",
"title": "Description"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Pausanias describes a sanctuary in Athens dedicated to the Erinyes under the name Semnai:",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Hard by [the Areopagos the murder court of Athens] is a sanctuary of the goddesses which the Athenians call the August, but Hesiod in the Theogony calls them Erinyes (Furies). It was Aeschylus who first represented them with snakes in their hair. But on the images neither of these nor of any of the under-world deities is there anything terrible. There are images of Pluto, Hermes, and Earth, by which sacrifice those who have received an acquittal on the Hill of Ares; sacrifices are also offered on other occasions by both citizens and aliens.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Orphic Hymns, a collection of 87 religious poems as translated by Thomas Taylor, contains two stanzas regarding the Erinyes. Hymn 68 refers to them as the Erinyes, while hymn 69 refers to them as the Eumenides.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hymn 69, to the Erinyes:",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Vociferous Bacchanalian Furies [Erinyes], hear! Ye, I invoke, dread pow'rs, whom all revere; Nightly, profound, in secret who retire, Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megara dire: Deep in a cavern merg'd, involv'd in night, near where Styx flows impervious to the sight; Ever attendant on mysterious rites, furious and fierce, whom Fate's dread law delights; Revenge and sorrows dire to you belong, hid in a savage veil, severe and strong, Terrific virgins, who forever dwell endu'd with various forms, in deepest hell; Aerial, and unseen by human kind, and swiftly coursing, rapid as the mind. In vain the Sun with wing'd refulgence bright, in vain the Moon, far darting milder light, Wisdom and Virtue may attempt in vain; and pleasing, Art, our transport to obtain Unless with these you readily conspire, and far avert your all-destructive ire. The boundless tribes of mortals you descry, and justly rule with Right's [Dike's] impartial eye. Come, snaky-hair'd, Fates [Moirai] many-form'd, divine, suppress your rage, and to our rites incline.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Hymn 70, to the Eumenides:",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Hear me, illustrious Furies [Eumenides], mighty nam'd, terrific pow'rs, for prudent counsel fam'd; Holy and pure, from Jove terrestrial [Zeus Khthonios](Hades) born and Proserpine [Phersephone], whom lovely locks adorn: Whose piercing sight, with vision unconfin'd, surveys the deeds of all the impious kind: On Fate attendant, punishing the race (with wrath severe) of deeds unjust and base. Dark-colour'd queens, whose glittering eyes, are bright with dreadful, radiant, life-destroying, light: Eternal rulers, terrible and strong, to whom revenge, and tortures dire belong; Fatal and horrid to the human sight, with snaky tresses wand'ring in the night; Either approach, and in these rites rejoice, for ye, I call, with holy, suppliant voice.",
"title": "Cult"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Myth fragments dealing with the Erinyes are found among the earliest extant records of ancient Greek culture. The Erinyes are featured prominently in the myth of Orestes, which recurs frequently throughout many works of ancient Greek literature.",
"title": "In ancient Greek literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Featured in ancient Greek literature, from poems to plays, the Erinyes form the Chorus and play a major role in the conclusion of Aeschylus's dramatic trilogy the Oresteia. In the first play, Agamemnon, King Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan War, where he is slain by his wife, Clytemnestra, who wants vengeance for her daughter Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon had sacrificed to obtain favorable winds to sail to Troy. In the second play, The Libation Bearers, their son Orestes has reached manhood and has been commanded by Apollo's oracle to avenge his father's murder at his mother's hand. Returning home and revealing himself to his sister Electra, Orestes pretends to be a messenger bringing the news of his own death to Clytemnestra. He then slays his mother and her lover Aegisthus. Although Orestes' actions were what Apollo had commanded him to do, Orestes has still committed matricide, a grave sacrilege. Because of this, he is pursued and tormented by the terrible Erinyes, who demand yet further blood vengeance.",
"title": "In ancient Greek literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In The Eumenides, Orestes is told by Apollo at Delphi that he should go to Athens to seek the aid of the goddess Athena. In Athens, Athena arranges for Orestes to be tried by a jury of Athenian citizens, with her presiding. The Erinyes appear as Orestes' accusers, while Apollo speaks in his defense. The trial becomes a debate about the necessity of blood vengeance, the honor that is due to a mother compared to that due to a father, and the respect that must be paid to ancient deities such as the Erinyes compared to the newer generation of Apollo and Athena. The jury vote is evenly split. Athena participates in the vote and chooses for acquittal. Athena declares Orestes acquitted because of the rules she established for the trial. Despite the verdict, the Erinyes threaten to torment all inhabitants of Athens and to poison the surrounding countryside. Athena, however, offers the ancient goddesses a new role, as protectors of justice, rather than vengeance, and of the city. She persuades them to break the cycle of blood for blood (except in the case of war, which is fought for glory, not vengeance). While promising that the goddesses will receive due honor from the Athenians and Athena, she also reminds them that she possesses the key to the storehouse where Zeus keeps the thunderbolts that defeated the other older deities. This mixture of bribes and veiled threats satisfies the Erinyes, who are then led by Athena in a procession to their new abode. In the play, the \"Furies\" are thereafter addressed as \"Semnai\" (Venerable Ones), as they will now be honored by the citizens of Athens and ensure the city's prosperity.",
"title": "In ancient Greek literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In Euripides' Orestes the Erinyes are for the first time \"equated\" with the Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες, pl. of Εὐμενίς; literally \"the gracious ones\", but also translated as \"Kindly Ones\"). This is because it was considered unwise to mention them by name (for fear of attracting their attention); the ironic name is similar to how Hades, god of the dead is styled Pluton, or Pluto, \"the Rich One\". Using euphemisms for the names of deities serves many religious purposes.",
"title": "In ancient Greek literature"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In Sophocles's play, Oedipus at Colonus, it is significant that Oedipus comes to his final resting place in the grove dedicated to the Erinyes. It shows that he has paid his penance for his blood crime, as well as come to integrate the balancing powers to his early over-reliance upon Apollo, the god of the individual, the sun, and reason. He is asked to make an offering to the Erinyes and complies, having made his peace.",
"title": "In ancient Greek literature"
}
]
| The Erinyes, also known as the Eumenides, are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth take vengeance on men, whosoever hath sworn a false oath". Walter Burkert suggests that they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath". They correspond to the Dirae in Roman mythology. The Roman writer Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote that they are called "Eumenides" in hell, "Furiae" on Earth, and "Dirae" in heaven. Erinyes are akin to some other Greek deities, called Poenai. According to Hesiod's Theogony, when the Titan Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood which fell on the Earth (Gaia), while Aphrodite was born from the crests of sea foam. Pseudo-Apollodorus also reports this lineage. According to variant accounts they are the daughters of Nyx ("Night"). while in Virgil's Aeneid, they are daughters of Pluto (Hades) and Nox (Nyx). In some accounts, they were the daughters of Euronymè and Cronus, or of Earth and Phorcys. In Orphic literature, they are the daughters of Hades and Persephone. Their number is usually left indeterminate. Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three: Alecto or Alekto, Megaera, and Tisiphone or Tilphousia, all of whom appear in the Aeneid. Dante Alighieri followed Virgil in depicting the same three-character triptych of Erinyes; in Canto IX of the Inferno they confront the poets at the gates of the city of Dis. Whilst the Erinyes were usually described as three maiden goddesses, the Erinys Telphousia was usually a byname for the wrathful goddess Demeter, who was worshipped under the title of Erinys in the Arkadian town of Thelpousa. | 2001-11-26T09:29:09Z | 2023-12-25T02:50:56Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erinyes |
10,142 | Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair | Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, in the County of Aberdeen, in the County of Meath and in the County of Argyll, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 4 January 1916 for John Hamilton-Gordon, 7th Earl of Aberdeen.
The Gordon family descends from John Gordon, who fought as a Royalist against the Covenanters in the Civil War. In 1642 he was created a baronet, of Haddo in the County of Aberdeen, in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia. In 1644 he was found guilty of treason and beheaded, with the baronetcy forfeited. The title was restored after the Restoration for his son John, the second Baronet.
The second Baronet died without male issue and was succeeded by his younger brother, the third Baronet. He was a noted advocate and served as Lord President of the Court of Session and as Lord Chancellor of Scotland. On 30 November 1682 he was raised to the Peerage of Scotland as Lord Haddo, Methlick, Tarves and Kellie, Viscount of Formartine and Earl of Aberdeen. He was succeeded by his only surviving son, the second Earl. He sat in the House of Lords as a Scottish Representative Peer from 1721 to 1727. On his death the titles passed to his eldest son from his second marriage, the third Earl. He was a Scottish Representative Peer from 1747 to 1761 and from 1774 to 1790.
The third earl was succeeded by his grandson, the fourth Earl, who was the eldest son of George Gordon, Lord Haddo. On 1 June 1814 he was created Viscount Gordon, of Aberdeen in the County of Aberdeen, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, which entitled him to an automatic seat in the House of Lords. Lord Aberdeen was a distinguished diplomat and statesman and served as Foreign Secretary from 1828 to 1830 and from 1841 to 1846 and as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1852 to 1855. Aberdeen married firstly Lady Catherine Elizabeth (1784–1812), daughter of John Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Abercorn, and assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Hamilton in 1818.
When Lord Aberdeen died, the titles passed to his eldest son from his second marriage to Harriet Douglas, the fifth Earl. He sat as Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberdeenshire. His eldest son, the sixth Earl, was a sailor and adventurer. He was accidentally drowned off the coast of America in 1870, without marrying or having children.
The sixth earl of Aberdeen was succeeded by his younger brother, the seventh Earl. John Hamilton-Gordon, was a Liberal politician and served as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1886 and from 1905 to 1915 and as Governor General of Canada from 1893 to 1898. On 4 January 1916 he was created Earl of Haddo, in the County of Aberdeen, and Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, in the County of Aberdeen, in the County of Meath and in the County of Argyll. Both titles are in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
He was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Marquess, who was a member of the London County Council and served as Lord-Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire. He was childless and was succeeded by his younger brother, the third Marquess. He was notably President of the Federation of British Industries. When he died the titles passed to his eldest son, the fourth Marquess. He was a member of the Aberdeenshire County Council and Lord-Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire. He had four adopted children but no biological issue and was succeeded by his younger brother, the fifth Marquess. He was a broadcaster working for the BBC. He never married and on his death in 1984 the titles passed to his fourth and youngest brother, the sixth Marquess. He was Chairman of The Arts Club. As of 2020 the titles are held by his grandson, the eighth Marquess, who succeeded in that year.
Numerous other members of the Gordon family have also gained distinction. The Hon. William Gordon (died 1816), eldest son from the third marriage of the second Earl, was a general in the Army. The Hon. Cosmo Gordon, second son from the third marriage of the second Earl, was a colonel in the Army. The Hon. Alexander Gordon (1739–1792), third son from the third marriage of the second Earl, was a Lord of Session from 1788 to 1792 under the judicial title of Lord Rockville. His son William Duff-Gordon was Member of Parliament for Worcester. In 1815 he succeeded his uncle as second Baron of Halkin according to a special remainder and assumed the additional surname of Duff (see Duff-Gordon baronets for further history of this branch of the family). The Hon. William Gordon, younger brother of the fourth Earl, was a vice-admiral in the Royal Navy and sat as Member of Parliament for Aberdeenshire. The Hon. Alexander Gordon (1786–1815), younger brother of the fourth Earl, was a soldier and was killed at the Battle of Waterloo.
The Hon. Sir Robert Gordon, younger brother of the fourth Earl, was a diplomat and served as British Ambassador to Austria. The Hon. John Gordon (1792–1869), younger brother of the fourth Earl, was an admiral in the Royal Navy. The Hon. Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon (1817–1890), eldest son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl, was a general in the Army and sat as Member of Parliament for Aberdeenshire East. His eldest son, Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon was also a general in the Army. Reverend the Hon. Douglas Hamilton-Gordon (1824–1901), third son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl, was Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria and Canon of Salisbury. The Hon. Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, fourth son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl, was a Liberal politician and was created Baron Stanmore in 1893 (see this title for more information on him and this branch of the family). Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, daughter of Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, and wife of the first Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, was an author, philanthropist and an advocate of woman's interests.
The family seat is Haddo House, Aberdeenshire. The title Earl of Haddo is the courtesy title for the Marquess's eldest son and heir, the eldest son of whom uses the courtesy title Viscount of Formartine. The Marquesses of Aberdeen and Temair are related to the Marquesses of Huntly. Sir John Gordon (died c. 1395) of Strathbogie, ancestor of Sir John Gordon, 1st Baronet, was the brother of Elizabeth Gordon. She married Sir Alexander Seton (died 1438) and was the mother of Alexander Gordon, 1st Earl of Huntly (ancestor of the Marquesses of Huntly).
George Ian Alastair Gordon, 8th Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair (born 4 May 1983) is the son of the 7th Marquess and his wife Joanna Clodagh Houldsworth. Styled formally as Viscount Formartine from 1984, he was educated at Harrow School.
He was styled as Earl of Haddo between 2002 and 12 March 2020, when he succeeded his father as Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, Earl of Haddo, Earl of Aberdeen, Viscount of Formartine, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen, Lord Haddo, Methlick, Tarves and Kellie, and also as a baronet (Gordon, of Haddo, Aberdeenshire, 1642).
As Lord Haddo he married Isabelle Coaten, daughter of David Coaten, and they have four children
There are further heirs to the subsidiary Earldom of Aberdeen, including the Duff-Gordon baronets, who are descended from Lord Rockville, a younger son of the second earl. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, in the County of Aberdeen, in the County of Meath and in the County of Argyll, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 4 January 1916 for John Hamilton-Gordon, 7th Earl of Aberdeen.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Gordon family descends from John Gordon, who fought as a Royalist against the Covenanters in the Civil War. In 1642 he was created a baronet, of Haddo in the County of Aberdeen, in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia. In 1644 he was found guilty of treason and beheaded, with the baronetcy forfeited. The title was restored after the Restoration for his son John, the second Baronet.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The second Baronet died without male issue and was succeeded by his younger brother, the third Baronet. He was a noted advocate and served as Lord President of the Court of Session and as Lord Chancellor of Scotland. On 30 November 1682 he was raised to the Peerage of Scotland as Lord Haddo, Methlick, Tarves and Kellie, Viscount of Formartine and Earl of Aberdeen. He was succeeded by his only surviving son, the second Earl. He sat in the House of Lords as a Scottish Representative Peer from 1721 to 1727. On his death the titles passed to his eldest son from his second marriage, the third Earl. He was a Scottish Representative Peer from 1747 to 1761 and from 1774 to 1790.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The third earl was succeeded by his grandson, the fourth Earl, who was the eldest son of George Gordon, Lord Haddo. On 1 June 1814 he was created Viscount Gordon, of Aberdeen in the County of Aberdeen, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, which entitled him to an automatic seat in the House of Lords. Lord Aberdeen was a distinguished diplomat and statesman and served as Foreign Secretary from 1828 to 1830 and from 1841 to 1846 and as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1852 to 1855. Aberdeen married firstly Lady Catherine Elizabeth (1784–1812), daughter of John Hamilton, 1st Marquess of Abercorn, and assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Hamilton in 1818.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "When Lord Aberdeen died, the titles passed to his eldest son from his second marriage to Harriet Douglas, the fifth Earl. He sat as Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberdeenshire. His eldest son, the sixth Earl, was a sailor and adventurer. He was accidentally drowned off the coast of America in 1870, without marrying or having children.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The sixth earl of Aberdeen was succeeded by his younger brother, the seventh Earl. John Hamilton-Gordon, was a Liberal politician and served as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1886 and from 1905 to 1915 and as Governor General of Canada from 1893 to 1898. On 4 January 1916 he was created Earl of Haddo, in the County of Aberdeen, and Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, in the County of Aberdeen, in the County of Meath and in the County of Argyll. Both titles are in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "He was succeeded by his eldest son, the second Marquess, who was a member of the London County Council and served as Lord-Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire. He was childless and was succeeded by his younger brother, the third Marquess. He was notably President of the Federation of British Industries. When he died the titles passed to his eldest son, the fourth Marquess. He was a member of the Aberdeenshire County Council and Lord-Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire. He had four adopted children but no biological issue and was succeeded by his younger brother, the fifth Marquess. He was a broadcaster working for the BBC. He never married and on his death in 1984 the titles passed to his fourth and youngest brother, the sixth Marquess. He was Chairman of The Arts Club. As of 2020 the titles are held by his grandson, the eighth Marquess, who succeeded in that year.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Numerous other members of the Gordon family have also gained distinction. The Hon. William Gordon (died 1816), eldest son from the third marriage of the second Earl, was a general in the Army. The Hon. Cosmo Gordon, second son from the third marriage of the second Earl, was a colonel in the Army. The Hon. Alexander Gordon (1739–1792), third son from the third marriage of the second Earl, was a Lord of Session from 1788 to 1792 under the judicial title of Lord Rockville. His son William Duff-Gordon was Member of Parliament for Worcester. In 1815 he succeeded his uncle as second Baron of Halkin according to a special remainder and assumed the additional surname of Duff (see Duff-Gordon baronets for further history of this branch of the family). The Hon. William Gordon, younger brother of the fourth Earl, was a vice-admiral in the Royal Navy and sat as Member of Parliament for Aberdeenshire. The Hon. Alexander Gordon (1786–1815), younger brother of the fourth Earl, was a soldier and was killed at the Battle of Waterloo.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Hon. Sir Robert Gordon, younger brother of the fourth Earl, was a diplomat and served as British Ambassador to Austria. The Hon. John Gordon (1792–1869), younger brother of the fourth Earl, was an admiral in the Royal Navy. The Hon. Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon (1817–1890), eldest son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl, was a general in the Army and sat as Member of Parliament for Aberdeenshire East. His eldest son, Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon was also a general in the Army. Reverend the Hon. Douglas Hamilton-Gordon (1824–1901), third son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl, was Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria and Canon of Salisbury. The Hon. Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, fourth son of the second marriage of the fourth Earl, was a Liberal politician and was created Baron Stanmore in 1893 (see this title for more information on him and this branch of the family). Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, daughter of Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, and wife of the first Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, was an author, philanthropist and an advocate of woman's interests.",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The family seat is Haddo House, Aberdeenshire. The title Earl of Haddo is the courtesy title for the Marquess's eldest son and heir, the eldest son of whom uses the courtesy title Viscount of Formartine. The Marquesses of Aberdeen and Temair are related to the Marquesses of Huntly. Sir John Gordon (died c. 1395) of Strathbogie, ancestor of Sir John Gordon, 1st Baronet, was the brother of Elizabeth Gordon. She married Sir Alexander Seton (died 1438) and was the mother of Alexander Gordon, 1st Earl of Huntly (ancestor of the Marquesses of Huntly).",
"title": "Family history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "George Ian Alastair Gordon, 8th Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair (born 4 May 1983) is the son of the 7th Marquess and his wife Joanna Clodagh Houldsworth. Styled formally as Viscount Formartine from 1984, he was educated at Harrow School.",
"title": "Present peer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "He was styled as Earl of Haddo between 2002 and 12 March 2020, when he succeeded his father as Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, Earl of Haddo, Earl of Aberdeen, Viscount of Formartine, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen, Lord Haddo, Methlick, Tarves and Kellie, and also as a baronet (Gordon, of Haddo, Aberdeenshire, 1642).",
"title": "Present peer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "As Lord Haddo he married Isabelle Coaten, daughter of David Coaten, and they have four children",
"title": "Present peer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "There are further heirs to the subsidiary Earldom of Aberdeen, including the Duff-Gordon baronets, who are descended from Lord Rockville, a younger son of the second earl.",
"title": "Line of succession"
}
]
| Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, in the County of Aberdeen, in the County of Meath and in the County of Argyll, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 4 January 1916 for John Hamilton-Gordon, 7th Earl of Aberdeen. | 2023-07-01T16:26:35Z | [
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10,147 | East Coast Swing | East Coast Swing (ECS) is a form of social partner dance. It belongs to the group of swing dances. It is danced under fast swing music, including lindy hop, rock and roll and boogie-woogie.
Yerrington and Outland equated East Coast Swing to the New Yorker in 1961. Originally known as "Eastern Swing" by Arthur Murray Studios, the name East Coast Swing became more common between 1975 and 1980.
The dance was created by dance studios including the Arthur Murray dance studios in the 1940s, based on the Lindy Hop. Lindy Hop was felt by dance studios to be both too difficult and too unstructured to teach to beginning dancers, but there was market demand for training in Swing Dance. The dance studios had initially dismissed Lindy Hop in particular as a fad. East Coast Swing can be referred to by many different names in different regions of the United States and the World. It has alternatively been called Eastern Swing, Jitterbug, American Swing, East Coast Lindy, Lindy (not to be confused with Lindy Hop), and Triple Swing (or Triple-step swing). Other variants of East Coast Swing that use altered footwork forms are known as Single Swing or "Single-step Swing" (where the triple step is replaced by a single step forming a slow, slow, quick, quick rhythm common to Foxtrot), and Double Swing (using a tap-step footwork pattern).
East Coast Swing is a Rhythm Dance that has both 6 and 8 beat patterns. The name East Coast Swing was coined initially to distinguish the dance from the street form and the new variant used in the competitive ballroom arena (as well as separating the dance from West Coast Swing, which was developed in California). While based on Lindy Hop, it does have clear distinctions. East Coast Swing is a standardized form of dance developed first for instructional purposes in the Arthur Murray studios, and then later codified to allow for a medium of comparison for competitive ballroom dancers. It can be said that there is no right or wrong way to dance it; however, certain styles of the dance are considered correct "form" within the technical elements documented and governed by the National Dance Council of America. The N.D.C.A. oversees all the standards of American Style Ballroom and Latin dances. Lindy Hop was never standardized and later became the inspiration for several other dance forms such as: (European) Boogie Woogie, Jive, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing and Rock and Roll.
In practice on the social dance floor, the six count steps of the East Coast Swing are often mixed with the eight count steps of Lindy Hop, Charleston, and less frequently, Balboa.
The 5 basic positions/moves are:
Single-step Swing
East Coast Swing has a 6 count basic step. This is in contrast to the meter of most swing music, which has a 4 count basic rhythm. In practice, however, the 6-count moves of the east coast swing are often combined with 8-count moves from the Lindy hop, Charleston, and Balboa.
Depending on the region and instructor, the basic step of single-step East Coast Swing is either "rock step, step, step" or "step, step, rock step". In both cases, the rock step always starts on the downbeat.
For "rock step, step, step" the beats, or counts, are the following:
Steps for the "lead" (traditionally, the man's part)
Steps for the "follow" (traditionally, the woman's part which mirrors the lead's part)
For "step, step, rock step," the rock step occurs on beats 5 and 6, but the overall progression remains the same.
The normal steps can be substituted with a triple step or double step "step-tap" or "kick-step" instead of a single step. This is commonly used during songs when a slower tempo makes the single step difficult (an example progression would be "rock step, triple step, triple step").
Because East Coast uses a six step pattern with music employing 4 beats per measure, three measures of music are required to complete two sets of steps, as shown in the following table.
The rock step starts on 1, 2 the first triple step starts 3a4 and the second on 5a6.
In single time style (used with faster music) the triple steps are replaced by single steps, so two beats of music are used for each single step while each step in the rock (R) step (S) is still completed in one beat, finishing the cycle in six musical beats. Some instructors will teach vocalizing the single time style as" "Quick. Quick. Slow. Slow. " or "Back Step. Slow. Slow."
There is the choice to start with triples or with a rock step, however if you check the above chart where a triple step starts on a 1, 2 you can see that the pattern progresses and wraps back around. The choice of starting with a triple or a rock step does have musical consequences as music has phrasing with hits that often happen on 12, or 24 or 36... This means that dancers who choose to start with a rock step will probably find themselves on a rock step on every new phrase. Those who start with a triple will start with a triple on each new phrase. An advantage of starting with the triple step is that dancers can more easily change their foot work right at the start of the musical phrase. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "East Coast Swing (ECS) is a form of social partner dance. It belongs to the group of swing dances. It is danced under fast swing music, including lindy hop, rock and roll and boogie-woogie.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Yerrington and Outland equated East Coast Swing to the New Yorker in 1961. Originally known as \"Eastern Swing\" by Arthur Murray Studios, the name East Coast Swing became more common between 1975 and 1980.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The dance was created by dance studios including the Arthur Murray dance studios in the 1940s, based on the Lindy Hop. Lindy Hop was felt by dance studios to be both too difficult and too unstructured to teach to beginning dancers, but there was market demand for training in Swing Dance. The dance studios had initially dismissed Lindy Hop in particular as a fad. East Coast Swing can be referred to by many different names in different regions of the United States and the World. It has alternatively been called Eastern Swing, Jitterbug, American Swing, East Coast Lindy, Lindy (not to be confused with Lindy Hop), and Triple Swing (or Triple-step swing). Other variants of East Coast Swing that use altered footwork forms are known as Single Swing or \"Single-step Swing\" (where the triple step is replaced by a single step forming a slow, slow, quick, quick rhythm common to Foxtrot), and Double Swing (using a tap-step footwork pattern).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "East Coast Swing is a Rhythm Dance that has both 6 and 8 beat patterns. The name East Coast Swing was coined initially to distinguish the dance from the street form and the new variant used in the competitive ballroom arena (as well as separating the dance from West Coast Swing, which was developed in California). While based on Lindy Hop, it does have clear distinctions. East Coast Swing is a standardized form of dance developed first for instructional purposes in the Arthur Murray studios, and then later codified to allow for a medium of comparison for competitive ballroom dancers. It can be said that there is no right or wrong way to dance it; however, certain styles of the dance are considered correct \"form\" within the technical elements documented and governed by the National Dance Council of America. The N.D.C.A. oversees all the standards of American Style Ballroom and Latin dances. Lindy Hop was never standardized and later became the inspiration for several other dance forms such as: (European) Boogie Woogie, Jive, East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing and Rock and Roll.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In practice on the social dance floor, the six count steps of the East Coast Swing are often mixed with the eight count steps of Lindy Hop, Charleston, and less frequently, Balboa.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The 5 basic positions/moves are:",
"title": "Basic Positions/Moves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Single-step Swing",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "East Coast Swing has a 6 count basic step. This is in contrast to the meter of most swing music, which has a 4 count basic rhythm. In practice, however, the 6-count moves of the east coast swing are often combined with 8-count moves from the Lindy hop, Charleston, and Balboa.",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Depending on the region and instructor, the basic step of single-step East Coast Swing is either \"rock step, step, step\" or \"step, step, rock step\". In both cases, the rock step always starts on the downbeat.",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "For \"rock step, step, step\" the beats, or counts, are the following:",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Steps for the \"lead\" (traditionally, the man's part)",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Steps for the \"follow\" (traditionally, the woman's part which mirrors the lead's part)",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "For \"step, step, rock step,\" the rock step occurs on beats 5 and 6, but the overall progression remains the same.",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The normal steps can be substituted with a triple step or double step \"step-tap\" or \"kick-step\" instead of a single step. This is commonly used during songs when a slower tempo makes the single step difficult (an example progression would be \"rock step, triple step, triple step\").",
"title": "Basic technique"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Because East Coast uses a six step pattern with music employing 4 beats per measure, three measures of music are required to complete two sets of steps, as shown in the following table.",
"title": "Timing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The rock step starts on 1, 2 the first triple step starts 3a4 and the second on 5a6.",
"title": "Timing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In single time style (used with faster music) the triple steps are replaced by single steps, so two beats of music are used for each single step while each step in the rock (R) step (S) is still completed in one beat, finishing the cycle in six musical beats. Some instructors will teach vocalizing the single time style as\" \"Quick. Quick. Slow. Slow. \" or \"Back Step. Slow. Slow.\"",
"title": "Timing"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "There is the choice to start with triples or with a rock step, however if you check the above chart where a triple step starts on a 1, 2 you can see that the pattern progresses and wraps back around. The choice of starting with a triple or a rock step does have musical consequences as music has phrasing with hits that often happen on 12, or 24 or 36... This means that dancers who choose to start with a rock step will probably find themselves on a rock step on every new phrase. Those who start with a triple will start with a triple on each new phrase. An advantage of starting with the triple step is that dancers can more easily change their foot work right at the start of the musical phrase.",
"title": "Timing"
}
]
| East Coast Swing (ECS) is a form of social partner dance. It belongs to the group of swing dances. It is danced under fast swing music, including lindy hop, rock and roll and boogie-woogie. Yerrington and Outland equated East Coast Swing to the New Yorker in 1961. Originally known as "Eastern Swing" by Arthur Murray Studios, the name East Coast Swing became more common between 1975 and 1980. | 2001-11-28T07:36:59Z | 2023-12-03T21:45:12Z | [
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:ISBN",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Dance",
"Template:Short description",
"Template:Refimprove",
"Template:Wikibooks"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Swing |
10,148 | Ernst Kaltenbrunner | Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was a high-ranking Austrian SS official during the Nazi era and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner was the third Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which included the offices of Gestapo, Kripo and SD, from January 1943 until the end of World War II in Europe.
Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SS in 1931, and by 1935 he was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. In 1938, he assisted in the Anschluss and was given command of the SS and police force in Austria. In January 1943, Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief of the RSHA, succeeding Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated in May 1942.
A committed anti-Semite and fanatical Hitler loyalist, Kaltenbrunner oversaw a period in which the genocide of Jews intensified. He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial (Himmler having committed suicide in May 1945) at the Nuremberg trials, where he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kaltenbrunner was sentenced to death and executed by hanging 16 October 1946.
Kaltenbrunner was born in Ried im Innkreis, Austria, the son of a lawyer, spent his early years and primary education in Raab and later attended the Realgymnasium in Linz. Raised in a nationalist family, he was childhood friends with Adolf Eichmann, the infamous SS officer who played a key role in implementing the Nazis' "Final Solution" against Europe's Jews. After Gymnasium, Kaltenbrunner went on to obtain his PhD in law at Graz University in 1926.
Kaltenbrunner worked at a law firm in Salzburg for a year before opening his own law office in Linz. He had deep scars on his face reportedly from dueling in his student days, although some sources attribute them to a car accident.
On 14 January 1934, Kaltenbrunner married Elisabeth Eder (20 October 1908, Linz, Upper Austria – 20 May 2002, Linz), who was also a Nazi Party member; the couple had three children. In addition to the children from his marriage, Kaltenbrunner had twins, Ursula and Wolfgang (b. 1945) with his long-time mistress, Gisela Gräfin von Westarp (27 June 1920, Wittenberg on the Elbe – 2 June 1983, Munich). All the children survived the war.
On 18 October 1930, Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party as member number 300,179. In 1931, he was the Bezirksredner (district speaker) for the Nazi Party in Upper Austria. Kaltenbrunner joined the SS on 31 August 1931; his SS number was 13,039. He first became a Rechtsberater (legal consultant) for the Nazi Party in 1929 and later held this same position for SS Abschnitt (Section) VIII, beginning in 1932. That same year he began working at his father's law practice, and by 1933 he had become head of the National-Socialist Lawyers' League in Linz.
In January 1934, Kaltenbrunner was briefly jailed at the Kaisersteinbruch detention camp with other Nazis for conspiracy by the Engelbert Dollfuss government. While there he led a hunger strike which forced the government to release 490 of the party members. In 1935, he was jailed again on suspicion of high treason. This charge was dropped, but he was sentenced to six months imprisonment for conspiracy and he lost his license to practice law.
From mid-1935 Kaltenbrunner was head of the illegal SS Abschnitt VIII in Linz and was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. To provide Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinz Jost with new information, Kaltenbrunner repeatedly made trips to Bavaria. He would hide on a train and on a ship that traveled to Passau, then return with money and orders for Austrian comrades. In 1937 Kaltenbrunner was arrested again by Austrian authorities on charges of heading the illegal Nazi Party organization in Oberösterreich. He was released in September.
Acting on orders from Hermann Göring, Kaltenbrunner assisted in bringing about the Anschluss with Germany (13 March 1938); he was awarded the role of State Secretary for Public Security in the Seyss-Inquart cabinet of 11 to 13 March 1938. Controlled from behind the scenes by Himmler, Kaltenbrunner still led, albeit clandestinely, the Austrian SS as part of his duty to "coordinate" and manage the Austrian population - this entailed the Nazification of all aspects of Austrian society. Then on 21 March 1938, he was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer. He was a member of the German Reichstag from 10 April 1938 until 8 May 1945. Amid this activity, he helped establish the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp near Linz. Mauthausen was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Austria following the Anschluss. On 11 September 1938, Kaltenbrunner was promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer (equivalent to a lieutenant general in the German Army) while holding the position of Führer of SS-Oberabschnitt Österreich (re-designated SS-Oberabschnitt Donau in November 1938). Also in 1938 he was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer; HSSPF) for Oberabschnitt Donau, which was the primary SS command in Austria (he held that post until 30 January 1943).
In June 1940, Kaltenbrunner was appointed Vienna's chief of police and held that additional post for a year. In July 1940, he was commissioned as a SS-Untersturmführer into the Waffen-SS Reserve. Alongside his many official duties, Kaltenbrunner also developed an intelligence network across Austria, moving southeastwards, which eventually brought him to Himmler's attention for appointment as chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in January 1943. The RSHA was composed of the SiPo (Sicherheitspolizei; the combined forces of the Gestapo and Kripo) along with the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service). Kaltenbrunner replaced Heydrich, who had been assassinated in June 1942. Kaltenbrunner held this position until the end of World War II. Hardly anyone knew Kaltenbrunner, and upon his appointment, Himmler transferred responsibility both for SS personnel and for economics from the RSHA to the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Nonetheless, Kaltenbrunner was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei on 21 June 1943. He also replaced Heydrich as president (serving from 1943 to 1945) of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), the organization today known as Interpol.
Fearing a collapsing home-front due to the Allied bombing campaigns, and worried that another "stab-in-the-back" at home could arise as a result, Kaltenbrunner immediately tightened the Nazi grip within Germany. From what historian Anthony Read relates, Kaltenbrunner's appointment as RSHA chief came as a surprise given the other possible candidates like the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, or even the SD foreign-intelligence chief, Walter Schellenberg. Historian Richard Grunberger also added the name of Wilhelm Stuckart, the future minister of the German Interior, as another potential candidate for head of the RSHA; however, he suggests that Kaltenbrunner was most likely selected since he was a comparative "newcomer", expected to be more "pliable" in Himmler's hands.
Like many of the ideological fanatics in the regime, Kaltenbrunner was a committed anti-Semite. According to former SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Georg Mayer, Kaltenbrunner was present at a December 1940 meeting among Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and Heydrich where it was decided to gas all Jews incapable of heavy physical work. Under Kaltenbrunner's command, the genocide of Jews picked up pace as "the process of extermination was to be expedited and the concentration of the Jews in the Reich itself and the occupied countries were to be liquidated as soon as possible." Kaltenbrunner stayed constantly informed over the status of concentration-camp activities, receiving periodic reports at his office in the RSHA.
To combat homosexuality across the greater Reich, Kaltenbrunner pushed the Ministry of Justice in July 1943 for an edict mandating compulsory castration for anyone found guilty of this offense. While this was rejected, he still took steps to get the army to review some 6,000 cases to prosecute homosexuals.
During the summer of 1943, Kaltenbrunner conducted his second inspection of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. While he was there, 15 prisoners were selected to demonstrate for Kaltenbrunner three methods of killing: by a gunshot to the neck, hanging, and gassing. After the killings were performed, Kaltenbrunner inspected the crematorium and later the quarry. In October 1943, he told Herbert Kappler, the head of German police and security services in Rome, that the "eradication of the Jews in Italy" was of "special interest" for "general security". Four days later, Kappler's SS and police units began rounding up and deporting Jews by train to Auschwitz concentration camp.
In 1944, during an arranged meeting in Klessheim Castle near Salzburg, when Hitler was in the process of strong-arming Admiral Horthy into a closer integration between Hungary and Nazi Germany, Kaltenbrunner was present for the negotiations and escorted Horthy out once they were over. Accompanying Horthy and Kaltenbrunner on the journey back to Hungary, Adolf Eichmann brought with him a special Einsatzkommando unit to begin the process of rounding up and deporting Hungary's 750,000 Jews.
It was said that even Himmler feared him, as Kaltenbrunner was an intimidating figure with his 1.94 metres (6 ft 4 in) height, facial scars, and volatile temper. Kaltenbrunner was also a longtime friend of Otto Skorzeny and recommended him for many secret missions, allowing Skorzeny to become one of Hitler's favorite agents. Kaltenbrunner also allegedly headed Operation Long Jump, an alleged plan to assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943.
Immediately in the wake of the 20 July Plot on Hitler's life in 1944, Kaltenbrunner was summoned to Hitler's wartime headquarters at the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) in East Prussia to begin the investigation into who had planned the assassination attempt. Once it was revealed that an attempted military coup against Hitler had been launched, Himmler and Kaltenbrunner had to tread carefully, as the military was not under the jurisdiction of the Gestapo or the SD. When the attempt failed, the conspirators were soon identified. An estimated 5,000 people were eventually executed, with many more sent to concentration camps.
Historian Heinz Höhne counted Kaltenbrunner among the fanatical Hitler loyalists and described him as being committed "to the bitter end". Field reports from the SD in October 1944 about deteriorating morale in the military prompted Kaltenbrunner to urge the involvement of the RSHA in military court-martial proceedings, but this was rejected by Himmler, who thought it unwise to interfere in Wehrmacht (military) affairs. In December 1944, Kaltenbrunner was granted the additional rank of General of the Waffen-SS. On 15 November 1944 he was awarded the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords. In addition, he was awarded the NSDAP Golden Party Badge and the Blutorden (Blood Order). Using his authority as Chief of the RSHA, Kaltenbrunner issued a decree on 6 February 1945 that allowed policemen to shoot "disloyal" people at their discretion, without judicial review.
On 12 March 1945, a meeting took place in Vorarlberg between Kaltenbrunner and Carl Jacob Burckhardt, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (1945–48). Just over a month later, Himmler was informed that SS-Obergruppenführer (general) Karl Wolff had been negotiating with the Allies for the capitulation of Italy. When questioned by Himmler, Wolff explained that he was operating under Hitler's orders and attempting to play separate Allies against one another. Himmler believed him, but Kaltenbrunner did not, and told Himmler that an informant claimed that Wolff had also negotiated with Cardinal Schuster of Milan and was about to surrender occupied Italy to the Allies. Himmler angrily repeated the allegations; Wolff, feigning offence, challenged Himmler to present these statements to Hitler. Unnerved by Wolff's demands, Himmler backed down, and Hitler sent Wolff back to Italy to continue his purported disruption of the Allies.
On 18 April 1945, three weeks before the war ended, Himmler named Kaltenbrunner commander-in-chief of the remaining German forces in southern Europe. Kaltenbrunner attempted to organize cells for post-war sabotage in the region and Germany, but accomplished little. Hitler made one of his last appearances on 20 April 1945 outside the subterranean Führerbunker in Berlin, where he pinned medals on boys from the Hitler Youth for their bravery. Kaltenbrunner was among those present, but realizing the end was near, he then fled from Berlin.
On 12 May 1945 Kaltenbrunner was apprehended along with his adjutant, Arthur Scheidler, and two SS guards in a remote cabin at the top of the Totes Gebirge mountains near Altaussee, Austria, by a search party initiated by the 80th Infantry Division, Third U.S. Army. Information had been gained from Johann Brandauer, the assistant burgermeister of Altaussee, that the party was hiding out with false papers in the cabin. This was supported by an eyewitness sighting by the Altaussee mountain ranger five days earlier. Special Agent Robert E. Matteson from the C.I.C. Detachment organized and led a patrol consisting of Brandauer, four ex-Wehrmacht soldiers, and a squad of US soldiers to effect the arrest. The party climbed over mountainous and glacial terrain for six hours in darkness before arriving at the cabin. After a short standoff, all four men exited the cabin and surrendered without a shot fired. Kaltenbrunner claimed to be a doctor and offered a false name. However, upon their arrival back to town his last mistress, Countess Gisela von Westarp, and the wife (Iris) of his adjutant Arthur Scheidler chanced to spot the men being led away; the ladies called out to both men and embraced them. This action resulted in their identification and arrest by US troops.
In 2001, Ernst Kaltenbrunner's personal Nazi security seal was found in an Alpine lake in Styria, Austria, 56 years after he had thrown it away to hide his identity. The seal was recovered by a Dutch citizen on holiday. The seal has the words "Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD" (Chief of the Security Police and SD) engraved on it. Experts have examined the seal and believe it was discarded in the final days of the European war in May 1945.
At the Nuremberg trials, Kaltenbrunner was charged with conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Due to the areas over which he exercised responsibility as an SS general and as chief of the RSHA, he was acquitted of crimes against peace, but held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
During the initial stages of the Nuremberg trials, Kaltenbrunner was absent because of two episodes of subarachnoid hemorrhage, which required several weeks of recovery time. After his health improved, the tribunal denied his request for pardon. When he was released from a military hospital he pleaded not guilty to the charges of the indictment against him. Kaltenbrunner said all decrees and legal documents that bore his signature were "rubber-stamped" and filed by his adjutant(s). He also said Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller had illegally affixed his signature to numerous documents in question.
Kaltenbrunner argued in his defence that his position as RSHA chief existed only theoretically and said he was only active in matters of espionage and intelligence. He maintained that Himmler, as his superior, was the person culpable for the atrocities committed during his tenure as chief of the RSHA. Kaltenbrunner also asserted that he had no knowledge of the Final Solution before 1943 and went on to claim that he protested against the ill-treatment of the Jews to Himmler and Hitler. Further denials from Kaltenbrunner included statements that he knew nothing of the Commissar Order and that he never visited Mauthausen concentration camp, despite documentation of his visit. At one point, Kaltenbrunner went so far as to avow that he was responsible for bringing the Final Solution to an end. In response to his denials, people in the courtroom laughed.
On 30 September 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) found Kaltenbrunner not guilty of crimes against peace, but guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity (counts three and four). On 1 October 1946, the IMT sentenced him to death by hanging.
Kaltenbrunner was executed on 16 October 1946, around 1:15 a.m., in Nuremberg. His body, like those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring (who committed suicide the previous day), was cremated at the Eastern Cemetery in Munich and the ashes were scattered in a tributary of the River Isar. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 – 16 October 1946) was a high-ranking Austrian SS official during the Nazi era and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner was the third Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which included the offices of Gestapo, Kripo and SD, from January 1943 until the end of World War II in Europe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SS in 1931, and by 1935 he was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. In 1938, he assisted in the Anschluss and was given command of the SS and police force in Austria. In January 1943, Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief of the RSHA, succeeding Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated in May 1942.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "A committed anti-Semite and fanatical Hitler loyalist, Kaltenbrunner oversaw a period in which the genocide of Jews intensified. He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial (Himmler having committed suicide in May 1945) at the Nuremberg trials, where he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kaltenbrunner was sentenced to death and executed by hanging 16 October 1946.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Kaltenbrunner was born in Ried im Innkreis, Austria, the son of a lawyer, spent his early years and primary education in Raab and later attended the Realgymnasium in Linz. Raised in a nationalist family, he was childhood friends with Adolf Eichmann, the infamous SS officer who played a key role in implementing the Nazis' \"Final Solution\" against Europe's Jews. After Gymnasium, Kaltenbrunner went on to obtain his PhD in law at Graz University in 1926.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Kaltenbrunner worked at a law firm in Salzburg for a year before opening his own law office in Linz. He had deep scars on his face reportedly from dueling in his student days, although some sources attribute them to a car accident.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On 14 January 1934, Kaltenbrunner married Elisabeth Eder (20 October 1908, Linz, Upper Austria – 20 May 2002, Linz), who was also a Nazi Party member; the couple had three children. In addition to the children from his marriage, Kaltenbrunner had twins, Ursula and Wolfgang (b. 1945) with his long-time mistress, Gisela Gräfin von Westarp (27 June 1920, Wittenberg on the Elbe – 2 June 1983, Munich). All the children survived the war.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On 18 October 1930, Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party as member number 300,179. In 1931, he was the Bezirksredner (district speaker) for the Nazi Party in Upper Austria. Kaltenbrunner joined the SS on 31 August 1931; his SS number was 13,039. He first became a Rechtsberater (legal consultant) for the Nazi Party in 1929 and later held this same position for SS Abschnitt (Section) VIII, beginning in 1932. That same year he began working at his father's law practice, and by 1933 he had become head of the National-Socialist Lawyers' League in Linz.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In January 1934, Kaltenbrunner was briefly jailed at the Kaisersteinbruch detention camp with other Nazis for conspiracy by the Engelbert Dollfuss government. While there he led a hunger strike which forced the government to release 490 of the party members. In 1935, he was jailed again on suspicion of high treason. This charge was dropped, but he was sentenced to six months imprisonment for conspiracy and he lost his license to practice law.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "From mid-1935 Kaltenbrunner was head of the illegal SS Abschnitt VIII in Linz and was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. To provide Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinz Jost with new information, Kaltenbrunner repeatedly made trips to Bavaria. He would hide on a train and on a ship that traveled to Passau, then return with money and orders for Austrian comrades. In 1937 Kaltenbrunner was arrested again by Austrian authorities on charges of heading the illegal Nazi Party organization in Oberösterreich. He was released in September.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Acting on orders from Hermann Göring, Kaltenbrunner assisted in bringing about the Anschluss with Germany (13 March 1938); he was awarded the role of State Secretary for Public Security in the Seyss-Inquart cabinet of 11 to 13 March 1938. Controlled from behind the scenes by Himmler, Kaltenbrunner still led, albeit clandestinely, the Austrian SS as part of his duty to \"coordinate\" and manage the Austrian population - this entailed the Nazification of all aspects of Austrian society. Then on 21 March 1938, he was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer. He was a member of the German Reichstag from 10 April 1938 until 8 May 1945. Amid this activity, he helped establish the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp near Linz. Mauthausen was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Austria following the Anschluss. On 11 September 1938, Kaltenbrunner was promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer (equivalent to a lieutenant general in the German Army) while holding the position of Führer of SS-Oberabschnitt Österreich (re-designated SS-Oberabschnitt Donau in November 1938). Also in 1938 he was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader (Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer; HSSPF) for Oberabschnitt Donau, which was the primary SS command in Austria (he held that post until 30 January 1943).",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In June 1940, Kaltenbrunner was appointed Vienna's chief of police and held that additional post for a year. In July 1940, he was commissioned as a SS-Untersturmführer into the Waffen-SS Reserve. Alongside his many official duties, Kaltenbrunner also developed an intelligence network across Austria, moving southeastwards, which eventually brought him to Himmler's attention for appointment as chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in January 1943. The RSHA was composed of the SiPo (Sicherheitspolizei; the combined forces of the Gestapo and Kripo) along with the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service). Kaltenbrunner replaced Heydrich, who had been assassinated in June 1942. Kaltenbrunner held this position until the end of World War II. Hardly anyone knew Kaltenbrunner, and upon his appointment, Himmler transferred responsibility both for SS personnel and for economics from the RSHA to the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Nonetheless, Kaltenbrunner was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei on 21 June 1943. He also replaced Heydrich as president (serving from 1943 to 1945) of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC), the organization today known as Interpol.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Fearing a collapsing home-front due to the Allied bombing campaigns, and worried that another \"stab-in-the-back\" at home could arise as a result, Kaltenbrunner immediately tightened the Nazi grip within Germany. From what historian Anthony Read relates, Kaltenbrunner's appointment as RSHA chief came as a surprise given the other possible candidates like the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, or even the SD foreign-intelligence chief, Walter Schellenberg. Historian Richard Grunberger also added the name of Wilhelm Stuckart, the future minister of the German Interior, as another potential candidate for head of the RSHA; however, he suggests that Kaltenbrunner was most likely selected since he was a comparative \"newcomer\", expected to be more \"pliable\" in Himmler's hands.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Like many of the ideological fanatics in the regime, Kaltenbrunner was a committed anti-Semite. According to former SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Georg Mayer, Kaltenbrunner was present at a December 1940 meeting among Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and Heydrich where it was decided to gas all Jews incapable of heavy physical work. Under Kaltenbrunner's command, the genocide of Jews picked up pace as \"the process of extermination was to be expedited and the concentration of the Jews in the Reich itself and the occupied countries were to be liquidated as soon as possible.\" Kaltenbrunner stayed constantly informed over the status of concentration-camp activities, receiving periodic reports at his office in the RSHA.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "To combat homosexuality across the greater Reich, Kaltenbrunner pushed the Ministry of Justice in July 1943 for an edict mandating compulsory castration for anyone found guilty of this offense. While this was rejected, he still took steps to get the army to review some 6,000 cases to prosecute homosexuals.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "During the summer of 1943, Kaltenbrunner conducted his second inspection of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. While he was there, 15 prisoners were selected to demonstrate for Kaltenbrunner three methods of killing: by a gunshot to the neck, hanging, and gassing. After the killings were performed, Kaltenbrunner inspected the crematorium and later the quarry. In October 1943, he told Herbert Kappler, the head of German police and security services in Rome, that the \"eradication of the Jews in Italy\" was of \"special interest\" for \"general security\". Four days later, Kappler's SS and police units began rounding up and deporting Jews by train to Auschwitz concentration camp.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1944, during an arranged meeting in Klessheim Castle near Salzburg, when Hitler was in the process of strong-arming Admiral Horthy into a closer integration between Hungary and Nazi Germany, Kaltenbrunner was present for the negotiations and escorted Horthy out once they were over. Accompanying Horthy and Kaltenbrunner on the journey back to Hungary, Adolf Eichmann brought with him a special Einsatzkommando unit to begin the process of rounding up and deporting Hungary's 750,000 Jews.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "It was said that even Himmler feared him, as Kaltenbrunner was an intimidating figure with his 1.94 metres (6 ft 4 in) height, facial scars, and volatile temper. Kaltenbrunner was also a longtime friend of Otto Skorzeny and recommended him for many secret missions, allowing Skorzeny to become one of Hitler's favorite agents. Kaltenbrunner also allegedly headed Operation Long Jump, an alleged plan to assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Immediately in the wake of the 20 July Plot on Hitler's life in 1944, Kaltenbrunner was summoned to Hitler's wartime headquarters at the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair) in East Prussia to begin the investigation into who had planned the assassination attempt. Once it was revealed that an attempted military coup against Hitler had been launched, Himmler and Kaltenbrunner had to tread carefully, as the military was not under the jurisdiction of the Gestapo or the SD. When the attempt failed, the conspirators were soon identified. An estimated 5,000 people were eventually executed, with many more sent to concentration camps.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Historian Heinz Höhne counted Kaltenbrunner among the fanatical Hitler loyalists and described him as being committed \"to the bitter end\". Field reports from the SD in October 1944 about deteriorating morale in the military prompted Kaltenbrunner to urge the involvement of the RSHA in military court-martial proceedings, but this was rejected by Himmler, who thought it unwise to interfere in Wehrmacht (military) affairs. In December 1944, Kaltenbrunner was granted the additional rank of General of the Waffen-SS. On 15 November 1944 he was awarded the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords. In addition, he was awarded the NSDAP Golden Party Badge and the Blutorden (Blood Order). Using his authority as Chief of the RSHA, Kaltenbrunner issued a decree on 6 February 1945 that allowed policemen to shoot \"disloyal\" people at their discretion, without judicial review.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "On 12 March 1945, a meeting took place in Vorarlberg between Kaltenbrunner and Carl Jacob Burckhardt, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (1945–48). Just over a month later, Himmler was informed that SS-Obergruppenführer (general) Karl Wolff had been negotiating with the Allies for the capitulation of Italy. When questioned by Himmler, Wolff explained that he was operating under Hitler's orders and attempting to play separate Allies against one another. Himmler believed him, but Kaltenbrunner did not, and told Himmler that an informant claimed that Wolff had also negotiated with Cardinal Schuster of Milan and was about to surrender occupied Italy to the Allies. Himmler angrily repeated the allegations; Wolff, feigning offence, challenged Himmler to present these statements to Hitler. Unnerved by Wolff's demands, Himmler backed down, and Hitler sent Wolff back to Italy to continue his purported disruption of the Allies.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "On 18 April 1945, three weeks before the war ended, Himmler named Kaltenbrunner commander-in-chief of the remaining German forces in southern Europe. Kaltenbrunner attempted to organize cells for post-war sabotage in the region and Germany, but accomplished little. Hitler made one of his last appearances on 20 April 1945 outside the subterranean Führerbunker in Berlin, where he pinned medals on boys from the Hitler Youth for their bravery. Kaltenbrunner was among those present, but realizing the end was near, he then fled from Berlin.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "On 12 May 1945 Kaltenbrunner was apprehended along with his adjutant, Arthur Scheidler, and two SS guards in a remote cabin at the top of the Totes Gebirge mountains near Altaussee, Austria, by a search party initiated by the 80th Infantry Division, Third U.S. Army. Information had been gained from Johann Brandauer, the assistant burgermeister of Altaussee, that the party was hiding out with false papers in the cabin. This was supported by an eyewitness sighting by the Altaussee mountain ranger five days earlier. Special Agent Robert E. Matteson from the C.I.C. Detachment organized and led a patrol consisting of Brandauer, four ex-Wehrmacht soldiers, and a squad of US soldiers to effect the arrest. The party climbed over mountainous and glacial terrain for six hours in darkness before arriving at the cabin. After a short standoff, all four men exited the cabin and surrendered without a shot fired. Kaltenbrunner claimed to be a doctor and offered a false name. However, upon their arrival back to town his last mistress, Countess Gisela von Westarp, and the wife (Iris) of his adjutant Arthur Scheidler chanced to spot the men being led away; the ladies called out to both men and embraced them. This action resulted in their identification and arrest by US troops.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 2001, Ernst Kaltenbrunner's personal Nazi security seal was found in an Alpine lake in Styria, Austria, 56 years after he had thrown it away to hide his identity. The seal was recovered by a Dutch citizen on holiday. The seal has the words \"Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD\" (Chief of the Security Police and SD) engraved on it. Experts have examined the seal and believe it was discarded in the final days of the European war in May 1945.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "At the Nuremberg trials, Kaltenbrunner was charged with conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Due to the areas over which he exercised responsibility as an SS general and as chief of the RSHA, he was acquitted of crimes against peace, but held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "During the initial stages of the Nuremberg trials, Kaltenbrunner was absent because of two episodes of subarachnoid hemorrhage, which required several weeks of recovery time. After his health improved, the tribunal denied his request for pardon. When he was released from a military hospital he pleaded not guilty to the charges of the indictment against him. Kaltenbrunner said all decrees and legal documents that bore his signature were \"rubber-stamped\" and filed by his adjutant(s). He also said Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller had illegally affixed his signature to numerous documents in question.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Kaltenbrunner argued in his defence that his position as RSHA chief existed only theoretically and said he was only active in matters of espionage and intelligence. He maintained that Himmler, as his superior, was the person culpable for the atrocities committed during his tenure as chief of the RSHA. Kaltenbrunner also asserted that he had no knowledge of the Final Solution before 1943 and went on to claim that he protested against the ill-treatment of the Jews to Himmler and Hitler. Further denials from Kaltenbrunner included statements that he knew nothing of the Commissar Order and that he never visited Mauthausen concentration camp, despite documentation of his visit. At one point, Kaltenbrunner went so far as to avow that he was responsible for bringing the Final Solution to an end. In response to his denials, people in the courtroom laughed.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "On 30 September 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) found Kaltenbrunner not guilty of crimes against peace, but guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity (counts three and four). On 1 October 1946, the IMT sentenced him to death by hanging.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Kaltenbrunner was executed on 16 October 1946, around 1:15 a.m., in Nuremberg. His body, like those of the other nine executed men and that of Hermann Göring (who committed suicide the previous day), was cremated at the Eastern Cemetery in Munich and the ashes were scattered in a tributary of the River Isar.",
"title": "SS career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Ernst Kaltenbrunner was a high-ranking Austrian SS official during the Nazi era and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner was the third Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which included the offices of Gestapo, Kripo and SD, from January 1943 until the end of World War II in Europe. Kaltenbrunner joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SS in 1931, and by 1935 he was considered a leader of the Austrian SS. In 1938, he assisted in the Anschluss and was given command of the SS and police force in Austria. In January 1943, Kaltenbrunner was appointed chief of the RSHA, succeeding Reinhard Heydrich, who was assassinated in May 1942. A committed anti-Semite and fanatical Hitler loyalist, Kaltenbrunner oversaw a period in which the genocide of Jews intensified. He was the highest-ranking member of the SS to face trial at the Nuremberg trials, where he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kaltenbrunner was sentenced to death and executed by hanging 16 October 1946. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-10-12T08:52:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Kaltenbrunner |
10,150 | Engelbert Dollfuss | Engelbert Dollfuß (alternatively: Dolfuss, German: [ˈɛŋəlbɛɐ̯t ˈdɔlfuːs]; 4 October 1892 – 25 July 1934) was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he ascended to Federal Chancellor in 1932 in the midst of a crisis for the conservative government. In early 1933, the so called "Selbstausschaltung des Parlaments" happened, which made the Austrian parliament unable to govern. Suppressing the Socialist movement in February 1934 during the Austrian Civil War and later banning the Austrian Nazi Party, he cemented the rule of authoritarian conservatism through the First of May Constitution. Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained the regime until Adolf Hitler's Anschluss in 1938.
Dollfuss was born to a poor, peasant family in the hamlet of Great Maierhof in the commune of St. Gotthard near Texingtal in Lower Austria. Young Dollfuss spent his childhood in his step-father's house in the nearby commune of Kirnberg, where he also went to elementary school. The local parish priests helped to finance Dollfuss's education, as his parents were unable to do so by themselves alone. He attended high school in Hollabrunn. After graduating from high school, Dollfuss intended to become a priest, and thus he enrolled at the University of Vienna to study theology, but after a few months changed course and started studying law in 1912. As a student, he earned a livelihood giving lessons. He became a member of the Students' Social Movement, a student organisation dedicated to social and charitable work among the workers.
As World War I broke out, Dollfuss reported to be recruited in Vienna but was rejected because he was two centimetres shorter than the minimum. Fully grown, he was less than 5 ft 0 in (1.52 m) in height, and later was nicknamed "Millimetternich", a portmanteau of Millimeter (German for millimetre) and Klemens von Metternich. The same day he was rejected in Vienna, Dollfuss went to St. Pölten where the recruiting commission for his district was located and insisted to be recruited, and, even though he did not meet the minimum height standards, he was accepted. As a volunteer, he had a right to choose a regiment in which he would serve, and Dollfuss opted for the Tyrolese militia also known as the Kaiserschützen. He was soon promoted to the rank of corporal. He served for 37 months at the Italian Front, south of Tyrol. By 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant.
After the war, he was still a student and was employed by the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union, which helped him to secure his material existence, and it was here where Dollfuss gained his first political experience. There, he organised peasants to help them recover from the war, as well as shield them from the influences of Marxism. Being recognised for his abilities he showed at the Union, he was sent for further studies to Berlin. In Berlin, he began to garner dislike for some of his professors, as academia there was substantially influenced by liberalism and socialism. In his studies, he devoted himself to the Christian principles of economics. In Germany, he became a member of the Federation of German Peasants' Union and of the Preussenkasse – essentially, a central bank for member-cooperatives, where he gained practical experience. In Germany, he met his future wife Alwine Glienke, a descendant of a Pomeranian family. Dollfuss often met with Carl Sonnenschein, leader of social activities of students and the pioneer of the Catholic movement in Berlin.
After returning to Vienna, he was a secretary of the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union. He devoted his efforts to consolidate that industry. Dollfuss was instrumental in the founding of the regional Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Austria, becoming its secretary and a director; the Federation of Agriculture and the Agricultural Labourers’ Insurance Institute; in organising the new Agrarian policy of Lower Austria and in laying the foundations for the corporative organisation of agriculture. A few years later, he was representative of Austria at the International Agrarian Congress, where his proposals made him internationally known in that sphere. He was seen as an unofficial leader of the Austrian peasantry.
On 1 October 1930 Dollfuss was appointed the president of the Federal Railways, the largest industrial corporation in Austria. There, Dollfuss came into contact with all branches of the industry. In March 1931, he was appointed Federal Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
On 10 May 1932, Dollfuss, age 39 and with only one year's experience in the Federal Government, was offered the office of Chancellor by President Wilhelm Miklas, also a member of the Christian-Social Party. Dollfuss refused to reply, instead spending the night in his favourite church praying, returning in the morning for a bath and a spartan meal before replying to the President that he would accept the offer. Dollfuss was sworn in on 20 May 1932 as head of a coalition government between the Christian-Social Party, the Landbund — a right-wing agrarian party — and Heimatblock, the parliamentary wing of the Heimwehr, a paramilitary ultra-nationalist group. The coalition assumed the pressing task of tackling the problems of the Great Depression. Much of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's industry had been situated in the areas that became part of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia after World War I as a result of the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Postwar Austria was therefore economically disadvantaged.
Dollfuss's support in Parliament was marginal; his coalition had only a one-vote majority.
In March 1933, a constitutional impasse arose over irregularities in the voting procedure in the Austrian parliament. The Social Democratic president of the National Council (the lower house of parliament), Karl Renner, resigned to be able to cast a vote as a parliament member. As a consequence, the two vice presidents, belonging to other parties, resigned as well in order to be able to vote. Without a president, the parliament could not conclude the session. Dollfuss took the three resignations as a pretext to declare that the National Council had become unworkable, and advised President Wilhelm Miklas to issue a decree adjourning it indefinitely. When the National Council wanted to reconvene days after the resignation of the three presidents, Dollfuss had police bar entrance to parliament, effectively eliminating democracy in Austria. From that point onwards, he governed by emergency decree, effectively seizing dictatorial powers.
Dollfuss was concerned that with German National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany from January 1933, the Austrian National Socialists (DNSAP) could gain a significant minority in future elections (according to fascism scholar Stanley G. Payne, should elections have been held in 1933, the DNSAP could have mustered about 25% of the votes – contemporary Time magazine analysts suggest a higher support of 50%, with a 75% approval rate in the Tyrol region bordering Nazi Germany). In addition, the Soviet Union's influence in Europe had increased throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Dollfuss banned the Communist Party of Austria on 26 May 1933 and the DNSAP on 19 June 1933. Under the banner of the Fatherland Front, he later established a one-party dictatorship rule largely modeled after fascism in Italy, banning all other Austrian parties - including the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDAPÖ). Social Democrats however continued to exist as an independent organization, nevertheless, though without its paramilitary Republikanischer Schutzbund, which until banned on 31 March 1933 could have mustered tens of thousands against Dollfuss's government.
Dollfuss modelled Austrofascism according to Catholic corporatist ideals with anti-secularist tones and in a similar way to Italian fascism, dropping Austrian pretenses of unification with Germany as long as the Nazi Party remained in power there. In August 1933, Benito Mussolini's regime issued a guarantee of Austrian independence. Dollfuss also exchanged "Secret Letters" with Mussolini about ways to guarantee Austrian independence. Mussolini had an interest in Austria forming a buffer zone against Nazi Germany. Dollfuss always stressed the similarity of the régimes of Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, and was convinced that Austrofascism and Italian fascism could counter totalitarian national-socialism and communism in Europe.
In September 1933 Dollfuss merged his Christian Social Party with elements of other nationalist and conservative groups, including the Heimwehr (which encompassed many workers who were unhappy with the radical leadership of the socialist party) to form the Vaterländische Front, though the Heimwehr continued to exist as an independent organization until 1936, when Dollfuss's successor Kurt von Schuschnigg forcibly merged it into the Front, instead creating the unabidingly loyal Frontmiliz as a paramilitary task-force. Dollfuss was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt in October 1933 by Rudolf Dertill, a 22-year-old who had been ejected from the military for his pro-Nazi views, and had joined the Nazi Party in 1932. Dertill was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted murder. In the aftermath of the attempted assassination, Dollfuss declared martial law, which allowed for the resumption of capital punishment in Austria.
In its drive to eliminate the Social Democrats' Schutzbund, the Dollfuss government searched the homes and meeting places of its members for weapons. On 12 February 1934, the Austrian Civil War was sparked by the armed resistance of the Linz branch of the Social Democrats to the search of their party headquarters. Word of the fighting in Linz spread quickly, and additional armed conflicts broke out, primarily in Austria's industrial regions and Vienna. The Schutzbund was greatly outnumbered by the police and army, which used artillery against the insurgents. In addition, the general strike which had been called to support the uprising failed to materialize. The result was the collapse of the rebellion by 15 February, with the deaths of about 350 persons, roughly equally divided between civilians, insurgents, and government forces. The Social Democrats were outlawed by the Federal government on 12 February 1934, and their leaders were imprisoned or fled abroad.
Dollfuss staged a rump parliamentary session with just Fatherland Front members present in April 1934 to have a new constitution approved, effectively the second constitution in the world espousing corporatist ideas (after that of the Portuguese Estado Novo). The session retrospectively made all the decrees already passed since March 1933 legal. The new constitution became effective on 1 May 1934 and swept away the last remnants of democracy and the system of the First Austrian Republic.
Dollfuss was assassinated on 25 July 1934 by a group of Austrian Nazis, including Otto Planetta, Franz Holzweber, Ernst Feike, Franz Leeb, Josef Hackl, Ludwig Maitzen, Erich Wohlraab, and Paul Hudl, who entered the Chancellery building and shot him in an attempted coup d'état. During mass trials which took place after the coup, Hudl was sentenced to life in prison, while the others were sentenced to death for their involvement. Planetta and Holzweber were hanged on 31 July 1934, Feike was hanged on 7 August 1934, and Leeb, Hackl, Maitzen, and Wohlraab were hanged on 13 August 1934. Hudl was released under an amnesty in 1938.
In his dying moments, Dollfuss asked for Viaticum, the Eucharist administered to a dying person, but his assassins refused to give it to him. Mussolini had no hesitation in attributing the attack to the German dictator: the news reached him at Cesena, where he was examining the plans for a psychiatric hospital. Mussolini personally gave the announcement to Dollfuss's widow, who was a guest at his villa in Riccione with her children. He also put at the disposal of Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, who spent a holiday in Venice, a plane that allowed the prince to rush back to Vienna and to face the assailants with his militia, with the permission of President Wilhelm Miklas.
Mussolini also mobilised a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria to thwart the putsch. Then he announced to the world: "The independence of Austria, for which he has fallen, is a principle that has been defended and will be defended by Italy even more strenuously", and then replaced in the main square of Bolzano the statue of Walther von der Vogelweide, a Germanic troubadour, with that of Drusus, a Roman general who conquered part of Germany. This was the greatest moment of friction between Italian Fascism and National Socialism and Mussolini himself came down several times to reaffirm the differences in the field.
The assassination of Dollfuss was accompanied by uprisings in many regions in Austria, resulting in further deaths. In Carinthia, a large contingent of northern German Nazis tried to seize power but were subdued by the Italian units nearby. At first Hitler was jubilant, but the Italian reaction surprised him. Hitler became convinced that he could not face a conflict with the Western European powers, and he officially denied liability, stating his regret for the murder of the Austrian Chancellor. He replaced the ambassador to Vienna with Franz von Papen and prevented the conspirators entering Germany, also expelling them from the Austrian Nazi Party. The Nazi assassins in Vienna, after declaring the formation of a new government under Austrian Nazi Anton Rintelen, previously exiled by Dollfuss as Austrian Ambassador to Rome, surrendered after threats from the Austrian military of blowing up the Chancellery using dynamite, and were subsequently tried and executed by hanging. Kurt Schuschnigg, previously Minister of Education, was appointed new chancellor of Austria after a few days, assuming the office from Dollfuss’s deputy Starhemberg.
Out of a population of 6.5 million, approximately 500,000 Austrians were present at Dollfuss's burial in Vienna. He is interred in the Hietzing cemetery in Vienna. His wife, Alwine Dollfuss (who died in 1973) was later buried beside him. Two of his children, Rudolf and Eva, were in Italy as guests of Rachele Mussolini at the time of his death, an event which saw Mussolini himself shed tears over his slain ally.
In Bertolt Brecht's 1941 play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Dollfuss is represented by the character "Dullfeet". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Engelbert Dollfuß (alternatively: Dolfuss, German: [ˈɛŋəlbɛɐ̯t ˈdɔlfuːs]; 4 October 1892 – 25 July 1934) was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he ascended to Federal Chancellor in 1932 in the midst of a crisis for the conservative government. In early 1933, the so called \"Selbstausschaltung des Parlaments\" happened, which made the Austrian parliament unable to govern. Suppressing the Socialist movement in February 1934 during the Austrian Civil War and later banning the Austrian Nazi Party, he cemented the rule of authoritarian conservatism through the First of May Constitution. Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained the regime until Adolf Hitler's Anschluss in 1938.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Dollfuss was born to a poor, peasant family in the hamlet of Great Maierhof in the commune of St. Gotthard near Texingtal in Lower Austria. Young Dollfuss spent his childhood in his step-father's house in the nearby commune of Kirnberg, where he also went to elementary school. The local parish priests helped to finance Dollfuss's education, as his parents were unable to do so by themselves alone. He attended high school in Hollabrunn. After graduating from high school, Dollfuss intended to become a priest, and thus he enrolled at the University of Vienna to study theology, but after a few months changed course and started studying law in 1912. As a student, he earned a livelihood giving lessons. He became a member of the Students' Social Movement, a student organisation dedicated to social and charitable work among the workers.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "As World War I broke out, Dollfuss reported to be recruited in Vienna but was rejected because he was two centimetres shorter than the minimum. Fully grown, he was less than 5 ft 0 in (1.52 m) in height, and later was nicknamed \"Millimetternich\", a portmanteau of Millimeter (German for millimetre) and Klemens von Metternich. The same day he was rejected in Vienna, Dollfuss went to St. Pölten where the recruiting commission for his district was located and insisted to be recruited, and, even though he did not meet the minimum height standards, he was accepted. As a volunteer, he had a right to choose a regiment in which he would serve, and Dollfuss opted for the Tyrolese militia also known as the Kaiserschützen. He was soon promoted to the rank of corporal. He served for 37 months at the Italian Front, south of Tyrol. By 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After the war, he was still a student and was employed by the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union, which helped him to secure his material existence, and it was here where Dollfuss gained his first political experience. There, he organised peasants to help them recover from the war, as well as shield them from the influences of Marxism. Being recognised for his abilities he showed at the Union, he was sent for further studies to Berlin. In Berlin, he began to garner dislike for some of his professors, as academia there was substantially influenced by liberalism and socialism. In his studies, he devoted himself to the Christian principles of economics. In Germany, he became a member of the Federation of German Peasants' Union and of the Preussenkasse – essentially, a central bank for member-cooperatives, where he gained practical experience. In Germany, he met his future wife Alwine Glienke, a descendant of a Pomeranian family. Dollfuss often met with Carl Sonnenschein, leader of social activities of students and the pioneer of the Catholic movement in Berlin.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "After returning to Vienna, he was a secretary of the Lower Austrian Peasants' Union. He devoted his efforts to consolidate that industry. Dollfuss was instrumental in the founding of the regional Chamber of Agriculture of Lower Austria, becoming its secretary and a director; the Federation of Agriculture and the Agricultural Labourers’ Insurance Institute; in organising the new Agrarian policy of Lower Austria and in laying the foundations for the corporative organisation of agriculture. A few years later, he was representative of Austria at the International Agrarian Congress, where his proposals made him internationally known in that sphere. He was seen as an unofficial leader of the Austrian peasantry.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On 1 October 1930 Dollfuss was appointed the president of the Federal Railways, the largest industrial corporation in Austria. There, Dollfuss came into contact with all branches of the industry. In March 1931, he was appointed Federal Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On 10 May 1932, Dollfuss, age 39 and with only one year's experience in the Federal Government, was offered the office of Chancellor by President Wilhelm Miklas, also a member of the Christian-Social Party. Dollfuss refused to reply, instead spending the night in his favourite church praying, returning in the morning for a bath and a spartan meal before replying to the President that he would accept the offer. Dollfuss was sworn in on 20 May 1932 as head of a coalition government between the Christian-Social Party, the Landbund — a right-wing agrarian party — and Heimatblock, the parliamentary wing of the Heimwehr, a paramilitary ultra-nationalist group. The coalition assumed the pressing task of tackling the problems of the Great Depression. Much of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's industry had been situated in the areas that became part of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia after World War I as a result of the Treaty of Saint-Germain. Postwar Austria was therefore economically disadvantaged.",
"title": "Chancellor of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Dollfuss's support in Parliament was marginal; his coalition had only a one-vote majority.",
"title": "Chancellor of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In March 1933, a constitutional impasse arose over irregularities in the voting procedure in the Austrian parliament. The Social Democratic president of the National Council (the lower house of parliament), Karl Renner, resigned to be able to cast a vote as a parliament member. As a consequence, the two vice presidents, belonging to other parties, resigned as well in order to be able to vote. Without a president, the parliament could not conclude the session. Dollfuss took the three resignations as a pretext to declare that the National Council had become unworkable, and advised President Wilhelm Miklas to issue a decree adjourning it indefinitely. When the National Council wanted to reconvene days after the resignation of the three presidents, Dollfuss had police bar entrance to parliament, effectively eliminating democracy in Austria. From that point onwards, he governed by emergency decree, effectively seizing dictatorial powers.",
"title": "Dollfuss as dictator of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Dollfuss was concerned that with German National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany from January 1933, the Austrian National Socialists (DNSAP) could gain a significant minority in future elections (according to fascism scholar Stanley G. Payne, should elections have been held in 1933, the DNSAP could have mustered about 25% of the votes – contemporary Time magazine analysts suggest a higher support of 50%, with a 75% approval rate in the Tyrol region bordering Nazi Germany). In addition, the Soviet Union's influence in Europe had increased throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Dollfuss banned the Communist Party of Austria on 26 May 1933 and the DNSAP on 19 June 1933. Under the banner of the Fatherland Front, he later established a one-party dictatorship rule largely modeled after fascism in Italy, banning all other Austrian parties - including the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDAPÖ). Social Democrats however continued to exist as an independent organization, nevertheless, though without its paramilitary Republikanischer Schutzbund, which until banned on 31 March 1933 could have mustered tens of thousands against Dollfuss's government.",
"title": "Dollfuss as dictator of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Dollfuss modelled Austrofascism according to Catholic corporatist ideals with anti-secularist tones and in a similar way to Italian fascism, dropping Austrian pretenses of unification with Germany as long as the Nazi Party remained in power there. In August 1933, Benito Mussolini's regime issued a guarantee of Austrian independence. Dollfuss also exchanged \"Secret Letters\" with Mussolini about ways to guarantee Austrian independence. Mussolini had an interest in Austria forming a buffer zone against Nazi Germany. Dollfuss always stressed the similarity of the régimes of Hitler in Germany and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, and was convinced that Austrofascism and Italian fascism could counter totalitarian national-socialism and communism in Europe.",
"title": "Dollfuss as dictator of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In September 1933 Dollfuss merged his Christian Social Party with elements of other nationalist and conservative groups, including the Heimwehr (which encompassed many workers who were unhappy with the radical leadership of the socialist party) to form the Vaterländische Front, though the Heimwehr continued to exist as an independent organization until 1936, when Dollfuss's successor Kurt von Schuschnigg forcibly merged it into the Front, instead creating the unabidingly loyal Frontmiliz as a paramilitary task-force. Dollfuss was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt in October 1933 by Rudolf Dertill, a 22-year-old who had been ejected from the military for his pro-Nazi views, and had joined the Nazi Party in 1932. Dertill was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted murder. In the aftermath of the attempted assassination, Dollfuss declared martial law, which allowed for the resumption of capital punishment in Austria.",
"title": "Dollfuss as dictator of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In its drive to eliminate the Social Democrats' Schutzbund, the Dollfuss government searched the homes and meeting places of its members for weapons. On 12 February 1934, the Austrian Civil War was sparked by the armed resistance of the Linz branch of the Social Democrats to the search of their party headquarters. Word of the fighting in Linz spread quickly, and additional armed conflicts broke out, primarily in Austria's industrial regions and Vienna. The Schutzbund was greatly outnumbered by the police and army, which used artillery against the insurgents. In addition, the general strike which had been called to support the uprising failed to materialize. The result was the collapse of the rebellion by 15 February, with the deaths of about 350 persons, roughly equally divided between civilians, insurgents, and government forces. The Social Democrats were outlawed by the Federal government on 12 February 1934, and their leaders were imprisoned or fled abroad.",
"title": "Dollfuss as dictator of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Dollfuss staged a rump parliamentary session with just Fatherland Front members present in April 1934 to have a new constitution approved, effectively the second constitution in the world espousing corporatist ideas (after that of the Portuguese Estado Novo). The session retrospectively made all the decrees already passed since March 1933 legal. The new constitution became effective on 1 May 1934 and swept away the last remnants of democracy and the system of the First Austrian Republic.",
"title": "Dollfuss as dictator of Austria"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Dollfuss was assassinated on 25 July 1934 by a group of Austrian Nazis, including Otto Planetta, Franz Holzweber, Ernst Feike, Franz Leeb, Josef Hackl, Ludwig Maitzen, Erich Wohlraab, and Paul Hudl, who entered the Chancellery building and shot him in an attempted coup d'état. During mass trials which took place after the coup, Hudl was sentenced to life in prison, while the others were sentenced to death for their involvement. Planetta and Holzweber were hanged on 31 July 1934, Feike was hanged on 7 August 1934, and Leeb, Hackl, Maitzen, and Wohlraab were hanged on 13 August 1934. Hudl was released under an amnesty in 1938.",
"title": "Assassination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In his dying moments, Dollfuss asked for Viaticum, the Eucharist administered to a dying person, but his assassins refused to give it to him. Mussolini had no hesitation in attributing the attack to the German dictator: the news reached him at Cesena, where he was examining the plans for a psychiatric hospital. Mussolini personally gave the announcement to Dollfuss's widow, who was a guest at his villa in Riccione with her children. He also put at the disposal of Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, who spent a holiday in Venice, a plane that allowed the prince to rush back to Vienna and to face the assailants with his militia, with the permission of President Wilhelm Miklas.",
"title": "Assassination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Mussolini also mobilised a part of the Italian army on the Austrian border and threatened Hitler with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria to thwart the putsch. Then he announced to the world: \"The independence of Austria, for which he has fallen, is a principle that has been defended and will be defended by Italy even more strenuously\", and then replaced in the main square of Bolzano the statue of Walther von der Vogelweide, a Germanic troubadour, with that of Drusus, a Roman general who conquered part of Germany. This was the greatest moment of friction between Italian Fascism and National Socialism and Mussolini himself came down several times to reaffirm the differences in the field.",
"title": "Assassination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The assassination of Dollfuss was accompanied by uprisings in many regions in Austria, resulting in further deaths. In Carinthia, a large contingent of northern German Nazis tried to seize power but were subdued by the Italian units nearby. At first Hitler was jubilant, but the Italian reaction surprised him. Hitler became convinced that he could not face a conflict with the Western European powers, and he officially denied liability, stating his regret for the murder of the Austrian Chancellor. He replaced the ambassador to Vienna with Franz von Papen and prevented the conspirators entering Germany, also expelling them from the Austrian Nazi Party. The Nazi assassins in Vienna, after declaring the formation of a new government under Austrian Nazi Anton Rintelen, previously exiled by Dollfuss as Austrian Ambassador to Rome, surrendered after threats from the Austrian military of blowing up the Chancellery using dynamite, and were subsequently tried and executed by hanging. Kurt Schuschnigg, previously Minister of Education, was appointed new chancellor of Austria after a few days, assuming the office from Dollfuss’s deputy Starhemberg.",
"title": "Assassination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Out of a population of 6.5 million, approximately 500,000 Austrians were present at Dollfuss's burial in Vienna. He is interred in the Hietzing cemetery in Vienna. His wife, Alwine Dollfuss (who died in 1973) was later buried beside him. Two of his children, Rudolf and Eva, were in Italy as guests of Rachele Mussolini at the time of his death, an event which saw Mussolini himself shed tears over his slain ally.",
"title": "Assassination"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In Bertolt Brecht's 1941 play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Dollfuss is represented by the character \"Dullfeet\".",
"title": "In literature"
}
]
| Engelbert Dollfuß was an Austrian Fatherland Front politician who served as Chancellor of Austria between 1932 and 1934. Having served as Minister for Forests and Agriculture, he ascended to Federal Chancellor in 1932 in the midst of a crisis for the conservative government. In early 1933, the so called "Selbstausschaltung des Parlaments" happened, which made the Austrian parliament unable to govern. Suppressing the Socialist movement in February 1934 during the Austrian Civil War and later banning the Austrian Nazi Party, he cemented the rule of authoritarian conservatism through the First of May Constitution. Dollfuss was assassinated as part of a failed coup attempt by Nazi agents in 1934. His successor Kurt Schuschnigg maintained the regime until Adolf Hitler's Anschluss in 1938. | 2001-11-28T12:51:49Z | 2023-12-25T01:07:20Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Dollfuss |
10,151 | E. T. A. Hoffmann | Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann; 24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822) was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffmann appears (heavily fictionalized) as the hero. He is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.
Hoffmann's stories highly influenced 19th-century literature, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.
Hoffmann's ancestors, both maternal and paternal, were jurists. His father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann (1736–97), was a barrister in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), as well as a poet and amateur musician who played the viola da gamba. In 1767 he married his cousin, Lovisa Albertina Doerffer (1748–96). Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, born on 24 January 1776, was the youngest of three children, of whom the second died in infancy.
When his parents separated in 1778, his father went to Insterburg (now Chernyakhovsk) with his elder son, Johann Ludwig Hoffmann (1768–1822), while Hoffmann's mother stayed in Königsberg with her relatives: two aunts, Johanna Sophie Doerffer (1745–1803) and Charlotte Wilhelmine Doerffer (c. 1754–79) and their brother, Otto Wilhelm Doerffer (1741–1811), who were all unmarried. The trio raised the youngster.
The household, dominated by the uncle (whom Ernst nicknamed O Weh—"Oh dear!"—in a play on his initials "O.W."), was pietistic and uncongenial. Hoffmann was to regret his estrangement from his father. Nevertheless, he remembered his aunts with great affection, especially the younger, Charlotte, whom he nicknamed Tante Füßchen ("Aunt Littlefeet"). Although she died when he was only three years old, he treasured her memory (a character in Hoffmann's Lebensansichten des Katers Murr is named after her) and embroidered stories about her to such an extent that later biographers sometimes assumed her to be imaginary, until proof of her existence was found after World War II.
Between 1781 and 1792 he attended the Lutheran school or Burgschule, where he made good progress in classics. He was taught drawing by one Saemann, and counterpoint by a Polish organist named Podbileski, who was to be the prototype of Abraham Liscot in Kater Murr. Ernst showed great talent for piano-playing, and busied himself with writing and drawing. The provincial setting was not, however, conducive to technical progress, and despite his many-sided talents he remained rather ignorant of both classical forms and of the new artistic ideas that were developing in Germany. He had, however, read Schiller, Goethe, Swift, Sterne, Rousseau and Jean Paul, and wrote part of a novel titled Der Geheimnisvolle.
Around 1787 he became friends with Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger (1775–1843), the son of a pastor, and nephew of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Elder, the well-known writer friend of Immanuel Kant. During the year 1792, both attended some of Kant's lectures at the University of Königsberg. Their friendship, although often tested by an increasing social difference, was to be lifelong.
In 1794, Hoffmann became enamored of Dora Hatt, a married woman to whom he had given music lessons. She was ten years older, and gave birth to her sixth child in 1795. In February 1796, her family protested against his attentions and, with his hesitant consent, asked another of his uncles to arrange employment for him in Glogau (Głogów), Prussian Silesia.
From 1796, Hoffmann obtained employment as a clerk for his uncle, Johann Ludwig Doerffer, who lived in Glogau with his daughter Minna. After passing further examinations he visited Dresden, where he was amazed by the paintings in the gallery, particularly those of Correggio and Raphael. During the summer of 1798, his uncle was promoted to a court in Berlin, and the three of them moved there in August—Hoffmann's first residence in a large city. It was there that Hoffmann first attempted to promote himself as a composer, writing an operetta called Die Maske and sending a copy to Queen Luise of Prussia. The official reply advised to him to write to the director of the Royal Theatre, a man named Iffland. By the time the latter responded, Hoffmann had passed his third round of examinations and had already left for Posen (Poznań) in South Prussia in the company of his old friend Hippel, with a brief stop in Dresden to show him the gallery.
From June 1800 to 1803, he worked in Prussian provinces in the area of Greater Poland and Masovia. This was the first time he had lived without supervision by members of his family, and he started to become "what school principals, parsons, uncles, and aunts call dissolute."
His first job, at Posen, was endangered after Carnival on Shrove Tuesday 1802, when caricatures of military officers were distributed at a ball. It was immediately deduced who had drawn them, and complaints were made to authorities in Berlin, who were reluctant to punish the promising young official. The problem was solved by "promoting" Hoffmann to Płock in New East Prussia, the former capital of Poland (1079–1138), where administrative offices were relocated from Thorn (Toruń). He visited the place to arrange lodging, before returning to Posen where he married Mischa (Maria or Marianna Thekla Michalina Rorer, whose Polish surname was Trzcińska). They moved to Płock in August 1802.
Hoffmann despaired because of his exile, and drew caricatures of himself drowning in mud alongside ragged villagers. He did make use, however, of his isolation, by writing and composing. He started a diary on 1 October 1803. An essay on the theatre was published in Kotzebue's periodical, Die Freimüthige, and he entered a competition in the same magazine to write a play. Hoffmann's was called Der Preis ("The Prize"), and was itself about a competition to write a play. There were fourteen entries, but none was judged worthy of the award: 100 Friedrichs d'or. Nevertheless, his entry was singled out for praise. This was one of the few good times of a sad period of his life, which saw the deaths of his uncle J. L. Hoffmann in Berlin, his Aunt Sophie, and Dora Hatt in Königsberg.
At the beginning of 1804, he obtained a post at Warsaw. On his way there, he passed through his hometown and met one of Dora Hatt's daughters. He was never to return to Königsberg.
Hoffmann assimilated well with Polish society; the years spent in Prussian Poland he recognized as the happiest of his life. In Warsaw he found the same atmosphere he had enjoyed in Berlin, renewing his friendship with Zacharias Werner, and meeting his future biographer, a neighbour and fellow jurist called Julius Eduard Itzig (who changed his name to Hitzig after his baptism). Itzig had been a member of the Berlin literary group called the Nordstern, or "North Star", and he gave Hoffmann the works of Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, Carlo Gozzi and Calderón. These relatively late introductions marked his work profoundly.
He moved in the circles of August Wilhelm Schlegel, Adelbert von Chamisso, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Rahel Levin and David Ferdinand Koreff.
But Hoffmann's fortunate position was not to last: on 28 November 1806, during the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte's troops captured Warsaw, and the Prussian bureaucrats lost their jobs. They divided the contents of the treasury between them and fled. In January 1807, Hoffmann's wife and two-year-old daughter Cäcilia returned to Posen, while he pondered whether to move to Vienna or go back to Berlin. A delay of six months was caused by severe illness. Eventually the French authorities demanded that all former officials swear allegiance or leave the country. As they refused to grant Hoffmann a passport to Vienna, he was forced to return to Berlin. He visited his family in Posen before arriving in Berlin on 18 June 1807, hoping to further his career there as an artist and writer.
The next fifteen months were some of the worst in Hoffmann's life. The city of Berlin was also occupied by Napoleon's troops. Obtaining only meagre allowances, he had frequent recourse to his friends, constantly borrowing money and still going hungry for days at a time; he learned that his daughter had died. Nevertheless, he managed to compose his Six Canticles for a cappella choir: one of his best compositions, which he would later attribute to Kreisler in Lebensansichten des Katers Murr.
On 1 September 1808 he arrived with his wife in Bamberg, where he began a job as theatre manager. The director, Count Soden, left almost immediately for Würzburg, leaving a man named Heinrich Cuno in charge. Hoffmann was unable to improve standards of performance, and his efforts caused intrigues against him which resulted in him losing his job to Cuno. He began work as music critic for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, a newspaper in Leipzig, and his articles on Beethoven were especially well received, and highly regarded by the composer himself. It was in its pages that the "Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler" character made his first appearance.
Hoffmann's breakthrough came in 1809, with the publication of Ritter Gluck, a story about a man who meets, or believes he has met, the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) more than twenty years after the latter's death. The theme alludes to the work of Jean Paul, who invented the term Doppelgänger the previous decade, and continued to exact a powerful influence over Hoffmann, becoming one of his earliest admirers. With this publication, Hoffmann began to use the pseudonym E. T. A. Hoffmann, telling people that the "A" stood for Amadeus, in homage to the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91). However, he continued to use Wilhelm in official documents throughout his life, and the initials E. T. W. also appear on his gravestone.
The next year, he was employed at the Bamberg Theatre as stagehand, decorator, and playwright, while also giving private music lessons. He became so enamored of a young singing student, Julia Marc, that his feelings were obvious whenever they were together, and Julia's mother quickly found her a more suitable match. When Joseph Seconda offered Hoffmann a position as musical director for his opera company (then performing in Dresden), he accepted, leaving on 21 April 1813.
Prussia had declared war against France on 16 March during the War of the Sixth Coalition, and their journey was fraught with difficulties. They arrived on the 25th, only to find that Seconda was in Leipzig; on the 26th, they sent a letter pleading for temporary funds. That same day Hoffmann was surprised to meet Hippel, whom he had not seen for nine years.
The situation deteriorated, and in early May Hoffmann tried in vain to find transport to Leipzig. On 8 May, the bridges were destroyed, and his family were marooned in the city. During the day, Hoffmann would roam, watching the fighting with curiosity. Finally, on 20 May, they left for Leipzig, only to be involved in an accident which killed one of the passengers in their coach and injured his wife.
They arrived on 23 May, and Hoffmann started work with Seconda's orchestra, which he found to be of the best quality. On 4 June an armistice began, which allowed the company to return to Dresden. But on 22 August, after the end of the armistice, the family was forced to relocate from their pleasant house in the suburbs into the town, and during the next few days the Battle of Dresden raged. The city was bombarded; many people were killed by bombs directly in front of him. After the main battle was over, he visited the gory battlefield. His account can be found in Vision auf dem Schlachtfeld bei Dresden. After a long period of continued disturbance, the town surrendered on 11 November, and on 9 December the company travelled to Leipzig.
On 25 February, Hoffmann quarrelled with Seconda, and the next day he was given notice of twelve weeks. When asked to accompany them on their journey to Dresden in April, he refused, and they left without him. But during July his friend Hippel visited, and soon he found himself being guided back into his old career as a jurist.
At the end of September 1814, in the wake of Napoleon's defeat, Hoffmann returned to Berlin and succeeded in regaining a job at the Kammergericht, the chamber court. His opera Undine was performed by the Berlin Theatre. Its successful run came to an end only after a fire on the night of the 25th performance. Magazines clamoured for his contributions, and after a while his standards started to decline. Nevertheless, many masterpieces date from this time.
During the period from 1819, Hoffmann was involved with legal disputes, while fighting ill health. Alcohol abuse and syphilis eventually caused weakening of his limbs during 1821, and paralysis from the beginning of 1822. His last works were dictated to his wife or to a secretary.
Prince Metternich's anti-liberal programs began to put Hoffmann in situations that tested his conscience. Thousands of people were accused of treason for having certain political opinions, and university professors were monitored during their lectures.
King Frederick William III of Prussia appointed an Immediate Commission for the investigation of political dissidence; when he found its observance of the rule of law too frustrating, he established a Ministerial Commission to interfere with its processes. The latter was greatly influenced by Commissioner Kamptz. During the trial of "Turnvater" Jahn, the founder of the gymnastics association movement, Hoffmann found himself annoying Kamptz, and became a political target. When Hoffmann caricatured Kamptz in a story (Meister Floh), Kamptz began legal proceedings. These ended when Hoffmann's illness was found to be life-threatening. The King asked for a reprimand only, but no action was ever taken. Eventually Meister Floh was published with the offending passages removed.
Hoffmann died of syphilis in Berlin on 25 June 1822 at the age of 46. His grave is preserved in the Protestant Friedhof III der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde (Cemetery No. III of the congregations of Jerusalem Church and New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor at the underground station Mehringdamm.
Hoffmann is one of the best-known representatives of German Romanticism, and a pioneer of the fantasy genre, with a taste for the macabre combined with realism that influenced such authors as Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), Charles Dickens (1812–1870), Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), George MacDonald (1824–1905), Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Vernon Lee (1856–1935), Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980). Hoffmann's story Das Fräulein von Scuderi is sometimes cited as the first detective story and a direct influence on Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"; Characters from it also appear in the opera Cardillac by Paul Hindemith.
The twentieth-century Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin characterised Hoffmann's works as Menippea, essentially satirical and self-parodying in form, thus including him in a tradition that includes Cervantes, Diderot and Voltaire.
Robert Schumann's piano suite Kreisleriana (1838) takes its title from one of Hoffmann's books (and according to Charles Rosen's The Romantic Generation, is possibly also inspired by "The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr", in which Kreisler appears). Jacques Offenbach's masterwork, the opera Les contes d'Hoffmann ("The Tales of Hoffmann", 1881), is based on the stories, principally "Der Sandmann" ("The Sandman", 1816), "Rat Krespel" ("Councillor Krespel", 1818), and "Das verlorene Spiegelbild" ("The Lost Reflection") from Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht (The Adventures of New Year's Eve, 1814). Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober (Little Zaches called Cinnabar, 1819) inspired an aria as well as the operetta Le Roi Carotte, 1872). Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892) is based on "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", and the ballet Coppélia, with music by Delibes, is based on two eerie Hoffmann stories.
Hoffmann also influenced 19th-century musical opinion directly through his music criticism. His reviews of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1808) and other important works set new literary standards for writing about music, and encouraged later writers to consider music as "the most Romantic of all the arts." Hoffmann's reviews were first collected for modern readers by Friedrich Schnapp, ed., in E.T.A. Hoffmann: Schriften zur Musik; Nachlese (1963) and have been made available in an English translation in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Writings on Music, Collected in a Single Volume (2004).
Hoffmann strove for artistic polymathy. He created far more in his works than mere political commentary achieved through satire. His masterpiece novel Lebensansichten des Katers Murr (The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr, 1819–1821) deals with such issues as the aesthetic status of true artistry and the modes of self-transcendence that accompany any genuine endeavour to create. Hoffmann's portrayal of the character Kreisler (a genius musician) is wittily counterpointed with the character of the tomcat Murr – a virtuoso illustration of artistic pretentiousness that many of Hoffmann's contemporaries found offensive and subversive of Romantic ideals.
Hoffmann's literature indicates the failings of many so-called artists to differentiate between the superficial and the authentic aspects of such Romantic ideals. The self-conscious effort to impress must, according to Hoffmann, be divorced from the self-aware effort to create. This essential duality in Kater Murr is conveyed structurally through a discursive 'splicing together' of two biographical narratives.
While disagreeing with E. F. Bleiler's claim that Hoffmann was "one of the two or three greatest writers of fantasy", Algis Budrys of Galaxy Science Fiction said that he "did lay down the groundwork for some of our most enduring themes".
Historian Martin Willis argues that Hoffmann's impact on science fiction has been overlooked, saying "his work reveals a writer dynamically involved in the important scientific debates of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." Willis points out that Hoffmann's work is contemporary with Frankenstein (1818) and with "the heated debates and the relationship between the new empirical science and the older forms of natural philosophy that held sway throughout the eighteenth century." His "interest in the machine culture of his time is well represented in his short stories, of which the critically renowned The Sandman (1816) and Automata (1814) are the best examples. ...Hoffmann's work makes a considerable contribution to our understanding of the emergence of scientific knowledge in the early years of the nineteenth century and to the conflict between science and magic, centred mainly on the 'truths' available to the advocates of either practice. ...Hoffmann's balancing of mesmerism, mechanics, and magic reflects the difficulty in categorizing scientific knowledge in the early nineteenth century." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann; 24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822) was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffmann appears (heavily fictionalized) as the hero. He is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Hoffmann's stories highly influenced 19th-century literature, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Hoffmann's ancestors, both maternal and paternal, were jurists. His father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann (1736–97), was a barrister in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), as well as a poet and amateur musician who played the viola da gamba. In 1767 he married his cousin, Lovisa Albertina Doerffer (1748–96). Ernst Theodor Wilhelm, born on 24 January 1776, was the youngest of three children, of whom the second died in infancy.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "When his parents separated in 1778, his father went to Insterburg (now Chernyakhovsk) with his elder son, Johann Ludwig Hoffmann (1768–1822), while Hoffmann's mother stayed in Königsberg with her relatives: two aunts, Johanna Sophie Doerffer (1745–1803) and Charlotte Wilhelmine Doerffer (c. 1754–79) and their brother, Otto Wilhelm Doerffer (1741–1811), who were all unmarried. The trio raised the youngster.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The household, dominated by the uncle (whom Ernst nicknamed O Weh—\"Oh dear!\"—in a play on his initials \"O.W.\"), was pietistic and uncongenial. Hoffmann was to regret his estrangement from his father. Nevertheless, he remembered his aunts with great affection, especially the younger, Charlotte, whom he nicknamed Tante Füßchen (\"Aunt Littlefeet\"). Although she died when he was only three years old, he treasured her memory (a character in Hoffmann's Lebensansichten des Katers Murr is named after her) and embroidered stories about her to such an extent that later biographers sometimes assumed her to be imaginary, until proof of her existence was found after World War II.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Between 1781 and 1792 he attended the Lutheran school or Burgschule, where he made good progress in classics. He was taught drawing by one Saemann, and counterpoint by a Polish organist named Podbileski, who was to be the prototype of Abraham Liscot in Kater Murr. Ernst showed great talent for piano-playing, and busied himself with writing and drawing. The provincial setting was not, however, conducive to technical progress, and despite his many-sided talents he remained rather ignorant of both classical forms and of the new artistic ideas that were developing in Germany. He had, however, read Schiller, Goethe, Swift, Sterne, Rousseau and Jean Paul, and wrote part of a novel titled Der Geheimnisvolle.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Around 1787 he became friends with Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger (1775–1843), the son of a pastor, and nephew of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Elder, the well-known writer friend of Immanuel Kant. During the year 1792, both attended some of Kant's lectures at the University of Königsberg. Their friendship, although often tested by an increasing social difference, was to be lifelong.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In 1794, Hoffmann became enamored of Dora Hatt, a married woman to whom he had given music lessons. She was ten years older, and gave birth to her sixth child in 1795. In February 1796, her family protested against his attentions and, with his hesitant consent, asked another of his uncles to arrange employment for him in Glogau (Głogów), Prussian Silesia.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "From 1796, Hoffmann obtained employment as a clerk for his uncle, Johann Ludwig Doerffer, who lived in Glogau with his daughter Minna. After passing further examinations he visited Dresden, where he was amazed by the paintings in the gallery, particularly those of Correggio and Raphael. During the summer of 1798, his uncle was promoted to a court in Berlin, and the three of them moved there in August—Hoffmann's first residence in a large city. It was there that Hoffmann first attempted to promote himself as a composer, writing an operetta called Die Maske and sending a copy to Queen Luise of Prussia. The official reply advised to him to write to the director of the Royal Theatre, a man named Iffland. By the time the latter responded, Hoffmann had passed his third round of examinations and had already left for Posen (Poznań) in South Prussia in the company of his old friend Hippel, with a brief stop in Dresden to show him the gallery.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "From June 1800 to 1803, he worked in Prussian provinces in the area of Greater Poland and Masovia. This was the first time he had lived without supervision by members of his family, and he started to become \"what school principals, parsons, uncles, and aunts call dissolute.\"",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "His first job, at Posen, was endangered after Carnival on Shrove Tuesday 1802, when caricatures of military officers were distributed at a ball. It was immediately deduced who had drawn them, and complaints were made to authorities in Berlin, who were reluctant to punish the promising young official. The problem was solved by \"promoting\" Hoffmann to Płock in New East Prussia, the former capital of Poland (1079–1138), where administrative offices were relocated from Thorn (Toruń). He visited the place to arrange lodging, before returning to Posen where he married Mischa (Maria or Marianna Thekla Michalina Rorer, whose Polish surname was Trzcińska). They moved to Płock in August 1802.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Hoffmann despaired because of his exile, and drew caricatures of himself drowning in mud alongside ragged villagers. He did make use, however, of his isolation, by writing and composing. He started a diary on 1 October 1803. An essay on the theatre was published in Kotzebue's periodical, Die Freimüthige, and he entered a competition in the same magazine to write a play. Hoffmann's was called Der Preis (\"The Prize\"), and was itself about a competition to write a play. There were fourteen entries, but none was judged worthy of the award: 100 Friedrichs d'or. Nevertheless, his entry was singled out for praise. This was one of the few good times of a sad period of his life, which saw the deaths of his uncle J. L. Hoffmann in Berlin, his Aunt Sophie, and Dora Hatt in Königsberg.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "At the beginning of 1804, he obtained a post at Warsaw. On his way there, he passed through his hometown and met one of Dora Hatt's daughters. He was never to return to Königsberg.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Hoffmann assimilated well with Polish society; the years spent in Prussian Poland he recognized as the happiest of his life. In Warsaw he found the same atmosphere he had enjoyed in Berlin, renewing his friendship with Zacharias Werner, and meeting his future biographer, a neighbour and fellow jurist called Julius Eduard Itzig (who changed his name to Hitzig after his baptism). Itzig had been a member of the Berlin literary group called the Nordstern, or \"North Star\", and he gave Hoffmann the works of Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, Carlo Gozzi and Calderón. These relatively late introductions marked his work profoundly.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "He moved in the circles of August Wilhelm Schlegel, Adelbert von Chamisso, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Rahel Levin and David Ferdinand Koreff.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "But Hoffmann's fortunate position was not to last: on 28 November 1806, during the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte's troops captured Warsaw, and the Prussian bureaucrats lost their jobs. They divided the contents of the treasury between them and fled. In January 1807, Hoffmann's wife and two-year-old daughter Cäcilia returned to Posen, while he pondered whether to move to Vienna or go back to Berlin. A delay of six months was caused by severe illness. Eventually the French authorities demanded that all former officials swear allegiance or leave the country. As they refused to grant Hoffmann a passport to Vienna, he was forced to return to Berlin. He visited his family in Posen before arriving in Berlin on 18 June 1807, hoping to further his career there as an artist and writer.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The next fifteen months were some of the worst in Hoffmann's life. The city of Berlin was also occupied by Napoleon's troops. Obtaining only meagre allowances, he had frequent recourse to his friends, constantly borrowing money and still going hungry for days at a time; he learned that his daughter had died. Nevertheless, he managed to compose his Six Canticles for a cappella choir: one of his best compositions, which he would later attribute to Kreisler in Lebensansichten des Katers Murr.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "On 1 September 1808 he arrived with his wife in Bamberg, where he began a job as theatre manager. The director, Count Soden, left almost immediately for Würzburg, leaving a man named Heinrich Cuno in charge. Hoffmann was unable to improve standards of performance, and his efforts caused intrigues against him which resulted in him losing his job to Cuno. He began work as music critic for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, a newspaper in Leipzig, and his articles on Beethoven were especially well received, and highly regarded by the composer himself. It was in its pages that the \"Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler\" character made his first appearance.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Hoffmann's breakthrough came in 1809, with the publication of Ritter Gluck, a story about a man who meets, or believes he has met, the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–87) more than twenty years after the latter's death. The theme alludes to the work of Jean Paul, who invented the term Doppelgänger the previous decade, and continued to exact a powerful influence over Hoffmann, becoming one of his earliest admirers. With this publication, Hoffmann began to use the pseudonym E. T. A. Hoffmann, telling people that the \"A\" stood for Amadeus, in homage to the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91). However, he continued to use Wilhelm in official documents throughout his life, and the initials E. T. W. also appear on his gravestone.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The next year, he was employed at the Bamberg Theatre as stagehand, decorator, and playwright, while also giving private music lessons. He became so enamored of a young singing student, Julia Marc, that his feelings were obvious whenever they were together, and Julia's mother quickly found her a more suitable match. When Joseph Seconda offered Hoffmann a position as musical director for his opera company (then performing in Dresden), he accepted, leaving on 21 April 1813.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Prussia had declared war against France on 16 March during the War of the Sixth Coalition, and their journey was fraught with difficulties. They arrived on the 25th, only to find that Seconda was in Leipzig; on the 26th, they sent a letter pleading for temporary funds. That same day Hoffmann was surprised to meet Hippel, whom he had not seen for nine years.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The situation deteriorated, and in early May Hoffmann tried in vain to find transport to Leipzig. On 8 May, the bridges were destroyed, and his family were marooned in the city. During the day, Hoffmann would roam, watching the fighting with curiosity. Finally, on 20 May, they left for Leipzig, only to be involved in an accident which killed one of the passengers in their coach and injured his wife.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "They arrived on 23 May, and Hoffmann started work with Seconda's orchestra, which he found to be of the best quality. On 4 June an armistice began, which allowed the company to return to Dresden. But on 22 August, after the end of the armistice, the family was forced to relocate from their pleasant house in the suburbs into the town, and during the next few days the Battle of Dresden raged. The city was bombarded; many people were killed by bombs directly in front of him. After the main battle was over, he visited the gory battlefield. His account can be found in Vision auf dem Schlachtfeld bei Dresden. After a long period of continued disturbance, the town surrendered on 11 November, and on 9 December the company travelled to Leipzig.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "On 25 February, Hoffmann quarrelled with Seconda, and the next day he was given notice of twelve weeks. When asked to accompany them on their journey to Dresden in April, he refused, and they left without him. But during July his friend Hippel visited, and soon he found himself being guided back into his old career as a jurist.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "At the end of September 1814, in the wake of Napoleon's defeat, Hoffmann returned to Berlin and succeeded in regaining a job at the Kammergericht, the chamber court. His opera Undine was performed by the Berlin Theatre. Its successful run came to an end only after a fire on the night of the 25th performance. Magazines clamoured for his contributions, and after a while his standards started to decline. Nevertheless, many masterpieces date from this time.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "During the period from 1819, Hoffmann was involved with legal disputes, while fighting ill health. Alcohol abuse and syphilis eventually caused weakening of his limbs during 1821, and paralysis from the beginning of 1822. His last works were dictated to his wife or to a secretary.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Prince Metternich's anti-liberal programs began to put Hoffmann in situations that tested his conscience. Thousands of people were accused of treason for having certain political opinions, and university professors were monitored during their lectures.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "King Frederick William III of Prussia appointed an Immediate Commission for the investigation of political dissidence; when he found its observance of the rule of law too frustrating, he established a Ministerial Commission to interfere with its processes. The latter was greatly influenced by Commissioner Kamptz. During the trial of \"Turnvater\" Jahn, the founder of the gymnastics association movement, Hoffmann found himself annoying Kamptz, and became a political target. When Hoffmann caricatured Kamptz in a story (Meister Floh), Kamptz began legal proceedings. These ended when Hoffmann's illness was found to be life-threatening. The King asked for a reprimand only, but no action was ever taken. Eventually Meister Floh was published with the offending passages removed.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Hoffmann died of syphilis in Berlin on 25 June 1822 at the age of 46. His grave is preserved in the Protestant Friedhof III der Jerusalems- und Neuen Kirchengemeinde (Cemetery No. III of the congregations of Jerusalem Church and New Church) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, south of Hallesches Tor at the underground station Mehringdamm.",
"title": "Life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Hoffmann is one of the best-known representatives of German Romanticism, and a pioneer of the fantasy genre, with a taste for the macabre combined with realism that influenced such authors as Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), Charles Dickens (1812–1870), Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), George MacDonald (1824–1905), Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Vernon Lee (1856–1935), Franz Kafka (1883–1924) and Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980). Hoffmann's story Das Fräulein von Scuderi is sometimes cited as the first detective story and a direct influence on Poe's \"The Murders in the Rue Morgue\"; Characters from it also appear in the opera Cardillac by Paul Hindemith.",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The twentieth-century Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin characterised Hoffmann's works as Menippea, essentially satirical and self-parodying in form, thus including him in a tradition that includes Cervantes, Diderot and Voltaire.",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Robert Schumann's piano suite Kreisleriana (1838) takes its title from one of Hoffmann's books (and according to Charles Rosen's The Romantic Generation, is possibly also inspired by \"The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr\", in which Kreisler appears). Jacques Offenbach's masterwork, the opera Les contes d'Hoffmann (\"The Tales of Hoffmann\", 1881), is based on the stories, principally \"Der Sandmann\" (\"The Sandman\", 1816), \"Rat Krespel\" (\"Councillor Krespel\", 1818), and \"Das verlorene Spiegelbild\" (\"The Lost Reflection\") from Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht (The Adventures of New Year's Eve, 1814). Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober (Little Zaches called Cinnabar, 1819) inspired an aria as well as the operetta Le Roi Carotte, 1872). Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892) is based on \"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King\", and the ballet Coppélia, with music by Delibes, is based on two eerie Hoffmann stories.",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Hoffmann also influenced 19th-century musical opinion directly through his music criticism. His reviews of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1808) and other important works set new literary standards for writing about music, and encouraged later writers to consider music as \"the most Romantic of all the arts.\" Hoffmann's reviews were first collected for modern readers by Friedrich Schnapp, ed., in E.T.A. Hoffmann: Schriften zur Musik; Nachlese (1963) and have been made available in an English translation in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Writings on Music, Collected in a Single Volume (2004).",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Hoffmann strove for artistic polymathy. He created far more in his works than mere political commentary achieved through satire. His masterpiece novel Lebensansichten des Katers Murr (The Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr, 1819–1821) deals with such issues as the aesthetic status of true artistry and the modes of self-transcendence that accompany any genuine endeavour to create. Hoffmann's portrayal of the character Kreisler (a genius musician) is wittily counterpointed with the character of the tomcat Murr – a virtuoso illustration of artistic pretentiousness that many of Hoffmann's contemporaries found offensive and subversive of Romantic ideals.",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Hoffmann's literature indicates the failings of many so-called artists to differentiate between the superficial and the authentic aspects of such Romantic ideals. The self-conscious effort to impress must, according to Hoffmann, be divorced from the self-aware effort to create. This essential duality in Kater Murr is conveyed structurally through a discursive 'splicing together' of two biographical narratives.",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "While disagreeing with E. F. Bleiler's claim that Hoffmann was \"one of the two or three greatest writers of fantasy\", Algis Budrys of Galaxy Science Fiction said that he \"did lay down the groundwork for some of our most enduring themes\".",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Historian Martin Willis argues that Hoffmann's impact on science fiction has been overlooked, saying \"his work reveals a writer dynamically involved in the important scientific debates of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.\" Willis points out that Hoffmann's work is contemporary with Frankenstein (1818) and with \"the heated debates and the relationship between the new empirical science and the older forms of natural philosophy that held sway throughout the eighteenth century.\" His \"interest in the machine culture of his time is well represented in his short stories, of which the critically renowned The Sandman (1816) and Automata (1814) are the best examples. ...Hoffmann's work makes a considerable contribution to our understanding of the emergence of scientific knowledge in the early years of the nineteenth century and to the conflict between science and magic, centred mainly on the 'truths' available to the advocates of either practice. ...Hoffmann's balancing of mesmerism, mechanics, and magic reflects the difficulty in categorizing scientific knowledge in the early nineteenth century.\"",
"title": "Assessment"
}
]
| Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffmann appears as the hero. He is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler. Hoffmann's stories highly influenced 19th-century literature, and he is one of the major authors of the Romantic movement. | 2001-11-28T20:55:01Z | 2023-12-04T01:46:17Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._A._Hoffmann |
10,152 | Erasmus | Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (/ˌdɛzɪˈdɪəriəs ɪˈræzməs/; Dutch: [ˌdeːziˈdeːriʏs eˈrɑsmʏs]; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus; c. 28 October 1466 – 12 July 1536) was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist and philosopher. Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.
He was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament, which raised questions that would be influential in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style and many other works.
Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation. He developed a biblical humanistic theology in which he advocated tolerance, concord and free thinking on matters of indifference. He remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the Church from within. He promoted the traditional doctrine of synergism, which some prominent Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favor of the doctrine of monergism. His middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps.
Erasmus's almost 70 years can be divided into four quarters. First was his childhood, ending with his being orphaned and impoverished; second, his struggling years as a canon (a kind of monk), a clerk, a priest, a failing and sickly university student, a would-be poet, and a tutor; third, his flourishing but peripatetic years of increasing focus and productivity following his 1499 contact with a reformist English circle, then with Jean Vitrier and later with the Aldine New Academy; and fourth, his final more secure and settled years as a prime influencer of European thought through his New Testament and increasing opposition to Lutheranism.
Many of Erasmus' convictions seem to spring from his early biography: esteem for the married state and appropriate marriages, support for priestly marriage, concern for improving marriage prospects for females, opposition to inconsiderate rules notably institutional dietary rules, a desire to make education engaging for the participants, horror of poverty and hopelessness, distaste for friars begging when they could study or work, unwillingness to be in the control of authorities, the need for those in authority to act in the best interest of their charges, a prizing of mercy and peace, an anger over unnecessary war especially between avaricious princes, an awareness of mortality, etc.
Desiderius Erasmus is reported to have been born in Rotterdam on 28 October in the late-1460. The year of Erasmus' birth is unclear: in later life he calculated his age as if born in 1466, but frequently his remembered age at major events actually implies 1469. (This article currently gives 1466 as the birth year. To handle this disagreement, ages are given first based on 1469, then in parentheses based on 1466: e.g., "20 (or 23)".)
He was named after Erasmus of Formiae, whom Erasmus' father Gerard (Gerardus Helye) personally favored.
Although associated closely with Rotterdam, he lived there for only four years, never to return afterwards. His parents could not be legally married: his father, Gerard, was a Catholic priest who may have spent up to six years in the 1450s or 60s in Italy as a scribe and scholar. His mother was Margaretha Rogerius (Latinized form of Dutch surname Rutgers), the daughter of a doctor from Zevenbergen. She may have been Gerard's housekeeper. Although he was born out of wedlock, Erasmus was cared for by his parents, with a loving household and the best education, until their early deaths from the bubonic plague in 1483. His only sibling Peter might have been born in 1463, to Margaret and her first husband thus making him only the half brother of Erasmus; Erasmus on the other side called him his brother.
Erasmus' own story, in his 1524 Compendium vitae Erasmi was along the lines that his (teenage?) parents were engaged, with the formal marriage blocked by his relatives (presumably a young widow or unmarried mother with a child was not an advantageous match); his father went to Italy to study Latin and Greek, and the relatives mislead Gerard that Margaretha had died, on which news grieving Gerard romantically took Holy Orders, only to find on his return that Margaretha was alive; many scholars dispute this account.
In 1471 his father became the vice-curate of the small town of Woerden (where young Erasmus may have attended the local vernacular school to learn to read and write) and in 1476 was promoted to the vice-curate of Gouda.
Erasmus was given the highest education available to a young man of his day, in a series of monastic or semi-monastic schools. In 1476, at the age of 6 (or 9), his family moved to Gouda and he started at the school of Mr Pieter Winckel, who later became his guardian (and, perhaps, diverted Erasmus and Peter's inheritance.) (Historians who date his birth in 1566 have Erasmus in Utrecht at the choir school at this period.)
In 1478, at the age of 9 (or 12), he and his older brother Peter were sent to one of the best Latin schools in the Netherlands, located at Deventer and owned by the chapter clergy of the Lebuïnuskerk (St. Lebuin's Church). Towards the end of his stay there the curriculum was renewed by the new principal of the school, Alexander Hegius, a correspondent of pioneering rhetorician Rudolphus Agricola. For the first time in Europe north of the Alps, Greek was taught at a lower level than a university and this is where he began learning it. His education there ended when plague struck the city about 1483, and his mother, who had moved to provide a home for her sons, died from the infection. Following the death of his parents and 20 students at his school he moved back to his patria (Rotterdam?) where he was supported by Berthe de Heyden, a compassionate widow.
In 1484, around the age 14 (or 17), he and his brother went to a cheaper grammar school or seminary at 's-Hertogenbosch run by the Brethren of the Common Life. He was exposed there to the Devotio moderna movement and the Brethren's famous book The Imitation of Christ but resented the harsh rules and strict methods of the religious brothers and educators. The two brothers made an agreement that they would resist the clergy but attend the university; Erasmus longed to study in Italy. Instead, Peter left for the Augustinian canonry in Stein, which left Erasmus feeling betrayed. Around this time he wrote forlornly to his friend Elizabeth de Heyden "Shipwrecked am I, and lost, 'mid waters chill'." He suffered Quartan fever for over a year. Eventually Erasmus moved to the same abbey as a postulant in or before 1487, around the age of 16 (or 19.)
Poverty had forced Erasmus into the consecrated life, entering the novitiate in 1487 at the canonry at rural Stein (a.k.a. Steyn), near Gouda, South Holland: the Chapter of Sion community largely borrowed its rule from the monkish Congregation of Windesheim. In 1488-1490, the surrounding region was plundered badly by armies fighting the Jonker Fransen war of succession and then suffered a famine. Erasmus professed his vows as a Canon Regular of St. Augustine there in late 1488 at age 19 (or 22). Historian Fr. Aiden Gasquet later wrote: "One thing, however, would seem to be quite clear; he could never have had any vocation for the religious life. His whole subsequent history shows this unmistakeably." According to one Catholic biographer, Erasmus had a spiritual awakening at the monastery.
Certain abuses in religious orders were among the chief objects of his later calls to reform the Church from within, particularly coerced or tricked recruitment of immature boys (as "victims of Dominic and Francis and Benedict"): Erasmus felt he had belonged to this class, joining "voluntarily but not freely" and so considered himself, if not morally bound by his vows, certainly legally, socially and honour- bound to keep them, yet to look for his true vocation.
While at Stein, 18-(or 21-)year-old Erasmus fell in unrequited love, forming what he called a "passionate attachment" (Latin: fervidos amores), with a fellow canon, Servatius Rogerus, and wrote a series of love letters in which he called Rogerus "half my soul", writing that "it was not for the sake of reward or out of a desire for any favour that I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly. What is it then? Why, that you love him who loves you." This correspondence contrasts with the generally detached and much more restrained attitude he showed in his later life, though he had a capacity to form and maintain deep male friendships, such as with More, Colet, and Ammonio. No mentions or sexual accusations were ever made of Erasmus during his lifetime. His works praise moderate sexual desire in marriage between men and women.
In 1493 he got permission to leave the canonry when offered the post of secretary to the ambitious Bishop of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen, on account of his great skill in Latin and his reputation as a man of letters.
He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood either on 25 April 1492, or 25 April 1495, at age 25 (or 28.) Either way, he did not actively work as a choir priest for very long, though his many works on confession and penance suggests experience of dispensing them.
From 1500, he avoided returning to the canonry at Stein even insisting the diet and hours would kill him, though he did stay with other Augustinian communities and at monasteries of other orders in his travels. Rogerus, who later became prior at Stein, and Erasmus corresponded over the years, with Rogerus demanding Erasmus return after his studies were complete. The library of the canonry ended up with by far the largest collection of Erasmus' publications in the Gouda region.
In 1505 Pope Julius II granted a dispensation from the vow of poverty to the extent of allowing Erasmus to hold certain benefices, and from the control and habit of his order, though he remained a priest and, formally, an Augustinian canon regular the rest his life. In 1517 Pope Leo X granted legal dispensations for Erasmus' defects of natality and confirmed the previous dispensation, allowing the 48-(or 51-)year-old his independence but still, as a canon, capable of holding office as a prior or abbot.
Erasmus traveled widely and regularly, for reasons of poverty, "escape" from his Stein canonry (to Cambrai), education (to Paris, Turin), escape from the sweating sickness plague (to Orléans), employment (to England), searching libraries for manuscripts, writing (Brabant), royal counsel (Cologne), patronage, tutoring and chaperoning (North Italy), networking (Rome), seeing books through printing in person (Paris, Venice, Louvain, Basel), and avoiding the persecution of religious fanatics (to Freiburg.) He enjoyed horseback riding
In 1495 with Bishop Henry's consent and a stipend, Erasmus went on to study at the University of Paris in the Collège de Montaigu, a centre of reforming zeal, under the direction of the ascetic Jan Standonck, of whose rigors he complained. The university was then the chief seat of Scholastic learning but already coming under the influence of Renaissance humanism. For instance, Erasmus became an intimate friend of an Italian humanist Publio Fausto Andrelini, poet and "professor of humanity" in Paris.
During this time, Erasmus developed a deep aversion to Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and started finding work as a tutor/chaperone to visiting English and Scottish aristocrats.
Patrons: William Blount • William Warham • John Fisher • John Longland • Margaret Beaufort • Catherine of Aragon
Erasmus stayed in England at least three times. In between he had periods studying in Paris, Orléans, Leuven and other cities.
In 1499 he was invited to England by William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, who offered to accompany him on his trip to England. His time in England was fruitful in the making of lifelong friendships with the leaders of English thought in the days of King Henry VIII.
During his first visit to England in 1499, he studied or taught at the University of Oxford. Erasmus was particularly impressed by the Bible teaching of John Colet, who pursued a style more akin to the church fathers than the Scholastics. Through the influence of the humanist John Colet, his interests turned towards theology. Other distinctive features of Colet's thought that may have influenced Erasmus are his pacifism, reform-mindedness, anti-Scholasticism and pastoral esteem for the sacrament of Confession.
This prompted him, upon his return from England to Paris, to intensively study the Greek language, which would enable him to study theology on a more profound level.
Erasmus also became fast friends with Thomas More, whose thought (e.g., on conscience and equity) had been influenced by 14th century French theologian Jean Gerson.
Erasmus left London with a full purse from his generous friends, to allow him to complete his studies. However, the English Customs officials confiscated all gold and silver, leaving him with nothing except a night fever that lasted several months.
For Erasmus' second visit, he spent over a year staying at Thomas More's house, honing his translation skills.
Erasmus preferred to live the life of an independent scholar and made a conscious effort to avoid any actions or formal ties that might inhibit his individual freedom. In England Erasmus was approached with prominent offices but he declined them all, until the King himself offered his support. He was inclined, but eventually did not accept and longed for a stay in Italy.
In 1510, Erasmus arrived at More's bustling house, was parked in bed to recover from his recurrent illness, and wrote The Praise of Folly, which was to be a best-seller.
After his glorious reception in Italy, Erasmus had returned broke and jobless, with strained relations with former friends and benefactors on the continent, and he regretted leaving Italy, despite being horrified by papal warfare. There is a gap in his usually voluminous correspondence: his so-called "two lost years", perhaps due to self-censorship of dangerous or disgruntled opinions; he shared lodgings with his friend Andrea Ammonio (the next year, secretary to Henry VIII) provided at the London Austin Friars' compound, skipping out after a disagreement with the friars over rent that caused bad blood.
He assisted his friend John Colet by authoring Greek textbooks and securing members of staff for the newly established St Paul's School and was in contact when Colet gave his notorious 1512 Convocation sermon which called for a reformation of ecclesiastical affairs.
In 1511, the University of Cambridge's Chancellor John Fisher arranged for Erasmus to be the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, though Erasmus turned down the option of spending the rest of his life as a professor there. He studied and taught Greek and researched and lectured on Jerome.
Erasmus mainly stayed at Queens' College while lecturing at the university, between 1511 and 1515. Despite a chronic shortage of money, he succeeded in mastering Greek by an intensive, day-and-night study of three years, taught by Thomas Linacre, continuously begging in letters that his friends send him books and money for teachers.
Erasmus' rooms were located in the "I" staircase of Old Court. Erasmus suffered from poor health and was especially concerned with heating, clean air, ventilation and draughts: he complained about the draughtiness of English buildings. He complained that Queens' College could not supply him with enough decent wine (wine was the Renaissance medicine for gallstones, from which Erasmus suffered). As Queens' was an unusually humanist-leaning institution in the 16th century, Queens' College Old Library still houses many first editions of Erasmus's publications, many of which were acquired during that period by bequest or purchase, including Erasmus's New Testament translation, which is signed by friend and Polish religious reformer Jan Łaski.
During this time, Erasmus encouraged Thomas More's book Utopia, perhaps even contributing fragments.
Opponents: Noël Béda
Following his first trip to England, Erasmus returned first to poverty in Paris, where he started to compile the Adagio for his students, then to Orleans to escape the plague, and then to semi-monastic life, scholarly studies and writing in France, notably at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Bertin at St Omer (1501,1502) where he wrote the initial version of the Enchiridion (Handbook of the Christian Knight.) A particular influence was his encounter in 1501 with Jean (Jehan) Vitrier, a radical Franciscan who consolidated his thoughts against false valorization of monasticism, ceremonialism and fasting in a kind of conversion experience, and introduced him to Origen.
After this, Erasmus went to Brabant, ultimately to the university at Louven.
Opponents: Aleander, Alberto Pío, Sepúlveda
In 1506 he was able to accompany and tutor the sons of the personal physician of the English King through Italy to Bologna.
His discovery en route of Lorenzo Valla's New Testament Notes was a major event in his career and prompted Erasmus to study the New Testament using philology.
In 1506 they passed through Turin and he arranged to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Turin per saltum at age 37 (or 40.) In the Winter, Erasmus was later present when Pope Julius II entered victorious into the conquered Bologna which he had besieged before.
Erasmus traveled on to Venice, working on an expanded version of his Adagia at the Aldine Press of the famous printer Aldus Manutius, advised which manuscripts to publish, and was an honorary member of the graecophone Aldine "New Academy" (Greek: Neakadêmia (Νεακαδημία)). From Aldus he learned the in-person workflow that made him productive at Froben: making last-minute changes, and immediately checking and correcting printed page proofs as soon as the ink had dried. Aldus wrote that Erasmus could do twice as much work in a given time as any other man he had ever met.
In 1507, according to his letters, he studied advanced Greek in Padua with the Venetian natural philosopher, Giulio Camillo. He found employment tutoring and escorting Scottish nobleman Alexander Stewart, the 24-year old Archbishop of St Andrews, through Padua, Florence, and Siena Erasmus made it to Rome in 1509, visiting some notable libraries and cardinals, but having a less active association with Italian scholars than might have been expected.
On his trip back over the Alps, down the Rhein, to England, he mentally composed The Praise of Folly.
Opponents: Latomus • Edward Lee • Ulrich von Hutten
Erasmus had accepted an honorary position as a Councillor to Charles V, and tutored his brother, the teenage future Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand of Hapsburg. He stayed in various locations including Anderlecht (near Brussels), in the Summer of 1521.
Erasmus may have made several other short visits to England or English territory while living in Brabant. Happily for Erasmus, More and Tunstall were posted in Brussels or Antwerp on government missions around 1516, More for six months, Tunstall for longer.
His residence at Leuven, where he lectured at the University, exposed Erasmus to much criticism from those ascetics, academics and clerics hostile to the principles of literary and religious reform to which he was devoting his life. In 1514, he made the acquaintance of Hermannus Buschius, Ulrich von Hutten and Johann Reuchlin who introduced him to the Hebrew language in Mainz. In 1517, he supported the foundation at the university of the Collegium Trilingue for the study of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek—after the model of Cisneros' College of the Three Languages at the University of Alcalá—financed by his late friend Hieronymus van Busleyden's will.
In 1520 he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold with Guillaume Budé, his last meetings with Thomas More and William Warham. His friends and former students and old correspondents were the incoming political elite, and he had risen with them.
Opponents: Œcolampadius
From 1514, Erasmus regularly traveled to Basel to coordinate the printing of his books with Froben and be the press' literary superintendent writing dedications and prefaces. He developed a lasting association with the great Basel publisher Johann Froben and later his son Hieronymus Froben (Eramus' godson) who together published over 200 works with Erasmus, working with expert correctors who went on to illustrious careers. His initial interest in Froben was aroused by his discovery of the printer's folio edition of the Adagiorum Chiliades tres (Adagia) (1513). Froben's work was notable for using the new Roman type (rather than blackletter) and Aldine-like Italic and Greek fonts, as well as elegant layouts using borders and fancy capitals.
In 1521 he settled in Basel. He was weary of the controversies and hostility at Louvain, and feared being dragged further into the Lutheran controversy. Apart from Froben's household, he had his own household with a formidable housekeeper and up to eight boarders or paid servants: who acted as assistants, correcters, amanuenses, dining companions, international couriers, and carers.
In collaboration with Froben and his team, the scope and ambition of Erasmus' Annotations, Erasmus' long-researched project of philological notes of the New Testament along the lines of Valla's Adnotations, had grown to also include a lightly-revised Latin Vulgate, then the Greek text, then several edifying essays on methodology, then a highly-revised Vulgate—all bundled as his Novum testamentum omne and pirated individually throughout Europe— then finally his amplified Paraphrases.
As the popular response to Luther gathered momentum, the social disorders, which Erasmus dreaded and Luther disassociated himself from, began to appear, including the German Peasants' War, the Anabaptist insurrections in Germany and in the Low Countries, iconoclasm, and the radicalisation of peasants across Europe. If these were the outcomes of reform, he was thankful that he had kept out of it. Yet he was ever more bitterly accused of having started the whole "tragedy" (as Erasmus dubbed the matter).
For a time, he provided financial support to the impoverished and disgraced former Latin Secretary of Antwerp Cornelius Grapheus, on his release from the Inquisition.
Following iconoclastic rioting in 1529 lead by Œcolampadius his former assistant, the city of Basel definitely adopted the Reformation, and banned the Catholic mass on April 1, 1529. Erasmus left Basel on the 13 April 1529 and departed by ship to the Catholic university town of Freiburg im Breisgau to be under the protection of his former student, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, staying for two years on the top floor of the Whale House, then buying and refurbishing a house of his own, where he took in scholar/assistants as table-boarders such as Damião de Góis, some of them fleeing persecution. Despite increasing frailty, Erasmus continued to work productively, notably on a new magnum opus, his manual on preaching Ecclesiastes, and his small book on preparing for death.
In 1529, his French translator and friend Louis de Berquin was burnt in Paris, following his condemnation as an anti-Rome heretic by the Sorbonne theologians.
There was a generational change in the Catholic hierarchy. (In 1533 his long-time patron English Primate Warham died of old age. In 1534 his distrusted protector Clement IV died, his recent Italian ally Cardinal Cajetan died, and his old ally Cardinal Campeggio retired.)
As more friends died (in 1533, his friend Pieter Gilles) and as Luther and theologians renewed their personal attacks on Erasmus, his letters are increasingly focused on concerns on the status of friendships and safety as he considered moving from bland Freiburg despite his health.
In 1535, Erasmus' friends Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were executed as pro-Rome traitors by Henry VIII, who Erasmus and More had first met as a boy. Erasmus wrote the first biography of More (and Fisher), the short, anonymous "Expositio Fidelis, which Froben published, at the instigation of de Góis despite illness.
Numerous of Erasmus' translators later met similar fates at the hands of Anglican, Catholic and Reformed sectarians and autocrats: including Margaret Pole, William Tyndale, Mary Tudor, Michael Servetus. Others, such as Juan de Valdés, fled and died in self-exile. His friend Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall died in prison under Elizabeth I for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. His correspondent Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who Erasmus had known as a teenaged student in Paris and Cambridge, was later imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years under Edward VI for impeding Protestantism. Damião de Góis was tried before the Portuguese Inquisition at age 72, and exiled to a monastery, and on release perhaps murdered. His amanuensis Gilbert Cousin died in prison at age 66, shortly after being arrested on the personal order of saint and fanatic Pope Pius V.
When his strength began to fail, he finally decided to accept an invitation by Queen Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands (sister of his former student Archduke Ferdinand I and Emperor Charles V), to move from Freiburg to Brabant. In 1535, he moved back to the Froben compound in Basel in preparation (Œcolampadius having died, and private practice of his religion now possible) and saw his last major works such as Ecclesiastes through publication, though he grew more frail. In 1536, he died at an attack of dysentery.
He had remained loyal to Roman Catholicism, but biographers have disagreed whether to treat him as him as an insider or an outsider.
He may not have had the opportunity to receive the last rites of the Catholic Church; the contemporary reports of his death do not mention whether he asked for a Catholic priest or not, if any were in Basel. According to historian Jan van Herwaarden, it is consistent with Erasmus' view that outward signs were not important; what mattered is the believer's direct relationship with God. However, van Herwaarden states that "he did not dismiss the rites and sacraments out of hand but asserted a dying person could achieve a state of salvation without the priestly rites, provided their faith and spirit were attuned to God" (i.e., maintaining being in a State of Grace) noting Erasmus' stipulation that this was "as the (Catholic) Church believes."
His last words, as recorded by his friend and biographer Beatus Rhenanus, were apparently "Dear God" (Dutch: Lieve God). He was buried with great ceremony in the Basel Minster (the former cathedral). The Protestant city authorities remarkably allowed his funeral to be an ecumenical Catholic requiem mass.
As his heir he instated Bonifacius Amerbach to give seed money to the poor and needy: he had received a dispensation to make a will rather than his wealth reverting to his order, the Chapter of Sion, and had pre-sold his personal library to Jan Łaski. One of the eventual recipients was the impoverished Protestant humanist Sebastian Castellio, who had fled from Geneva to Basel, who subsequently translated the Bible into Latin and French, and who worked for the repair of the breach and divide of Christianity in its Catholic, Anabaptist, and Protestant branches.
Erasmus had a distinctive manner of thinking, a Catholic historian suggests: one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony with "a deep and abiding commitment to human flourishing" "In all spheres, his outlook was essentially pastoral."
Erasmus has been called a seminal rather than a consistent or systematic thinker, notably averse to over-extending from the specific to the general; who nevertheless should be taken very seriously as a pastoral and rhetorical theologian, with a philological and historical approach—rather than a metaphysical approach—to interpreting Scripture and interested in the literal and tropological senses. A theologian has written of "Erasmus’ preparedness completely to satisfy no-one but himself." He has been called moderate, judicious and constructive even when being critical or when mocking extremes.
Peace, peaceableness and peacemaking, in all spheres from the domestic to the religious to the political, were central distinctives of Erasmus' writing on Christian living and his mystical theology: "the sum and summary of our religion is peace and unanimity" At the Nativity of Jesus "the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace.":
He (Christ) conquered by gentleness; He conquered by kindness; he conquered by truth itself
Erasmus was not an absolute Pacifist but promoted political Pacificism and religious Irenicism. Notable writings on irenicism include de Concordia, On the War with the Turks, The Education of a Christian Prince, On Restoring the Concord of the Church, and The Complaint of Peace. Erasmus' ecclesiology of peacemaking held that the church authorities had a divine mandate to settle religious disputes, in an as non-excluding way as possible, including by the preferably-minimal development of doctrine.
In the latter, Lady Peace insists on peace as the crux of Christian life and for understanding Christ:
I give you my peace, I leave you my peace" (John 14:27). You hear what he leaves his people? Not horses, bodyguards, empire or riches – none of these. What then? He gives peace, leaves peace – peace with friends, peace with enemies.
A historian has called him "The 16th Century's Pioneer of Peace Education and a Culture of Peace".
Erasmus had experienced war as a child and was particularly concerned about wars between Christian kings, who should be brothers and not start wars; a theme in his book The Education of a Christian Prince. His Adages included "War is sweet to those who have never tasted it." (Dulce bellum inexpertis from Pindar's Greek.)
He promoted and was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold, and his wide-ranging correspondence frequently related to issues of peacemaking. He saw a key role of the Church in peacemaking by arbitration, and the office of the Pope was necessary to reign in tyrannical princes and bishops.
He questioned the practical usefulness and abuses of Just War theory, further limiting it to feasible defensive actions with popular support and that "war should never be undertaken unless, as a last resort, it cannot be avoided." In his Adages he discusses (common translation) "A disadvantageous peace is better than a just war", which owes to Cicero and John Colet's "Better an unjust peace than the justest war."
Erasmus was extremely critical of the warlike way of important European princes of his era, including some princes of the church. He described these princes as corrupt and greedy. Erasmus believed that these princes "collude in a game, of which the outcome is to exhaust and oppress the commonwealth". He spoke more freely about this matter in letters sent to his friends like Thomas More, Beatus Rhenanus and Adrianus Barlandus: a particular target of his criticisms was the Emperor Maximilian I, whom Erasmus blamed for allegedly preventing the Netherlands from signing a peace treaty with Guelders and other schemes to cause wars in order to extract money from his subjects.
He referred to his irenical disposition in the Preface to On Free Will as a secret inclination of nature that would make him even prefer the views of the Sceptics over intolerant assertions, though he sharply distinguished adiaphora from what was uncontentiously explicit in the New Testament or absolutely mandated by Church teaching. Concord demanded unity and assent: Erasmus was anti-sectarian as well as non-sectarian. To follow the law of love, our intellects must be humble and friendly when making any assertions: he called contention "earthly, beastly, demonic" and a good-enough reason to reject a teacher or their followers. In Melancthon's view, Erasmus taught charity not faith.
Certain works of Erasmus laid a foundation for religious toleration of private opinions and ecumenism. For example, in De libero arbitrio, opposing certain views of Martin Luther, Erasmus noted that religious disputants should be temperate in their language, "because in this way the truth, which is often lost amidst too much wrangling may be more surely perceived." Gary Remer writes, "Like Cicero, Erasmus concludes that truth is furthered by a more harmonious relationship between interlocutors."
Erasmus' pacificism included a particular dislike for sedition:
It was the duty of the leaders of this (reforming) movement, if Christ was their goal, to refrain not only from vice, but even from every appearance of evil; and to offer not the slightest stumbling block to the Gospel, studiously avoiding even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient. Above all they should have guarded against all sedition.
Erasmus had been involved in early attempts to protect Luther and his sympathisers from charges of heresy. Erasmus wrote Inquisitio de fide to limit what should be considered heresy to fractiously agitating against essential doctrines (e.g., those of the Creed), with malice and persistence. As with St Theodore the Studite, Erasmus was against the death penalty merely for private or peaceable heresy, or for dissent on non-essentials: "It is better to cure a sick man than to kill him." The Church has the duty to protect believers and convert or heal heretics; he invoked Jesus' parable of the wheat and tares.
Nevertheless, he allowed the death penalty against violent seditionists, to prevent bloodshed and war: he allowed that the state has the right to execute those who are a necessary danger to public order—whether heretic or orthodox—but noted (e.g., to fr:Noël Béda) that Augustine had been against the execution of even violent Donatists: Johannes Trapman states that Erasmus' endorsement of suppression of the Anabaptists springs from their refusal to heed magistrates and the criminal violence of the Münster rebellion not because of their heretical views on baptism. Despite these concessions to state power, he suggested that religious persecution could still be challenged as inexpedient (ineffective).
In a letter to Cardial Lorenzo Campeggio, Erasmus lobbied diplomatically for toleration: "If the sects could be tolerated under certain conditions (as the Bohemians pretend), it would, I admit, be a grievous misfortune, but one more endurable than war."
While the focus of most of his writing was about peace within Christendom, he was involved in the public policy debate on war with the Ottoman Empire, which was then invading Western Europe, notably in his book On the war against the Turks (1530), with Pope Leo X promoting going on the offensive with a new crusade.
In common with his times, Erasmus regarded the Jewish and Islamic religions as Christian heresies rather than separate religions, using the inclusive term half-Christian for the latter. However, there is a wide range of scholarly opinion on the extent and nature of antisemitic and anti-Moslem prejudice in his writings: Erasmus scholar Shimon Markish wrote that the charge of antisemitism could not be sustained in Erasmus' public writings, however historian Nathan Ron has found his writing to be harsh and racial in its implications, with contempt and hostility to Islam. Biographer James Tracy sees an anti-semitic edge in Erasmus' comments against Pferfferkorn in the Ruechlin affair, which expresses Erasmus' general "suspicion of those who, behind the scenes, manipulate influence and opinion for nefarious ends."
Erasmus was not vehemently antisemitic in the way of the later post-Catholic Martin Luther; it was not a topic or theme of his public writing. Erasmus claimed not to be personally xenophobic: "For I am of such a nature that I could love even a Jew, were he a pleasant companion and did not spew out blasphemy against Christ" however Markish suggests that it is probable Erasmus never actually encountered a (practicing) Jew.
Unusually for a Christian theologian of any time, he perceived and championed strong Hellenistic rather than exclusively Hebraic influences on the intellectual milieux of Jesus, Paul and the early church.
Erasmus' emphasis on peacemaking reflects a typical pre-occupation of medieval lay spirituality as historian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) puts it: "medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. “Christianity” in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal—constantly aspired to if seldom attained—was peace and mutual love."
In marriage, Erasmus' two significant innovations, according to historian Nathan Ron, were that "matrimony can and should be a joyous bond, and that this goal can be achieved by a relationship between spouses based on mutuality, conversation, and persuasion."
Erasmus justified much of his reform program as defenses, albeit unsystematic and practical, of the sacraments: notably for the underappreciated sacraments of Baptism and Marriage, considered as more than events; and for the correct attitude of the participants, notable for the mysterious Eucharist, pragmatic Confession, the dangerous Last Rites, and the pastoral Holy Orders.
Reacting from his own experiences, Erasmus believed that monastic life and institutions no longer served the positive spiritual or social purpose they once may have: in the Enchiridion he controversially put it Monkishness is not piety. Better to live as "a monk in the world" than in the monastery.
Many of his works contain diatribes against supposed monastic corruption, and particularly against the mendicant friars (Franciscans and Dominicans): these orders also typically ran the university Scholastic theology programs and from whose ranks came his most dangerous enemies. He was scandalized by superstitions, such as that if you were buried in a Franciscan habit you would go direct to heaven, crime and child novices. He advocated various reforms, including a ban on taking orders until the 30th year, the closure of corrupt and smaller monasteries, respect for bishops, requiring work not begging (reflecting the practice of his own order of Augustinian Canons,) the downplaying of monastic hours, fasts and ceremonies, and a less mendacious approach to gullible pilgrims and tenants.
However, he was not in favour of speedy closures: in his account of his pilgrimage to Walsingham, he noted that the funds extracted from pilgrims typically supported houses for the poor and elderly.
These ideas widely influenced his generation of humanists, both Catholic and Protestant, and the lurid hyperbolic attacks of his half-satire The Praise of Folly were later treated by Protestants as objective reports of near-universal corruption. Furthermore, "what is said over a glass of wine, ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief," such as his proposal to marry all monks to all nuns or to send them all away to fight the Turks and colonize new islands.
He believed the only vow necessary for Christians should be the vow of Baptism, and others such as the vows of the evangelical counsels, while admirable in content, were now mainly counter-productive.
The Protestant Reformation began in the year following the publication of his pathbreaking edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek (1516). The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the church, from which Protestantism later emerged, had become so clear that many intellectuals and churchmen could not escape the summons to join the debate.
According to historian C. Scott Dixon, Erasmus' not only criticized church failings but questioned many of his Church's basic teachings; however, according to biographer Erika Rummel, "Erasmus was aiming at the correction of abuses rather than at doctrinal innovation or institutional change."
Erasmus, at the height of his literary fame, was called upon to take sides, but partisanship was foreign to his nature and his habits. Despite all his criticism of clerical corruption and abuses within the Western Church, especially at first he sided with neither party, and eventually shunned the Protestant Reformation movements along with their most radical offshoots.
The world had laughed at his satire, The Praise of Folly, but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work so far had commended itself to the best minds and also to the dominant powers in the religious world. Erasmus chose to write in Latin (and Greek), the languages of scholars. He did not build a large body of supporters in the unlettered; his critiques reached a small but elite audience.
Erasmus and Luther impacted each other greatly. Each had misgivings about each other from the beginning (Erasmus on Luther's rash and antagonistic character, Luther on Erasmus' focus on morality rather than grace) but strategically agreed not to be negative about the other in public.
Noting Luther's criticism of corruption in the Church, Erasmus at one time described him as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth" while agreeing, "It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed." Behind the scenes Erasmus forbade his publisher Froben from handling the works of Luther and tried to keep the reform movement focused on institutional rather than theological issues, yet he also privately wrote to authorities to prevent Luther's persecution.
Luther hoped for his cooperation in a work which seemed only the natural outcome of Erasmus' own, and spoke with admiration of Erasmus's superior learning. In their early correspondence, Luther expressed boundless admiration for all Erasmus had done in the cause of a sound and reasonable Christianity and urged him to join the Lutheran party. Erasmus declined to commit himself, arguing that to do so would endanger the cause for Latin: bonae litterae which he regarded as one of his purposes in life. Only as an independent scholar could he hope to influence the reform of religion. When Erasmus hesitated to support him, the straightforward Luther became angered that Erasmus was avoiding the responsibility due either to cowardice or a lack of purpose.
However, any hesitancy on the part of Erasmus may have stemmed, not from lack of courage or conviction, but rather from a concern over the mounting disorder and violence of the reform movement. To Philip Melanchthon in 1524 he wrote:
I know nothing of your church; at the very least it contains people who will, I fear, overturn the whole system and drive the princes into using force to restrain good men and bad alike. The gospel, the word of God, faith, Christ, and Holy Spirit – these words are always on their lips; look at their lives and they speak quite another language.
Though he sought to remain firmly neutral in doctrinal disputes, each side accused him of siding with the other, perhaps because of his perceived influence and what they regarded as his dissembling neutrality, which he regarded as peacemaking accommodation:
I detest dissension because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss.
By 1523 Erasmus had been convinced that Luther's ideas on necessity/free will were a subject of core disagreement deserving a public airing, and strategized with friends and correspondents on how to respond with proper moderation without making the situation worse for all, especially for the humanist reform agenda.
The publication of his brief book On Free Will initiated what has been called "The greatest debate of that era" which still has ramifications today, bypassing discussion on reform which they agreed on in general, and instead dealing with biblical justifications of synergism versus monergism in relation to salvation.
Luther responded with On the Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio) (1525). Erasmus replied to this in his lengthy two volume Hyperaspistes and other works.
Apart from the perceived moral failings among followers of the Reformers, an important sign for Erasmus, he also dreaded any change in doctrine, citing the long history of the Church as a bulwark against innovation. He put the matter bluntly to Luther:
We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now with a few followers, although the leading men of your flock do not agree either with you or among themselves – indeed though you do not even agree with yourself, since in this same Assertion you say one thing in the beginning and something else later on, recanting what you said before.
Continuing his chastisement of Luther – and undoubtedly put off by the notion of there being "no pure interpretation of Scripture anywhere but in Wittenberg" – Erasmus touches upon another important point of the controversy:
You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture.
In 1529, Erasmus wrote "An epistle against those who falsely boast they are Evangelicals" to Vulturius Neocomus (Gerardus Geldenhouwer). Here Erasmus complains of the doctrines and morals of the Reformers:
You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists; against our prayers, fasts, and Masses; and you are not content to retrench the abuses that may be in these things, but must needs abolish them entirely. ...Look around on this 'Evangelical' generation, and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it. ...The solemn prayers of the Church are abolished, but now there are very many who never pray at all. ...I have never entered their conventicles, but I have sometimes seen them returning from their sermons, the countenances of all of them displaying rage, and wonderful ferocity, as though they were animated by the evil spirit. ...Who ever beheld in their meetings any one of them shedding tears, smiting his breast, or grieving for his sins? ...Confession to the priest is abolished, but very few now confess to God. ...They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.
A test of the Reformation was the doctrine of the sacraments, and the crux of this question was the observance of the Eucharist. Erasmus was concerned that the sacramentarians, headed by Œcolampadius of Basel, were claiming Erasmus held views similar to their own in order to try to claim him for their schismatic and "erroneous" movement. In 1530, Erasmus published a new edition of the orthodox treatise of Algerus against the heretic Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century. He added a dedication, affirming his belief in the reality of the Body of Christ after consecration in the Eucharist, commonly referred to as transubstantiation.
Erasmus wrote books against aspects of the teaching, impacts or threats of several other Reformers:
However, Erasmus maintained friendly relations with other Protestants, notably the irenic Melancthon and Albrecht Duerer.
A common accusation, supposedly started by antagonistic monk-theologians, made Erasmus responsible for Martin Luther and the Reformation: "Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it." Erasmus wittily dismissed the charge, claiming that Luther had "hatched a different bird entirely." Erasmus-reader Peter Canisius commented: "Certainly there was no lack of eggs for Luther to hatch."
Erasmus has a problematic standing in the history of philosophy: whether he should be called a philosopher at all, (as, indeed, some question whether he should be considered a theologian either.) Erasmus deemed himself to be a rhetorician or grammarian rather than a philosopher. He was particularly influenced by satirist and rhetorician Lucian. Erasmus' writings shifted "an intellectual culture from logical disputation about things to quarrels about texts, contexts, and words."
An important concept to Erasmus was "the Folly of the Cross" (which The Praise of Folly explored): the view that Truth belongs to the exuberant, perhaps ecstatic, world of what is foolish, strange and unexpected to us, rather than the cold worlds that intricate scholastic dialectical and syllogistic philosophical argument generate; this produced in Erasmus a profound disinterest in hyper-rationality, and an emphasis on verbal, rhetorical, mystical, pastoral and personal/political moral concerns instead.
(Not to be confused with his Italian contemporary Chrysostom Javelli's Philosophia Christiana.)
Erasmus approached classical philosophers theologically and rhetorically: their value was in how they pre-saged, explained or amplified the unique teachings of Christ (particularly the Sermon on the Mount): the philosophia Christi. "A great part of the teaching of Christ is to be found in some of the philosophers, particularly Socrates, Diogenes and Epictetus. But Christ taught it much more fully, and exemplified it better..." (Paraclesis) In fact, Christ was "the very father of philosophy" (Anti-Barbieri.)
In works such as his Enchiridion, The Education of a Christian Prince and the Colloquies, Erasmus developed his idea of the philosophia Christi, a life lived according to the teachings of Jesus taken as a (spiritual-ethical-social-political-legal) philosophy:
Christ the heavenly teacher has founded a new people on earth,…Having eyes without guile, these folk know no spite or envy; having freely castrated themselves, and aiming at a life of angels while in the flesh, they know no unchaste lust; they know not divorce, since there is no evil they will not endure or turn to the good; they have not the use of oaths, since they neither distrust nor deceive anyone; they know not the hunger for money, since their treasure is in heaven, nor do they itch for empty glory, since they refer all things to the glory of Christ.…these are the new teachings of our founder, such as no school of philosophy has ever brought forth.
In philosopher Étienne Gilson's summary: "the quite precise goal he pursues is to reject Greek philosophy outside of Christianity, into which the Middle Ages introduced Greek philosophy with the risk of corrupting this Christian Wisdom."
Useful "philosophy" needed to be limited to (or re-defined as) the practical and moral:
You must realize that 'philosopher' does not mean someone who is clever at dialectics or science but someone who rejects illusory appearance and undauntedly seeks out and follows what is true and good. Being a philosopher is in practice the same as being a Christian; only the terminology is different."
Erasmus syncretistically took phrases, ideas and motifs from many classical philosophers to furnish discussions of Christian themes: academics have identified aspects of his thought as variously Platonist (duality), Cynical (asceticism), Stoic (adiaphora), Epicurean (ataraxia, pleasure as virtue), realist/non-voluntarist, and Isocratic (rhetoric, political education, syncretism.) However, his Christianized version of Epicureanism is regarded as his own.
Erasmus was sympathetic to a kind of Scepticism:
A Sceptic is not someone who doesn't care to know what is true or false…but rather someone who does not make a final decision easily or fight to the death for his own opinion, but rather accepts as probable what someone else accepts as certain…I explicitly exclude from Scepticism whatever is set forth in Sacred Scripture or whatever has been handed down to us by the authority of the Church.
He eschewed metaphysical, epistemological and logical philosophy as found in Aristotle, in particular the curriculum and systematic methods of the post-Aquinas Schoolmen (Scholastics) and their dry, useless Aristoteleanism: "What has Aristotle to do with Christ?" We should avoid philosophical factionalism and so "make the whole world Christian." Indeed, Erasmus thought that Scholastic philosophy actually distracted participants from their proper focus on immediate morality, unless used moderately. And, by "excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation."
Erasmus wrote in terms of a tri-partite nature of man, with the soul the seat of free will:
The body is purely material; the spirit is purely divine; the soul…is tossed back and forwards between the two according to whether it resists or gives way to the temptations of the flesh. The spirit makes us gods; the body makes us beasts; the soul makes us men.
According to theologian George van Kooten, Erasmus was the first modern scholar "to note the similarities between Plato's Symposium and John's Gospel", first in the Enchiridion then in the Adagia, pre-dating other scholarly interest by 400 years.
Erasmus wrote for educated audiences on both Christian subjects and those of general human interest. By the 1530s, the writings of Erasmus accounted for 10 to 20 percent of all book sales in Europe. "Undoubtedly he was the most read author of his age."
His letter to Ulrich von Hutten on Thomas More's household has been called "the first real biography in the real modern sense."
With the collaboration of Publio Fausto Andrelini, he made a collection of Latin proverbs and adages, commonly known as the Adagia. It includes the adage "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." He coined the adage "Pandora's box", arising through an error in his translation of Hesiod's Pandora in which he confused pithos (storage jar) with pyxis (box).
Examples of Adages are: more haste, less speed; a dung beetle hunting an eagle.
Erasmus later spent nine months in Venice at the Aldine Press expanding the Adagia to over three thousand entries; in the course of 27 editions, it expanded to over four thousand entries in Basel at the Froben press. It "introduced a fairly wide audience to the actual words and thoughts of the ancients."
His more serious writings begin early with the Enchiridion militis Christiani, the "Handbook of the Christian Soldier" (1501 and re-issued in 1518 with an expanded preface – translated into English in 1533 by the young William Tyndale). (A more literal translation of enchiridion – "dagger" – has been likened to "the spiritual equivalent of the modern Swiss Army knife.") In this short work, Erasmus outlines the views of the normal Christian life, which he was to spend the rest of his days elaborating. He has been described as "evangelical in his beliefs and pietistic in his practise."
Erasmus's best-known work is The Praise of Folly, written in 1509, published in 1511 under the double title Moriae encomium (Greek, Latinised) and Laus stultitiae (Latin). It is inspired by De triumpho stultitiae written by Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli. A satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society in general and in the Western Church in particular, it was dedicated to Sir Thomas More, whose name the title puns.
De Copia (or Foundations of the Abundant Style or On Copiousness) is a textbook designed to teach aspects of classical rhetoric: having a large supply of words, phrases and grammatical forms is a gateway to formulating and expressing thoughts, especially for "forensic oratory", with mastery and freshness. Perhaps as a joke, its full title is "The twofold copia of words and arguments in a double commentary" (Latin: De duplici copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo). It was "the most often printed rhetoric textbook written in the renaissance, with 168 editions between 1512 and 1580."
The first part of the book is about verborum (words). It famously includes 147 variations on "Your letter pleased me very much", and 203 variations on "Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you."
The second part of the book is about rerum (arguments) to learn critical thinking and advocacy. Erasmus advised students to practice the rhetorical techniques of copiousness by writing letters to each other arguing both side of an issue (Latin: in utramque parte).
In a similar vein to the Adages was his translation of Plutarch's Moralia: parts were published from 1512 onwards and collected as the Opuscula plutarchi (c1514).
This was the basis of 1531's Apophthegmatum opus (Apophthegms), which ultimately contained over 3,000 aphophthegms: "certainly the fullest and most influential Renaissance collection of Cynic sayings and anecdotes", particular of Diogenes (from Diogenes Laertius.)
One of these was published independently, as How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend, dedicated to England's Henry VIII.
Julius excluded from Heaven is a biting satire usually attributed to Erasmus perhaps for private circulation, though he publicly denied writing it, calling its author a fool. The recently deceased Pope Julius arrives at the gates of heaven in his armour with his dead army, demanding from St Peter to be let in based on his glory and exploits. St Peter turns him away.
Erasmus's Sileni Alcibiadis is one of his most direct assessments of the need for Church reform. It started as a small entry in the 1508 Adagia citing Plato's Symposium and expanded to several hundred sentences. Johann Froben published it first within a revised edition of the Adagia in 1515, then as a stand-alone work in 1517.
Sileni is the plural (Latin) form of Silenus, a creature often related to the Roman wine god Bacchus and represented in pictorial art as inebriated, merry revellers, variously mounted on donkeys, singing, dancing, playing flutes, etc. In particular, the Sileni that Erasmus referred to were small, coarse, ugly or distasteful carved figures which opened up to reveal a beautiful deity or valuables inside.
Alcibiades was a Greek politician in the 5th century BCE and a general in the Peloponnesian War; he figures here more as a character written into some of Plato's dialogues – an externally-attractive, young, debauched playboy whom Socrates tries to convince to seek truth instead of pleasure, wisdom instead of pomp and splendor.
The term Sileni – especially when juxtaposed with the character of Alcibiades – can therefore be understood as an evocation of the notion that something on the inside is more expressive of a person's character than what one sees on the outside. For instance, something or someone ugly on the outside can be beautiful on the inside, which is one of the main points of Plato's dialogues featuring Alcibiades and in the Symposium, in which Alcibiades also appears.
On the other hand, Erasmus lists several Sileni and then controversially questions whether Christ is the most noticeable Silenus of them all. The Apostles were Sileni since they were ridiculed by others. The scriptures are a Silenus too.
The work then launches into a biting endorsement of the need for high church officials (especially the Pope) to follow the evangelical counsel of poverty (simplicity): this condemnation of wealth and power was a full two years before the notional start of the Reformation; the church must be able to act as a moderating influence on the ambition and selfishness of princes.
The Institutio principis Christiani or "Education of a Christian Prince" (Basel, 1516) was written as advice to the young king Charles of Spain (later Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor), to whom the Preface is addressed. Erasmus applies the general principles of honor and sincerity to the special functions of the Prince, whom he represents throughout as the servant of the people. Education was published in 1516, three years after Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince was written; a comparison between the two is worth noting. Machiavelli stated that, to maintain control by political force, it is safer for a prince to be feared than loved. Erasmus preferred for the prince to be loved, and strongly suggested a well-rounded education in order to govern justly and benevolently and avoid becoming a source of oppression.
Erasmus produced this first edition of his corrected Latin and Greek New Testament in 1516, in Basel at the print of Johann Froben, and took it through multiple revisions and editions. An integral part was the substantial philological annotations. Erasmus independently brought out Paraphrases of the books of the New Testament, suited for a less academic readership.
Erasmus had, for his time, relatively little interest in the Old Testament, apart from the Psalms. "To Erasmus, Judaism was obsolete. To Reuchlin, something of Judaism remained of continuing value to Christianity."</ref> Similarly, he was relatively disinterested in the Book of Revelation, which he did not produce a paraphrase for, and he provocatively reported the doubts in the early Greek church about its status in the canon: Erasmus had none of the apocalypticism of his times which so animated Savonarolan and Protestant rhetoric: only one percent of his Annotations on the New Testament concerned the Book of Revelation.
Erasmus had been working for years on two related projects to help theologians: philological notes on the Latin and Greek texts and a fresh Latin New Testament. He examined all the Latin versions he could find to create a critical text. Then he polished the language. He declared, "It is only fair that Paul should address the Romans in somewhat better Latin." In the earlier phases of the project, he never mentioned a Greek text.
While his intentions for publishing a fresh Latin translation are clear, it is less clear why he included the Greek text. Though some speculate that he long intended to produce a critical Greek text or that he wanted to beat the Complutensian Polyglot into print, there is no evidence to support this. He wrote, "There remains the New Testament translated by me, with the Greek facing, and notes on it by me." He further demonstrated the reason for the inclusion of the Greek text when defending his work:
But one thing the facts cry out, and it can be clear, as they say, even to a blind man, that often through the translator's clumsiness or inattention the Greek has been wrongly rendered; often the true and genuine reading has been corrupted by ignorant scribes, which we see happen every day, or altered by scribes who are half-taught and half-asleep.
So he included the Greek text to permit qualified readers to verify the quality of his Latin version. But by first calling the final product Novum Instrumentum omne ("All of the New Teaching") and later Novum Testamentum omne ("All of the New Testament") he also indicated clearly that he considered a text in which the Greek and the Latin versions were consistently comparable to be the essential core of the church's New Testament tradition.
Erasmus said the printing of the first edition was "precipitated rather than published", resulting in a number of transcription errors. After comparing what writings he could find, Erasmus wrote corrections between the lines of the manuscripts he was using (among which was Minuscule 2) and sent them as proofs to Froben. His access to Greek manuscripts was limited compared to modern scholars and he had to rely on Jerome's late-4th century Vulgate to fill in the blanks.
His effort was hurriedly published by his friend Johann Froben of Basel in 1516 and thence became the first published Greek New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum omne, diligenter ab Erasmo Rot. Recognitum et Emendatum. Erasmus used several Greek manuscript sources because he did not have access to a single complete manuscript. Most of the manuscripts were, however, late Greek manuscripts of the Byzantine textual family and Erasmus used the oldest manuscript the least because "he was afraid of its supposedly erratic text." He also ignored some manuscripts that were at his disposal which are now deemed older and better.
In the second (1519) edition, the more familiar term Testamentum was used instead of Instrumentum. Together, the first and second editions sold 3,300 copies. By comparison, only 600 copies of the Complutensian Polyglot were ever printed. This edition was used by Martin Luther in his German translation of the Bible, written for people who could not understand Latin. The first and second edition texts did not include the passage (1 John 5:7–8) that has become known as the Comma Johanneum. Erasmus had been unable to find those verses in any Greek manuscript, but one was supplied to him during production of the third edition.
The third edition of 1522 was probably used by William Tyndale for the first English New Testament (Worms, 1526) and was the basis for the 1550 Robert Stephanus edition used by the translators of the Geneva Bible and King James Version of the English Bible. Erasmus published a fourth edition in 1527 containing parallel columns of Greek, Latin Vulgate and Erasmus's Latin texts. In this edition Erasmus also supplied the Greek text of the last six verses of Revelation (which he had translated from Latin back into Greek in his first edition) from Cardinal Ximenez's Biblia Complutensis. In 1535 Erasmus published the fifth (and final) edition which dropped the Latin Vulgate column but was otherwise similar to the fourth edition. Later versions of the Greek New Testament by others, but based on Erasmus's Greek New Testament, became known as the Textus Receptus.
Erasmus dedicated his work to Pope Leo X as a patron of learning and regarded this work as his chief service to the cause of Christianity. Immediately afterwards, he began the publication of his Paraphrases of the New Testament, a popular presentation of the contents of the several books. These, like all of his writings, were published in Latin but were quickly translated into other languages with his encouragement.
Lady Peace complains about warmongering. This book was written at the request of the Burgundian Chancellor, who was then seeking a peace deal with France, to influence the zeitgeist.
On the use of battle standards featuring crosses:
That cross is the standard of him who conquered, not by fighting, but by dying; who came, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. It is a standard, the very sight of which might teach you what sort of enemies you have to war against, if you are a christian, and how you may be sure to gain the victory. I see you, while the standard of salvation is in one hand, rushing on with a sword in the other, to the murder of your brother; and, under the banner of the cross, destroying the life of one who to the cross owes his salvation.
The final paragraph of The Complaint of Peace finishes with the command Latin: resipiscite, meaning a voluntary return from madness and unconsiousness:
At last! Enough and more than enough blood has been spilled, human blood, and if that were little, even Christian blood. Enough has been squandered in mutual destruction, enough already sacrificed to Orcus and the Furies and to nourish the eyes of the Turks. The comedy is at an end. Finally, after tolerating far too long the miseries of war, repent!
However, the subsequent European wars of religion which accompanied the Reformation resulted in the deaths of between 7 and 18 million Europeans, including up to one third of the population of Germany.
Erasmus described his editorial intent with the Paraphrases of the New Testament as philological rather than theological: "to fill in the gaps, to soften the abrupt ones, to digest the confused ones, to develop the developed ones, to explain the knotty ones, to add light to the dark ones, to give Hebraicisms a Roman polish ... and thus to moderate παραφρασιννε παραφρόνησις: that is, 'to say otherwise so as not to say otherwise.'"
He brought out the Paraphrases progressively: Romans (1517), Corinthians (1519), the rest of the Epistles throughout 1520 and 1521, and the four Gospels and Acts from 1522 to 1524. He did not put out a paraphrase of the Book of Revelation.
According to Erasmus: "A paraphrase is not a translation but something looser, a kind of commentary in which the writer and his author retain separate roles."
The Paraphrases allowed Erasmus to amplify the text of the New Testament by integrating philological and theological points from his scholarly Annotations, allowing more of a role for his personal opinions or angles, but in a less scholarly format.
The Paraphrases were very well-received, particularly in England, by most parties.
Biographer Roland Bainton nominated this passage as "the essence of Erasmus" (its positivity to natural affection has none of the Lutheran total depravity doctrine, and it accords with the Catholic analogia entis pattern):
"Now in the natural love of this father for his son behold the goodness of God, who is far more clement to sinful man, if only he repents and despises himself, than any father to his son, however tenderly he may love him."
The Colloquia familiaria began as simple spoken Latin exercises for schoolboys to encourage fluency in colloquial Latin interaction, but expanded in number, ambition and audience. The sensational nature of many of the Colloquies made it a prime target for censorship.
Notable Colloquies include the exciting Naufragium (Shipwreck), the philosophical and path-forging The Epicurean, and the zany catalogue of fantastic animal stories Friendship.
For example, A Religious Pilgrimage deals with many serious subjects humorously, and scandalously includes a letter supposedly written by a Statue of the Virgin Mary, in which, while it first thanks a reformer for following Luther against needlessly invoking saints (where the listed invocations are all for sinful or wordly things), becomes a warning against iconoclasm and stripping altars.
As a result of his reformatory activities, Erasmus found himself at odds with some reformers and some Catholic churchmen. His last years were made difficult by controversies with men toward whom he was sympathetic.
Notable among these was Ulrich von Hutten, once a friend, a brilliant but erratic genius who had thrown himself into the Lutheran cause (and militant German nationalism ) and declared that Erasmus, if he had a spark of honesty, would do the same. In his reply in 1523, Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni, Erasmus accused Hutten of having misinterpreted his utterances about reform and reiterates his determination never to break with the Catholic Church.
Historian Francis Aidan Gasquet regarded this book as necessary for understanding Erasmus' true position on Rome, quoting:
"I have never approved of (the Roman See's) tyranny, rapacity, and other vices about which of old common complaints were heard from good men. Neither do I sweepingly condemn ‘Indulgences,’ though I have always disliked any barefaced traffic in them. What I think about ceremonies, many places in my works plainly show.… What it may mean ‘to reduce the Pope to order’ I do not rightly understand. First, I think it must be allowed that Rome is a Church, for no number of evils can make it cease to be a Church, otherwise we should have no Churches whatever. Moreover, I hold it to be an orthodox Church; and this Church, it must be admitted, has a Bishop. Let him be allowed also to be Metropolitan, seeing there are very many archbishops in countries where there has been no apostle, and Rome, without controversy, had certainly SS. Peter and Paul, the two chief apostles. Then how is it absurd that among Metropolitans the chief place be granted to the Roman Pontiff?"
Erasmus noted that he would not renounce old friends because they took sides for or against Luther, noting that several had changed their minds again.
The paradoxes of Luther are not worth dying for. “There is no question of articles of faith, but of such matters as ‘Whether the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff was established by Christ:’ ‘whether cardinals are necessary to the Christian Church:’ ‘whether confession is de jure divino:’ ‘whether bishops can make their laws binding under pain of mortal sin:’ ‘whether free will is necessary for salvation:’ ‘whether faith alone assures salvation,’ &c. If Christ gave him grace,” Erasmus hopes that “he would be a martyr for His truth, but he has no desire whatever to be one for Luther.”
Erasmus wrote On Free Will (De libero arbitrio) (1524) against Luther's view on free will: that everything happens by strict necessity.
Erasmus lays down both sides of the argument impartially. In this controversy Erasmus lets it be seen that, from the thrust of Scripture, he would like to claim more for free will than St. Paul and St. Augustine seem to allow according to Luther's interpretation. For Erasmus the essential point is that humans have the freedom of choice, when responding to prior grace (synergism).
In response, Luther wrote his De servo arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will) (1525), which attacked "On Free Will" and Erasmus himself, going so far as to claim that Erasmus was not a Christian. "Free will does not exist", according to Luther in that sin makes human beings completely incapable of bringing themselves to God (monergism).
Erasmus responded with a lengthy, two-part book Hyperaspistes (1526–27).
Editions: 1523, 1525, 1529
This liturgy for a Catholic Mass, with sequences and a homily teaching that for Mary, and the Saints, imitation should be the chief part of veneration.
Fair choir of angels, take up the zither, take up the lyre. The Virgin Mother must be celebrated in song, in a virginal ode. The angels, joining in the song, will re-echo your voice. For they love virgins, being virgins themselves.
The liturgy re-framed the existing Marian devotions: as a substitute for mentioning the Holy House of Loreto, he used the meaning of Loreto as 'laurel', as in the champion's laurel wreath. The work also may have been intended to demonstrate the proper application of indulgences, as it came with one from the archbishop of Besançon.
The writings of Erasmus exhibit a continuing concern with language, and in 1525 he devoted an entire treatise to the subject, Lingua. This and several of his other works are said to have provided a starting point for a philosophy of language, though Erasmus did not produce a completely elaborated system.
The Institutio matrimonii was published in 1526 as treatise about marriage. He did not follow the contemporary mainstream which saw the woman as a subject to the man, but suggested the man was to love the woman similar as he would Christ, who also descended to earth to serve. He saw the role of the woman as a socia (partner) to the man.
The relationship should be of amicitia (sweet and mutual fondness). Erasmus suggested that true marriage between devout Christians required a true friendship (contrary to contemporary legal theories that required community consensus or consummation); and because true friendship never dies, divorce of a true marriage was impossible; the seeking of a divorce was a sign that the true friendship (and so the true marriage) never existed and so the divorce should be allowed, after investigation and protecting the individuals.
As far as sex in marriage is concerned, Erasmus' gentle, gradualist asceticism promoted that a mutually-agreed celibate marriage, if God had made this doable by the partners, could be the ideal: in theory it allowed more opportunity for spiritual pursuits. But he controversially noted
Since everything else has been designed for a purpose, it hardly seems probable that in this one matter alone nature was asleep. I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and that venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin.
The Ciceronianus came out in 1528, attacking the style of Latin that was based exclusively and fanatically on Cicero's writings. Étienne Dolet wrote a riposte titled Erasmianus in 1535. Erasmus' own Latin style was late classical (i.e., from Terence to Jerome) as far as syntax and grammar, but freely used medievalisms in its vocabulary.
In his catechism (entitled Explanation of the Apostles' Creed) (1530), Erasmus took a stand against Luther's recent Catechisms by asserting the unwritten Sacred Tradition as just as valid a source of revelation as the Bible, by enumerating the Deuterocanonical books in the canon of the Bible and by acknowledging seven sacraments. He identified anyone who questioned the perpetual virginity of Mary as blasphemous. However, he supported lay access to the Bible.
In a letter to Nikolaus von Amsdorf, Luther objected to Erasmus's catechism and called Erasmus a "viper", "liar", and "the very mouth and organ of Satan".
Erasmus's last major work, published the year of his death, is the Ecclesiastes or "Gospel Preacher" (Basel, 1536), a massive manual for preachers of around a thousand pages. Though somewhat unwieldy because Erasmus was unable to edit it properly in his old age, it is in some ways the culmination of all of Erasmus's literary and theological learning and, according to some scholars, of the previous millennium of preaching manuals since Augustine. It offered prospective preachers advice on important aspects of their vocation with abundant reference to classical and biblical sources.
According to Ernest Barker, "Besides his work on the New Testament, Erasmus laboured also, and even more arduously, on the early Fathers. Among the Latin Fathers he edited the works of St Jerome, St Hilary, and St Augustine; among the Greeks he worked on Irenaeus, Origen and Chrysostom."
In 1530, Erasmus, in his fourth edition of the works of Cyprian, introduced a treatise De duplici martyrio ad Fortunatum, which he attributed to Cyprian and presented as having been found by chance in an old library. This text, close to the works of Erasmus, both in content (hostility to the confusion between virtue and suffering) and in form, and of which no manuscript is known, contains at least one flagrant anachronism: an allusion to the persecution of Diocletian, persecution that took place long after the death of Cyprian. In 1544, the Dominican Henricus Gravius [de] denounced the work as inauthentic and attributed its authorship to Erasmus or an imitator of Erasmus. In the twentieth century, the hypothesis of a fraud by Erasmus was rejected a priori by most of the great Erasmians, for example Percy Stafford Allen, but it is adopted by academics like Anthony Grafton.
Erasmus was given the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists". He has also been called "the most illustrious rhetorician and educationalist of the Renaissance".
Since the origin of Christianity there have been perhaps only two other men—St Augustine and Voltaire—whose influence can be paralleled with Erasmus.
No man before or since acquired such undisputed sovereignty in the republic of letters... The reform which he set in motion went beyond him, and left him behind. In some of his opinions, however, he was ahead of his age, and anticipated a more modern stage of Protestantism. He was as much a forerunner of Rationalism as of the Reformation.
French biographer Désiré Nisard characterized him as a lens or focal point: "the whole of the Renaissance in Western Europe in the sixteenth century converged towards him."
Erasmians: Erasmus frequently mentioned that he did not want office nor to be the founder or figurehead of a sect or movement, despite his vigorous branding and self-promotion. Nevertheless, historians do identify de facto "Erasmians" (ranging from the early Jesuits to the early reformers, and both Thomas More and William Tyndale)—Christian humanists who picked up on some or other aspects of Erasmus' agenda.
Erasmianism: This has been described as a "more intellectual form of spiritualized Christianity". It had a notable influence in Spain. The near election of Reginald Pole as pope in 1546 has been attributed to Erasmianism in the electors. However, a precise definition is not possible; it is not, for example, a set of doctrinal propositions.
French historian Jean-Claude Margolin has noted an Erasmian stream in French culture putting "the concrete before the abstract and the ethical before the speculative", though it is not clear whether Erasmus influenced the French or vice versa.
Erasmian Reformation: Some historians such as Edward Gibbon and Hugh Trevor-Roper have even claimed an "'Erasmianism after Erasmus,' a secret stream which meandered to and fro across the Catholic/Protestant divide, creating oases of rational thought impartially on either side." For some, this amounted to a third church: or even that "Luther's and Calvin's Reformations were minor affairs" compared to the Reformation of Erasmus and the humanists' which swept away the Middle Ages.
Erasmian liberalism: This has had an enduring run: described by philosopher Edwin Curley that "the spirit of Erasmian liberalism was to emphasize the ethical aspects of Christianity at the expense of the doctrinal, to suspend judgment on many theological issues, and to insist that the faith actually required for salvation was a simple and uncontroversial one."
Protestant historian Roland Bainton is quoted "no-one did more than Erasmus to break down the theory and practice of the medieval variety of intolerance." Other popular or scholarly writers have suggested that Erasmus' tolerant but idealistic agenda failed, certainly at the political level, evidenced by the wars and persecutions of the Protestant Reformation.
Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education! (R.R. Bolger) … with greater confidence it can be claimed that Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education in the sixteenth century. …It may also be claimed that Erasmus was one of the most important champions of women's rights in his century.
According to scholar Gerald J. Luhrman, "the system of secondary education, as developed in a number of European countries, is inconceivable without the efforts of humanist educationalists, particularly Erasmus. His ideas in the field of language acquisition were systematized and realized to a large extent in the schools founded by the Jesuits..."
In England, he wrote the first curriculum for St Paul's School and his Latin grammar (written with Lily and Colet) "continued to be used, in adapted form, into the Twentieth Century."
His system of pronouncing ancient Greek was adopted for teaching in the major Western European nations.
Erasmus "tried to realize a practical goal: a modern education as preparation for administrators from the higher estates."
The popularity of his books is reflected in the number of editions and translations that have appeared since the sixteenth century. Ten columns of the catalogue of the British Library are taken up with the enumeration of the works and their subsequent reprints. The greatest names of the classical and patristic world are among those translated, edited, or annotated by Erasmus, including Ambrose, Aristotle, Augustine, Basil, John Chrysostom, Cicero and Jerome.
In his native Rotterdam, the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus Bridge, Erasmus MC and Gymnasium Erasmianum have been named in his honor. Between 1997 and 2009, one of the main metro lines of the city was named Erasmuslijn. The Foundation Erasmus House (Rotterdam), is dedicated to celebrating Erasmus's legacy. Three moments in Erasmus's life are celebrated annually. On 1 April, the city celebrates the publication of his best-known book The Praise of Folly. On 11 July, the Night of Erasmus celebrates the lasting influence of his work. His birthday is celebrated on 28 October.
Erasmus became extraordinarily popular and influential in Spain, including in and around the talent pool that formed the early Jesuits. There were at least 120 translations, editions, or adaptations of Erasmian writings between 1520 and 1552. Erasmians and their associated faced, at times, extraordinary pushback from the theologians at Salamanca and Vallodolid, for being associated with the alumbrado and illuminist tendencies, with many (notably Ignatius of Loyola) resorting to exile rather than facing the Inquisition, imprisonment or worse. However, at times the heads of the Inquisition were themselves Erasmians.
Erasmus faced a notable semi-secret trial in Vallodolid in 1527, attended by numerous bishops, abbots and theologians. Its records still exist. It disbanded without condemning Erasmus as a heretic, as most of his contentious beliefs were regarded as respectable by at least some important bishops, and the fanciful interpretations of the accusers did not stand up to scrutiny.
Erasmus' grammar, Adages, Copia, and other books continued as the core Latin educational material in England for the following centuries.
His translated Gospel paraphrases were legally required to be chained for public access in every church, in the reign of Edward VI.
After reading Erasmus' 1516 New Testament, Thomas Bilney "felt a marvellous comfort and quietness," and won over his Cambridge friends, future notable bishops, Matthew Parker and Hugh Latimer to reformist biblicism. One of William Tyndale's earliest works was his translation of Erasmus' Enchiridion (1522,1533). Both Tyndale and his theological opponent Thomas More are considered Erasmians.
Historian Lucy Wooding argues (in Christopher Haigh's paraphrases) that "England nearly had a Catholic Reformation along Erasmian lines –but it was cut short by (Queen) Mary’s death and finally torpedoed by the Council of Trent"
The initial Henrican closure of smaller monasteries followed the Erasmian agenda, which was also shared by Catholic humanists such as Reginald Pole; however the later violent closures and iconoclasm were far from Erasmus' program.
For some Restoration Anglicans, both those promoting enforced anti-extremism and latitudinarians, and into the Age of Enlightenment, Erasmus' moderation represented "an alternative to the belligerent Protestantism that characterized English political and social discourse". It has been claimed that William of Orange's Toleration Act owed to Erasmus' inspiration.
For Edward Gibbon, Erasmus was "the father of rational theology."
Erasmus's reputation and the interpretations of his work have varied over time. Moderate Catholics recognized him as a leading figure in attempts to reform the Church, while Protestants recognized his initial support for (and, in part, inspiration of) Luther's ideas and the groundwork he laid for the future Reformation, especially in biblical scholarship.
Erasmus was continually protected by popes, bishops and kings during his lifetime. The following generation of saints and scholars included many influenced by Erasmian humanism, notably Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila.
However, Erasmus attracted enemies in contemporary theologians in Paris, Louvain, Salamanca and Rome, notably Sepulveda, Stunica, Edward Lee, Noël Beda, as well as Alberto Pío, Prince of Carpi, who read his work with dedicated suspicion. These were theologians, usually from the mendicant orders that were Erasmus' particular target (such as Dominicans, Carmelites and Franciscans), who held a positive "linear view of history" for theology that privileged recent late-medieval theology and rejected the ad fontes methodology. Erasmus believed the vehemence of the attacks on Luther was a strategem to blacken humanism (and himself) by association, part of the centuries-long power struggle of university theologians with humanism.
Erasmus spent considerable effort defending himself in writing, which he could not do after his death.
The Council of Trent addressed many of the controversies Erasmus had been involved with: including free will, accumulated errors in the Vulgate, and priestly training.
By the 1560s, there was a marked downturn in reception: at various times and durations, some of Erasmus' works, especially in Protestantized editions, were placed on the various Roman, Dutch, French, Spanish and Mexican Indexes of Prohibited Books, either to not be read, or to be censored and expurgated: each area had different censorship considerations and severity.
For the Roman Index as it emerged at the close of the Council of Trent, Erasmus' works were completely banned (1559), mostly unbanned (1564), completely banned again (1590), and then mostly unbanned again with strategic revisions (1596) by the Indexes of successive Popes. The Colloquies were especially but not universally frowned on for school use, and many of Erasmus' tendentious prefaces and notes to his scholarly editions required adjustment. In Spain's Index, the translation of the Enchiridion only needed the phrase "Monkishness is not piety" removed to become acceptable.
Because Erasmus' scholarly editions were frequently the only sources of Patristic information in print, the strict bans were often impractical, so theologians worked to produce replacement editions building on, or copying, Erasmus' editions.
The Jesuits received a dispensation from the Roman Inquisitor General to read and use Erasmus' work, as did priests working near Protestant areas such as Francis de Sales.
Early Dutch Jesuit scholar Peter Canisius (fl. 1547 - 1597), who produced several works superseding Erasmus', is known to have read, or used phrases from, Erasmus' New Testament (including the Annotations and Notes) and perhaps the Paraphrases, his Jerome biography and complete works, the Adages, the Copia, and the Colloquies: Canisius, having actually read Erasmus, had an ambivalent view on Erasmus that contrasted with the negative line of some of his contemporaries:
Very many people applied also to Erasmus, declaring: 'Either Erasmus speaks like Luther or Luther like Erasmus' (Aut Erasmus Lutherizat, aut Lutherus Erasmizat). And yet, we must say, if we would like to render an honest judgment, that Erasmus and Luther were very different. Erasmus always remained a Catholic. ... Erasmus criticized religion 'with craft rather than with force', often applying considerable caution and moderation to either his own opinions or errors. ...Erasmus passed judgment on what he thought required censure and correction in the teaching of theologians and in the Church.
In contrast, Robert Bellarmine's Controversies mentions Erasmus (as presented by Erasmus' opponent Albert Pío) negatively over 100 times, categorizing him as a "forerunner of the heretics"; though not a heretic. Alphonsus Ligouri, who also had not read Erasmus, judged that Erasmus "died with the character of an unsound Catholic but not a heretic," putting it all in the context of a dispute between Theologians and Rhetoricians.
His patristic scholarship continued to be valued by academics, as were un-controversial parts of his biblical scholarship, though Catholic biblical scholars started to criticize Erasmus' limited range of manuscripts for his direct New Testament as undermining his premise of correcting the Latin from the "original" Greek.
The Jesuit mission to China, lead by Matteo Ricci, adopted the approach of cultural accommodation linked to Erasmus. The early Jesuits were exposed to Erasmus at their colleges, and their positioning of Confucius echoed Erasmus' positioning of "Saint" Socrates.
Salesian scholars have noted Erasmus' significant influence on Francis de Sales: "in the approach and the spirit he (de Sales) took to reform his diocese and more importantly on how individual Christians could become better together," his optimism, civility, esteem of marriage. and, according to historian Charles Béné, a piety addressed to the laity, the acceptance of mental prayer, and the valuing of pagan wisdom.
A famous 17th century Dominican library featured statues of famous churchmen on one side and of famous "heretics" (in chains) on the other: those foes including the two leading anti-mendicant Catholic voices William of Saint-Amour (fl. 1250) and Erasmus.
From 1648 to 1794 and then 1845 to the present, the mainly-Jesuit Bollandist Society has been progressively publishing Lives of the Saints, in 61 volumes and supplements. Historian John C. Olin notes an accord of approach with the hitherto "unique" method, mixing critical standards and devotional/rhetorical purpose, that Erasmus had laid out in his Life of St Jerome.
By the 1700s, Erasmus' even indirect influence on Catholic thought had waned. A historian has written that "a number of Erasmus' modern Catholic critics do not display an accurate knowledge of his writings but misrepresent him, often by relying upon hostile secondary sources," naming Yves Congar as an example.
A major turning point in the popular Catholic appraisal of Erasmus occurred in 1900 with rosy Benedictine historian (and, later, Cardinal) Francis Aidan Gasquet's The Eve of the Reformation which included a whole chapter on Erasmus based on a re-reading of his books and letters. Gasquet wrote "Erasmus, like many of his contemporaries, is often perhaps injudicious in the manner in which he advocated reforms. But when the matter is sifted to the bottom, it will commonly be found that his ideas are just."
Over the last century, Erasmus has been un-cancelled and his Catholic reputation has gradually started to be rehabilitated: favourable factors may include:
His instrumentalist approach to Christian humanism has been compared to that of John Henry Newman and the personalism of John Paul II, but also has been criticized as treating the Church's doctrines merely as aids to piety.
The Catholic scholar Thomas Cummings saw parallels between Erasmus' vision of Church reform and the vision of Church reform that succeeded at the Second Vatican Council. Theologian J. Coppens noted the "Erasmian themes" of Lumen Gentium (e.g. para 12), such as the sensus fidei fidelium and the dignity of all the baptized. Another scholar writes "in our days, especially after Vatican II, Erasmus is more and more regarded as an important defender of the Christian religion." John O'Malley has commented on connections between Erasmus and Dei Verbum.
In 1963, Thomas Merton wrote "If there had been no Luther, Erasmus would now be regarded by everyone as one of the great Doctors of the Catholic Church. I like his directness, his simplicity, and his courage."
Notably, since the 1950s, the Roman Catholic Easter Vigil mass has included a Renewal of Baptismal Promises, an innovation first proposed by Erasmus in his Paraphrases.
In his 1987 collection The Spirituality of Erasmus of Rotterdam historian Richard deMolen, later a Catholic priest, called for Erasmus' canonization.
Protestant views on Erasmus fluctuated depending on region and period, with continual support in his native Netherlands and in cities of the Upper Rhine area. However, following his death and in the late sixteenth century, many Reformation supporters saw Erasmus's critiques of Luther and lifelong support for the universal Catholic Church as damning, and second-generation Protestants were less vocal in their debts to the great humanist.
There was a tendency to downplay that many of the usages fundamental to Luther, Melancthon and Calvin, such as the forensic imputation of righteousness, grace as divine favour or mercy (rather than a medicine-like substance or habit), faith as trust (rather than a persuasion only), "repentance" over "doing penance" (as used by Luther in the first theses of the 95 Theses), owed to Erasmus.
Luther had attempted a Biblical analogy to justify his dismissal of Erasmus' thought: "He has done what he was ordained to do: he has introduced the ancient languages, in the place of injurious scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab…I would rather he would entirely abstain from explaining and paraphrasing the Scriptures, for he is not up to this work…to lead into the land of promise, is not his business…" "Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth…He is a very Caiaphas."
Some historians have even said that "the spread of Lutheranism was checked by Luther’s antagonizing (of) Erasmus and the humanists."
Erasmus' reception is also demonstrable among Swiss Protestants in the sixteenth century: he had an indelible influence on the biblical commentaries of, for example, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin, all of whom used both his annotations on the New Testament and his paraphrases of same in their own New Testament commentaries. Huldrych Zwingli, the founder of the Reformed tradition, had a conversion experience after reading Erasmus' poem, 'Jesus' Lament to Mankind.' Zwingli's moralism, hermeneutics and attitude to patristic authority owe to Erasmus, and contrast with Luther's.
Anabaptist scholars have suggested an 'intellectual dependence' of Anabaptists on Erasmus.
For evangelical Christianity, Erasmus had a strong influence on Arminius.
Erasmus' promotion of the recognition of adiaphora and toleration within bounds was taken up by many kinds of Protestants.
Erasmus' Greek New Testament was the basis of the Textus Receptus bibles, which were used for all Protestant bible translations from 1600 to 1900, notably including the Luther Bible and the King James Version.
Writers have often explained Erasmus' failure to adopt their favoured position as manifesting some deep character flaw.
Luther's antipathy to Erasmus has continued to more recent times in some Lutheran teachers:
Oh how Erasmus placed honor above truth! To seek honor is a human frailty. To ever permit it to go to the point of placing honor and for that matter friendship, expediency, or anything else, above truth is to be blinded by the devil himself and to set a snare for others to be entrapped in his delusions. Such delusions Erasmus would support in pride, weakness, vacillation, and false love for peace and harmony." "Erasmus, the Judas of the Reformation" "this cultured and eloquent theological midget
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917) explained "His inborn vanity and self-complacency were thereby increased almost to the point of becoming a disease; at the same time he sought, often by the grossest flattery, to obtain the favour and material support of patrons or to secure the continuance of such benefits." According to Catholic historian Joseph Lortz (1962) "Erasmus remained in the church…but as a half Catholic…indecisive, hesitating, suspended in the middle."
A 1920s American historian wrote "Erasmus's ambitions, fed by an innate vanity which at times repels by its frank self-seeking, included both fame and fortune" yet pulls back on another historian's view that his "irritable self-conceit, shameless importunity,…may lead one to a sense of contempt for the scholar", pointing out the reality of Erasmus' dire poverty in Paris.
In the 20th century, various pyschoanalyses were made of Erasmus by practitioners: these diagnosed him variously as "supremely egotistic, neurasthenic, morbidly sensitive, volatile, variable, and vacillating, injudicious, irritable, and querulous, yet always ... a baffling but interesting chararacter"; a "volatile neurotic, latent homosexual, hypochondriac, and psychasthenic"; having "a form of narcissistic character disorder," a spiritualized, vengeful, "paranoid disposition" driven by "injured narcissism", "repeated persecutory preoccupations...(with) delusional states of paranoia toward the end of his life", repressed anger directed "father figures such as prelates and teachers," needing a "sense of victimization"
Huizinga's biography (1924) treats him more sympathically, with phrases such as: a great and sincere need for concord and affection, profoundly in need of (physical and spiritual) purity, a delicate soul (with a delicate constitution), fated to an immoderate love of liberty, having a dangerous fusion between inclination and conviction, restless but precipitate, a continual intermingling of explosion and reserve, fastidious, bashful, coquettish, a white-lier, evasive, suspicious, and feline. Yet "compared with most of his contemporaries he remains moderate and refined."
Erasmus is credited with numerous quotes; many of them are not exactly original to him but are taken from his collections of sayings such as Adages or Apophthegmata.
He is also blamed for the mistranslation from Greek of "to call a bowl a bowl" as "to call a spade a spade", and the rendering of Pandora's "jar" as "box".
Until Erasmus received his (1505 and 1517) Papal dispensations to wear clerical garb, Erasmus wore versions of the local habit of his order, the Canons regular of St Augustine, which varied by region and house, unless traveling: in general, a white or perhaps black cassock with linen and lace choir rochet for liturgical contexts or sarotium (scarf), almuce (cape), perhaps with an asymmetrical black cope of cloth or sheepskin (cacullae) or long black cloak.
From 1505, and certainly after 1517, he dressed as a scholar-priest. He preferred warm and soft garments: according to one source, he arranged for his clothing to be stuffed with fur to protect him against the cold, and his habit counted with a collar of fur which usually covered his nape.
All Erasmus' portraits show him wearing a knitted scholar's bonnet.
Erasmus chose the Roman god of borders and boundaries Terminus as a personal symbol and had a signet ring with a herm he thought depicted Terminus carved into a carnelian. The herm was presented to him in Rome by his student Alexander Stewart and in reality depicted the Greek god Dionysus. The ring was also depicted in a portrait of his by the Flemish painter Quentin Matsys.
The herm became part of the Erasmus branding at Froben, and is on his tombstone. In the early 1530s, Erasmus was portrayed as Terminus by Hans Holbein the Younger.
He chose Concedo Nulli (Lat. I concede to no-one) as his personal motto. The obverse of the medal by Quintin Matsys featured the Terminus herm, the motto, and along the circumference "Contemplate the end of a long life" and Horace's "Death is the ultimate boundary of things," which re-casts the motto as a memento mori.
In 1928, the site of Erasmus' grave was dug up, and a body identified in the bones and examined. In 1974, a body was dug up in a slightly different location, accompanied by an Erasmus medal. Both bodies have been claimed to be Erasmus'. However, it is possible neither is.
The Catalogue of the Works of Erasmus (2023) runs to 444 entries (120 pages), almost all from the latter half of his life.
The Collected Works of Erasmus (or CWE) is an 84 volume set of English translations and commentary from the University of Toronto Press. As of May 2023, 66 of 84 volumes have been released. The Erasmi opera omni, known as the Amsterdam Edition or ASD, is a 65 volume set of the original Latin works. As of 2022, 59 volumes have been released.
The best sources for the world of European Renaissance Humanism in the early sixteenth century is the correspondence of Erasmus.
Erasmus wrote or answered up to 40 letters per day. Over 3,000 letters exist for a 52-year period, including to and from most Western popes, emperors, kings and their staff, as well as to leading intellectuals, bishops, reformers, fans, friends, and enemies.
"I have never censured anything but human superstition and abuses. I only wish that I could drag the universal church to where I was struggling to lead it, so that, throwing off superstition, hypocrisy, worldly attachments, and frivolous little questions, we would all serve the Lord with pure hearts, each in his own vocation."
The 1516 edition had Erasmus' corrected Vulgate Latin and Greek versions. The subsequent revised editions had Erasmus' new Latin version and the Greek. The 1527 edition had both the Vulgate and Erasmus' new Latin with the Greek. These were accompanied by substantial annotations, methodological notes and paraphrases, in separate volumes.
For the patristic and classical editions Erasmus was variously supervising editor and editor or translator, often working with others. He also contributed prefaces, notes and biographies.
Late in his publishing career, Erasmus produced editions of two pre-scholastic but post-patristic writers:
Classical writers whose works Erasmus translated or edited include Lucian (1506), Euripides (1508), Pseudo-Cato (1513), Curtius (1517), Suetonius (1518), Cicero (1523), Ovid and Prudentius (1524), Galen (1526), Seneca (1515, 1528), Plutarch (1512-1531), Aristotle (1531, Introduction to edition of Simon Grynaeus), Demosthenes (1532), Terence (1532), Ptolemy (1533), as well as Livy, Pliny, Libanius, Galen, Isocrates and Xenophon. Many of the Adagia translate adages from ancient and classical sources, notably from Aesop; many of Apophthegmata are from Platonists or Cynics.
Also: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (/ˌdɛzɪˈdɪəriəs ɪˈræzməs/; Dutch: [ˌdeːziˈdeːriʏs eˈrɑsmʏs]; English: Erasmus of Rotterdam or Erasmus; c. 28 October 1466 – 12 July 1536) was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist and philosopher. Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "He was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament, which raised questions that would be influential in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style and many other works.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation. He developed a biblical humanistic theology in which he advocated tolerance, concord and free thinking on matters of indifference. He remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the Church from within. He promoted the traditional doctrine of synergism, which some prominent Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favor of the doctrine of monergism. His middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Erasmus's almost 70 years can be divided into four quarters. First was his childhood, ending with his being orphaned and impoverished; second, his struggling years as a canon (a kind of monk), a clerk, a priest, a failing and sickly university student, a would-be poet, and a tutor; third, his flourishing but peripatetic years of increasing focus and productivity following his 1499 contact with a reformist English circle, then with Jean Vitrier and later with the Aldine New Academy; and fourth, his final more secure and settled years as a prime influencer of European thought through his New Testament and increasing opposition to Lutheranism.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Many of Erasmus' convictions seem to spring from his early biography: esteem for the married state and appropriate marriages, support for priestly marriage, concern for improving marriage prospects for females, opposition to inconsiderate rules notably institutional dietary rules, a desire to make education engaging for the participants, horror of poverty and hopelessness, distaste for friars begging when they could study or work, unwillingness to be in the control of authorities, the need for those in authority to act in the best interest of their charges, a prizing of mercy and peace, an anger over unnecessary war especially between avaricious princes, an awareness of mortality, etc.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Desiderius Erasmus is reported to have been born in Rotterdam on 28 October in the late-1460. The year of Erasmus' birth is unclear: in later life he calculated his age as if born in 1466, but frequently his remembered age at major events actually implies 1469. (This article currently gives 1466 as the birth year. To handle this disagreement, ages are given first based on 1469, then in parentheses based on 1466: e.g., \"20 (or 23)\".)",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "He was named after Erasmus of Formiae, whom Erasmus' father Gerard (Gerardus Helye) personally favored.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Although associated closely with Rotterdam, he lived there for only four years, never to return afterwards. His parents could not be legally married: his father, Gerard, was a Catholic priest who may have spent up to six years in the 1450s or 60s in Italy as a scribe and scholar. His mother was Margaretha Rogerius (Latinized form of Dutch surname Rutgers), the daughter of a doctor from Zevenbergen. She may have been Gerard's housekeeper. Although he was born out of wedlock, Erasmus was cared for by his parents, with a loving household and the best education, until their early deaths from the bubonic plague in 1483. His only sibling Peter might have been born in 1463, to Margaret and her first husband thus making him only the half brother of Erasmus; Erasmus on the other side called him his brother.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Erasmus' own story, in his 1524 Compendium vitae Erasmi was along the lines that his (teenage?) parents were engaged, with the formal marriage blocked by his relatives (presumably a young widow or unmarried mother with a child was not an advantageous match); his father went to Italy to study Latin and Greek, and the relatives mislead Gerard that Margaretha had died, on which news grieving Gerard romantically took Holy Orders, only to find on his return that Margaretha was alive; many scholars dispute this account.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In 1471 his father became the vice-curate of the small town of Woerden (where young Erasmus may have attended the local vernacular school to learn to read and write) and in 1476 was promoted to the vice-curate of Gouda.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Erasmus was given the highest education available to a young man of his day, in a series of monastic or semi-monastic schools. In 1476, at the age of 6 (or 9), his family moved to Gouda and he started at the school of Mr Pieter Winckel, who later became his guardian (and, perhaps, diverted Erasmus and Peter's inheritance.) (Historians who date his birth in 1566 have Erasmus in Utrecht at the choir school at this period.)",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1478, at the age of 9 (or 12), he and his older brother Peter were sent to one of the best Latin schools in the Netherlands, located at Deventer and owned by the chapter clergy of the Lebuïnuskerk (St. Lebuin's Church). Towards the end of his stay there the curriculum was renewed by the new principal of the school, Alexander Hegius, a correspondent of pioneering rhetorician Rudolphus Agricola. For the first time in Europe north of the Alps, Greek was taught at a lower level than a university and this is where he began learning it. His education there ended when plague struck the city about 1483, and his mother, who had moved to provide a home for her sons, died from the infection. Following the death of his parents and 20 students at his school he moved back to his patria (Rotterdam?) where he was supported by Berthe de Heyden, a compassionate widow.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In 1484, around the age 14 (or 17), he and his brother went to a cheaper grammar school or seminary at 's-Hertogenbosch run by the Brethren of the Common Life. He was exposed there to the Devotio moderna movement and the Brethren's famous book The Imitation of Christ but resented the harsh rules and strict methods of the religious brothers and educators. The two brothers made an agreement that they would resist the clergy but attend the university; Erasmus longed to study in Italy. Instead, Peter left for the Augustinian canonry in Stein, which left Erasmus feeling betrayed. Around this time he wrote forlornly to his friend Elizabeth de Heyden \"Shipwrecked am I, and lost, 'mid waters chill'.\" He suffered Quartan fever for over a year. Eventually Erasmus moved to the same abbey as a postulant in or before 1487, around the age of 16 (or 19.)",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Poverty had forced Erasmus into the consecrated life, entering the novitiate in 1487 at the canonry at rural Stein (a.k.a. Steyn), near Gouda, South Holland: the Chapter of Sion community largely borrowed its rule from the monkish Congregation of Windesheim. In 1488-1490, the surrounding region was plundered badly by armies fighting the Jonker Fransen war of succession and then suffered a famine. Erasmus professed his vows as a Canon Regular of St. Augustine there in late 1488 at age 19 (or 22). Historian Fr. Aiden Gasquet later wrote: \"One thing, however, would seem to be quite clear; he could never have had any vocation for the religious life. His whole subsequent history shows this unmistakeably.\" According to one Catholic biographer, Erasmus had a spiritual awakening at the monastery.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Certain abuses in religious orders were among the chief objects of his later calls to reform the Church from within, particularly coerced or tricked recruitment of immature boys (as \"victims of Dominic and Francis and Benedict\"): Erasmus felt he had belonged to this class, joining \"voluntarily but not freely\" and so considered himself, if not morally bound by his vows, certainly legally, socially and honour- bound to keep them, yet to look for his true vocation.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "While at Stein, 18-(or 21-)year-old Erasmus fell in unrequited love, forming what he called a \"passionate attachment\" (Latin: fervidos amores), with a fellow canon, Servatius Rogerus, and wrote a series of love letters in which he called Rogerus \"half my soul\", writing that \"it was not for the sake of reward or out of a desire for any favour that I have wooed you both unhappily and relentlessly. What is it then? Why, that you love him who loves you.\" This correspondence contrasts with the generally detached and much more restrained attitude he showed in his later life, though he had a capacity to form and maintain deep male friendships, such as with More, Colet, and Ammonio. No mentions or sexual accusations were ever made of Erasmus during his lifetime. His works praise moderate sexual desire in marriage between men and women.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1493 he got permission to leave the canonry when offered the post of secretary to the ambitious Bishop of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen, on account of his great skill in Latin and his reputation as a man of letters.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood either on 25 April 1492, or 25 April 1495, at age 25 (or 28.) Either way, he did not actively work as a choir priest for very long, though his many works on confession and penance suggests experience of dispensing them.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "From 1500, he avoided returning to the canonry at Stein even insisting the diet and hours would kill him, though he did stay with other Augustinian communities and at monasteries of other orders in his travels. Rogerus, who later became prior at Stein, and Erasmus corresponded over the years, with Rogerus demanding Erasmus return after his studies were complete. The library of the canonry ended up with by far the largest collection of Erasmus' publications in the Gouda region.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In 1505 Pope Julius II granted a dispensation from the vow of poverty to the extent of allowing Erasmus to hold certain benefices, and from the control and habit of his order, though he remained a priest and, formally, an Augustinian canon regular the rest his life. In 1517 Pope Leo X granted legal dispensations for Erasmus' defects of natality and confirmed the previous dispensation, allowing the 48-(or 51-)year-old his independence but still, as a canon, capable of holding office as a prior or abbot.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Erasmus traveled widely and regularly, for reasons of poverty, \"escape\" from his Stein canonry (to Cambrai), education (to Paris, Turin), escape from the sweating sickness plague (to Orléans), employment (to England), searching libraries for manuscripts, writing (Brabant), royal counsel (Cologne), patronage, tutoring and chaperoning (North Italy), networking (Rome), seeing books through printing in person (Paris, Venice, Louvain, Basel), and avoiding the persecution of religious fanatics (to Freiburg.) He enjoyed horseback riding",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1495 with Bishop Henry's consent and a stipend, Erasmus went on to study at the University of Paris in the Collège de Montaigu, a centre of reforming zeal, under the direction of the ascetic Jan Standonck, of whose rigors he complained. The university was then the chief seat of Scholastic learning but already coming under the influence of Renaissance humanism. For instance, Erasmus became an intimate friend of an Italian humanist Publio Fausto Andrelini, poet and \"professor of humanity\" in Paris.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "During this time, Erasmus developed a deep aversion to Aristotelianism and Scholasticism and started finding work as a tutor/chaperone to visiting English and Scottish aristocrats.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Patrons: William Blount • William Warham • John Fisher • John Longland • Margaret Beaufort • Catherine of Aragon",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Erasmus stayed in England at least three times. In between he had periods studying in Paris, Orléans, Leuven and other cities.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In 1499 he was invited to England by William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy, who offered to accompany him on his trip to England. His time in England was fruitful in the making of lifelong friendships with the leaders of English thought in the days of King Henry VIII.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "During his first visit to England in 1499, he studied or taught at the University of Oxford. Erasmus was particularly impressed by the Bible teaching of John Colet, who pursued a style more akin to the church fathers than the Scholastics. Through the influence of the humanist John Colet, his interests turned towards theology. Other distinctive features of Colet's thought that may have influenced Erasmus are his pacifism, reform-mindedness, anti-Scholasticism and pastoral esteem for the sacrament of Confession.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "This prompted him, upon his return from England to Paris, to intensively study the Greek language, which would enable him to study theology on a more profound level.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Erasmus also became fast friends with Thomas More, whose thought (e.g., on conscience and equity) had been influenced by 14th century French theologian Jean Gerson.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Erasmus left London with a full purse from his generous friends, to allow him to complete his studies. However, the English Customs officials confiscated all gold and silver, leaving him with nothing except a night fever that lasted several months.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "For Erasmus' second visit, he spent over a year staying at Thomas More's house, honing his translation skills.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Erasmus preferred to live the life of an independent scholar and made a conscious effort to avoid any actions or formal ties that might inhibit his individual freedom. In England Erasmus was approached with prominent offices but he declined them all, until the King himself offered his support. He was inclined, but eventually did not accept and longed for a stay in Italy.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1510, Erasmus arrived at More's bustling house, was parked in bed to recover from his recurrent illness, and wrote The Praise of Folly, which was to be a best-seller.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "After his glorious reception in Italy, Erasmus had returned broke and jobless, with strained relations with former friends and benefactors on the continent, and he regretted leaving Italy, despite being horrified by papal warfare. There is a gap in his usually voluminous correspondence: his so-called \"two lost years\", perhaps due to self-censorship of dangerous or disgruntled opinions; he shared lodgings with his friend Andrea Ammonio (the next year, secretary to Henry VIII) provided at the London Austin Friars' compound, skipping out after a disagreement with the friars over rent that caused bad blood.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "He assisted his friend John Colet by authoring Greek textbooks and securing members of staff for the newly established St Paul's School and was in contact when Colet gave his notorious 1512 Convocation sermon which called for a reformation of ecclesiastical affairs.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In 1511, the University of Cambridge's Chancellor John Fisher arranged for Erasmus to be the Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity, though Erasmus turned down the option of spending the rest of his life as a professor there. He studied and taught Greek and researched and lectured on Jerome.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Erasmus mainly stayed at Queens' College while lecturing at the university, between 1511 and 1515. Despite a chronic shortage of money, he succeeded in mastering Greek by an intensive, day-and-night study of three years, taught by Thomas Linacre, continuously begging in letters that his friends send him books and money for teachers.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Erasmus' rooms were located in the \"I\" staircase of Old Court. Erasmus suffered from poor health and was especially concerned with heating, clean air, ventilation and draughts: he complained about the draughtiness of English buildings. He complained that Queens' College could not supply him with enough decent wine (wine was the Renaissance medicine for gallstones, from which Erasmus suffered). As Queens' was an unusually humanist-leaning institution in the 16th century, Queens' College Old Library still houses many first editions of Erasmus's publications, many of which were acquired during that period by bequest or purchase, including Erasmus's New Testament translation, which is signed by friend and Polish religious reformer Jan Łaski.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "During this time, Erasmus encouraged Thomas More's book Utopia, perhaps even contributing fragments.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Opponents: Noël Béda",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Following his first trip to England, Erasmus returned first to poverty in Paris, where he started to compile the Adagio for his students, then to Orleans to escape the plague, and then to semi-monastic life, scholarly studies and writing in France, notably at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Bertin at St Omer (1501,1502) where he wrote the initial version of the Enchiridion (Handbook of the Christian Knight.) A particular influence was his encounter in 1501 with Jean (Jehan) Vitrier, a radical Franciscan who consolidated his thoughts against false valorization of monasticism, ceremonialism and fasting in a kind of conversion experience, and introduced him to Origen.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "After this, Erasmus went to Brabant, ultimately to the university at Louven.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Opponents: Aleander, Alberto Pío, Sepúlveda",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "In 1506 he was able to accompany and tutor the sons of the personal physician of the English King through Italy to Bologna.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "His discovery en route of Lorenzo Valla's New Testament Notes was a major event in his career and prompted Erasmus to study the New Testament using philology.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In 1506 they passed through Turin and he arranged to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Turin per saltum at age 37 (or 40.) In the Winter, Erasmus was later present when Pope Julius II entered victorious into the conquered Bologna which he had besieged before.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Erasmus traveled on to Venice, working on an expanded version of his Adagia at the Aldine Press of the famous printer Aldus Manutius, advised which manuscripts to publish, and was an honorary member of the graecophone Aldine \"New Academy\" (Greek: Neakadêmia (Νεακαδημία)). From Aldus he learned the in-person workflow that made him productive at Froben: making last-minute changes, and immediately checking and correcting printed page proofs as soon as the ink had dried. Aldus wrote that Erasmus could do twice as much work in a given time as any other man he had ever met.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "In 1507, according to his letters, he studied advanced Greek in Padua with the Venetian natural philosopher, Giulio Camillo. He found employment tutoring and escorting Scottish nobleman Alexander Stewart, the 24-year old Archbishop of St Andrews, through Padua, Florence, and Siena Erasmus made it to Rome in 1509, visiting some notable libraries and cardinals, but having a less active association with Italian scholars than might have been expected.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "On his trip back over the Alps, down the Rhein, to England, he mentally composed The Praise of Folly.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Opponents: Latomus • Edward Lee • Ulrich von Hutten",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Erasmus had accepted an honorary position as a Councillor to Charles V, and tutored his brother, the teenage future Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand of Hapsburg. He stayed in various locations including Anderlecht (near Brussels), in the Summer of 1521.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Erasmus may have made several other short visits to England or English territory while living in Brabant. Happily for Erasmus, More and Tunstall were posted in Brussels or Antwerp on government missions around 1516, More for six months, Tunstall for longer.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "His residence at Leuven, where he lectured at the University, exposed Erasmus to much criticism from those ascetics, academics and clerics hostile to the principles of literary and religious reform to which he was devoting his life. In 1514, he made the acquaintance of Hermannus Buschius, Ulrich von Hutten and Johann Reuchlin who introduced him to the Hebrew language in Mainz. In 1517, he supported the foundation at the university of the Collegium Trilingue for the study of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek—after the model of Cisneros' College of the Three Languages at the University of Alcalá—financed by his late friend Hieronymus van Busleyden's will.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "In 1520 he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold with Guillaume Budé, his last meetings with Thomas More and William Warham. His friends and former students and old correspondents were the incoming political elite, and he had risen with them.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Opponents: Œcolampadius",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "From 1514, Erasmus regularly traveled to Basel to coordinate the printing of his books with Froben and be the press' literary superintendent writing dedications and prefaces. He developed a lasting association with the great Basel publisher Johann Froben and later his son Hieronymus Froben (Eramus' godson) who together published over 200 works with Erasmus, working with expert correctors who went on to illustrious careers. His initial interest in Froben was aroused by his discovery of the printer's folio edition of the Adagiorum Chiliades tres (Adagia) (1513). Froben's work was notable for using the new Roman type (rather than blackletter) and Aldine-like Italic and Greek fonts, as well as elegant layouts using borders and fancy capitals.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "In 1521 he settled in Basel. He was weary of the controversies and hostility at Louvain, and feared being dragged further into the Lutheran controversy. Apart from Froben's household, he had his own household with a formidable housekeeper and up to eight boarders or paid servants: who acted as assistants, correcters, amanuenses, dining companions, international couriers, and carers.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In collaboration with Froben and his team, the scope and ambition of Erasmus' Annotations, Erasmus' long-researched project of philological notes of the New Testament along the lines of Valla's Adnotations, had grown to also include a lightly-revised Latin Vulgate, then the Greek text, then several edifying essays on methodology, then a highly-revised Vulgate—all bundled as his Novum testamentum omne and pirated individually throughout Europe— then finally his amplified Paraphrases.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "As the popular response to Luther gathered momentum, the social disorders, which Erasmus dreaded and Luther disassociated himself from, began to appear, including the German Peasants' War, the Anabaptist insurrections in Germany and in the Low Countries, iconoclasm, and the radicalisation of peasants across Europe. If these were the outcomes of reform, he was thankful that he had kept out of it. Yet he was ever more bitterly accused of having started the whole \"tragedy\" (as Erasmus dubbed the matter).",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "For a time, he provided financial support to the impoverished and disgraced former Latin Secretary of Antwerp Cornelius Grapheus, on his release from the Inquisition.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Following iconoclastic rioting in 1529 lead by Œcolampadius his former assistant, the city of Basel definitely adopted the Reformation, and banned the Catholic mass on April 1, 1529. Erasmus left Basel on the 13 April 1529 and departed by ship to the Catholic university town of Freiburg im Breisgau to be under the protection of his former student, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, staying for two years on the top floor of the Whale House, then buying and refurbishing a house of his own, where he took in scholar/assistants as table-boarders such as Damião de Góis, some of them fleeing persecution. Despite increasing frailty, Erasmus continued to work productively, notably on a new magnum opus, his manual on preaching Ecclesiastes, and his small book on preparing for death.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In 1529, his French translator and friend Louis de Berquin was burnt in Paris, following his condemnation as an anti-Rome heretic by the Sorbonne theologians.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "There was a generational change in the Catholic hierarchy. (In 1533 his long-time patron English Primate Warham died of old age. In 1534 his distrusted protector Clement IV died, his recent Italian ally Cardinal Cajetan died, and his old ally Cardinal Campeggio retired.)",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "As more friends died (in 1533, his friend Pieter Gilles) and as Luther and theologians renewed their personal attacks on Erasmus, his letters are increasingly focused on concerns on the status of friendships and safety as he considered moving from bland Freiburg despite his health.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "In 1535, Erasmus' friends Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were executed as pro-Rome traitors by Henry VIII, who Erasmus and More had first met as a boy. Erasmus wrote the first biography of More (and Fisher), the short, anonymous \"Expositio Fidelis, which Froben published, at the instigation of de Góis despite illness.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Numerous of Erasmus' translators later met similar fates at the hands of Anglican, Catholic and Reformed sectarians and autocrats: including Margaret Pole, William Tyndale, Mary Tudor, Michael Servetus. Others, such as Juan de Valdés, fled and died in self-exile. His friend Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall died in prison under Elizabeth I for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. His correspondent Bishop Stephen Gardiner, who Erasmus had known as a teenaged student in Paris and Cambridge, was later imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years under Edward VI for impeding Protestantism. Damião de Góis was tried before the Portuguese Inquisition at age 72, and exiled to a monastery, and on release perhaps murdered. His amanuensis Gilbert Cousin died in prison at age 66, shortly after being arrested on the personal order of saint and fanatic Pope Pius V.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "When his strength began to fail, he finally decided to accept an invitation by Queen Mary of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands (sister of his former student Archduke Ferdinand I and Emperor Charles V), to move from Freiburg to Brabant. In 1535, he moved back to the Froben compound in Basel in preparation (Œcolampadius having died, and private practice of his religion now possible) and saw his last major works such as Ecclesiastes through publication, though he grew more frail. In 1536, he died at an attack of dysentery.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "He had remained loyal to Roman Catholicism, but biographers have disagreed whether to treat him as him as an insider or an outsider.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "He may not have had the opportunity to receive the last rites of the Catholic Church; the contemporary reports of his death do not mention whether he asked for a Catholic priest or not, if any were in Basel. According to historian Jan van Herwaarden, it is consistent with Erasmus' view that outward signs were not important; what mattered is the believer's direct relationship with God. However, van Herwaarden states that \"he did not dismiss the rites and sacraments out of hand but asserted a dying person could achieve a state of salvation without the priestly rites, provided their faith and spirit were attuned to God\" (i.e., maintaining being in a State of Grace) noting Erasmus' stipulation that this was \"as the (Catholic) Church believes.\"",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "His last words, as recorded by his friend and biographer Beatus Rhenanus, were apparently \"Dear God\" (Dutch: Lieve God). He was buried with great ceremony in the Basel Minster (the former cathedral). The Protestant city authorities remarkably allowed his funeral to be an ecumenical Catholic requiem mass.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "As his heir he instated Bonifacius Amerbach to give seed money to the poor and needy: he had received a dispensation to make a will rather than his wealth reverting to his order, the Chapter of Sion, and had pre-sold his personal library to Jan Łaski. One of the eventual recipients was the impoverished Protestant humanist Sebastian Castellio, who had fled from Geneva to Basel, who subsequently translated the Bible into Latin and French, and who worked for the repair of the breach and divide of Christianity in its Catholic, Anabaptist, and Protestant branches.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Erasmus had a distinctive manner of thinking, a Catholic historian suggests: one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony with \"a deep and abiding commitment to human flourishing\" \"In all spheres, his outlook was essentially pastoral.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Erasmus has been called a seminal rather than a consistent or systematic thinker, notably averse to over-extending from the specific to the general; who nevertheless should be taken very seriously as a pastoral and rhetorical theologian, with a philological and historical approach—rather than a metaphysical approach—to interpreting Scripture and interested in the literal and tropological senses. A theologian has written of \"Erasmus’ preparedness completely to satisfy no-one but himself.\" He has been called moderate, judicious and constructive even when being critical or when mocking extremes.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "Peace, peaceableness and peacemaking, in all spheres from the domestic to the religious to the political, were central distinctives of Erasmus' writing on Christian living and his mystical theology: \"the sum and summary of our religion is peace and unanimity\" At the Nativity of Jesus \"the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace.\":",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "He (Christ) conquered by gentleness; He conquered by kindness; he conquered by truth itself",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Erasmus was not an absolute Pacifist but promoted political Pacificism and religious Irenicism. Notable writings on irenicism include de Concordia, On the War with the Turks, The Education of a Christian Prince, On Restoring the Concord of the Church, and The Complaint of Peace. Erasmus' ecclesiology of peacemaking held that the church authorities had a divine mandate to settle religious disputes, in an as non-excluding way as possible, including by the preferably-minimal development of doctrine.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In the latter, Lady Peace insists on peace as the crux of Christian life and for understanding Christ:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "I give you my peace, I leave you my peace\" (John 14:27). You hear what he leaves his people? Not horses, bodyguards, empire or riches – none of these. What then? He gives peace, leaves peace – peace with friends, peace with enemies.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "A historian has called him \"The 16th Century's Pioneer of Peace Education and a Culture of Peace\".",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Erasmus had experienced war as a child and was particularly concerned about wars between Christian kings, who should be brothers and not start wars; a theme in his book The Education of a Christian Prince. His Adages included \"War is sweet to those who have never tasted it.\" (Dulce bellum inexpertis from Pindar's Greek.)",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "He promoted and was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold, and his wide-ranging correspondence frequently related to issues of peacemaking. He saw a key role of the Church in peacemaking by arbitration, and the office of the Pope was necessary to reign in tyrannical princes and bishops.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "He questioned the practical usefulness and abuses of Just War theory, further limiting it to feasible defensive actions with popular support and that \"war should never be undertaken unless, as a last resort, it cannot be avoided.\" In his Adages he discusses (common translation) \"A disadvantageous peace is better than a just war\", which owes to Cicero and John Colet's \"Better an unjust peace than the justest war.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Erasmus was extremely critical of the warlike way of important European princes of his era, including some princes of the church. He described these princes as corrupt and greedy. Erasmus believed that these princes \"collude in a game, of which the outcome is to exhaust and oppress the commonwealth\". He spoke more freely about this matter in letters sent to his friends like Thomas More, Beatus Rhenanus and Adrianus Barlandus: a particular target of his criticisms was the Emperor Maximilian I, whom Erasmus blamed for allegedly preventing the Netherlands from signing a peace treaty with Guelders and other schemes to cause wars in order to extract money from his subjects.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "He referred to his irenical disposition in the Preface to On Free Will as a secret inclination of nature that would make him even prefer the views of the Sceptics over intolerant assertions, though he sharply distinguished adiaphora from what was uncontentiously explicit in the New Testament or absolutely mandated by Church teaching. Concord demanded unity and assent: Erasmus was anti-sectarian as well as non-sectarian. To follow the law of love, our intellects must be humble and friendly when making any assertions: he called contention \"earthly, beastly, demonic\" and a good-enough reason to reject a teacher or their followers. In Melancthon's view, Erasmus taught charity not faith.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Certain works of Erasmus laid a foundation for religious toleration of private opinions and ecumenism. For example, in De libero arbitrio, opposing certain views of Martin Luther, Erasmus noted that religious disputants should be temperate in their language, \"because in this way the truth, which is often lost amidst too much wrangling may be more surely perceived.\" Gary Remer writes, \"Like Cicero, Erasmus concludes that truth is furthered by a more harmonious relationship between interlocutors.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Erasmus' pacificism included a particular dislike for sedition:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "It was the duty of the leaders of this (reforming) movement, if Christ was their goal, to refrain not only from vice, but even from every appearance of evil; and to offer not the slightest stumbling block to the Gospel, studiously avoiding even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient. Above all they should have guarded against all sedition.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Erasmus had been involved in early attempts to protect Luther and his sympathisers from charges of heresy. Erasmus wrote Inquisitio de fide to limit what should be considered heresy to fractiously agitating against essential doctrines (e.g., those of the Creed), with malice and persistence. As with St Theodore the Studite, Erasmus was against the death penalty merely for private or peaceable heresy, or for dissent on non-essentials: \"It is better to cure a sick man than to kill him.\" The Church has the duty to protect believers and convert or heal heretics; he invoked Jesus' parable of the wheat and tares.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Nevertheless, he allowed the death penalty against violent seditionists, to prevent bloodshed and war: he allowed that the state has the right to execute those who are a necessary danger to public order—whether heretic or orthodox—but noted (e.g., to fr:Noël Béda) that Augustine had been against the execution of even violent Donatists: Johannes Trapman states that Erasmus' endorsement of suppression of the Anabaptists springs from their refusal to heed magistrates and the criminal violence of the Münster rebellion not because of their heretical views on baptism. Despite these concessions to state power, he suggested that religious persecution could still be challenged as inexpedient (ineffective).",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "In a letter to Cardial Lorenzo Campeggio, Erasmus lobbied diplomatically for toleration: \"If the sects could be tolerated under certain conditions (as the Bohemians pretend), it would, I admit, be a grievous misfortune, but one more endurable than war.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "While the focus of most of his writing was about peace within Christendom, he was involved in the public policy debate on war with the Ottoman Empire, which was then invading Western Europe, notably in his book On the war against the Turks (1530), with Pope Leo X promoting going on the offensive with a new crusade.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "In common with his times, Erasmus regarded the Jewish and Islamic religions as Christian heresies rather than separate religions, using the inclusive term half-Christian for the latter. However, there is a wide range of scholarly opinion on the extent and nature of antisemitic and anti-Moslem prejudice in his writings: Erasmus scholar Shimon Markish wrote that the charge of antisemitism could not be sustained in Erasmus' public writings, however historian Nathan Ron has found his writing to be harsh and racial in its implications, with contempt and hostility to Islam. Biographer James Tracy sees an anti-semitic edge in Erasmus' comments against Pferfferkorn in the Ruechlin affair, which expresses Erasmus' general \"suspicion of those who, behind the scenes, manipulate influence and opinion for nefarious ends.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Erasmus was not vehemently antisemitic in the way of the later post-Catholic Martin Luther; it was not a topic or theme of his public writing. Erasmus claimed not to be personally xenophobic: \"For I am of such a nature that I could love even a Jew, were he a pleasant companion and did not spew out blasphemy against Christ\" however Markish suggests that it is probable Erasmus never actually encountered a (practicing) Jew.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Unusually for a Christian theologian of any time, he perceived and championed strong Hellenistic rather than exclusively Hebraic influences on the intellectual milieux of Jesus, Paul and the early church.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Erasmus' emphasis on peacemaking reflects a typical pre-occupation of medieval lay spirituality as historian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) puts it: \"medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. “Christianity” in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal—constantly aspired to if seldom attained—was peace and mutual love.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "In marriage, Erasmus' two significant innovations, according to historian Nathan Ron, were that \"matrimony can and should be a joyous bond, and that this goal can be achieved by a relationship between spouses based on mutuality, conversation, and persuasion.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "Erasmus justified much of his reform program as defenses, albeit unsystematic and practical, of the sacraments: notably for the underappreciated sacraments of Baptism and Marriage, considered as more than events; and for the correct attitude of the participants, notable for the mysterious Eucharist, pragmatic Confession, the dangerous Last Rites, and the pastoral Holy Orders.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Reacting from his own experiences, Erasmus believed that monastic life and institutions no longer served the positive spiritual or social purpose they once may have: in the Enchiridion he controversially put it Monkishness is not piety. Better to live as \"a monk in the world\" than in the monastery.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "Many of his works contain diatribes against supposed monastic corruption, and particularly against the mendicant friars (Franciscans and Dominicans): these orders also typically ran the university Scholastic theology programs and from whose ranks came his most dangerous enemies. He was scandalized by superstitions, such as that if you were buried in a Franciscan habit you would go direct to heaven, crime and child novices. He advocated various reforms, including a ban on taking orders until the 30th year, the closure of corrupt and smaller monasteries, respect for bishops, requiring work not begging (reflecting the practice of his own order of Augustinian Canons,) the downplaying of monastic hours, fasts and ceremonies, and a less mendacious approach to gullible pilgrims and tenants.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "However, he was not in favour of speedy closures: in his account of his pilgrimage to Walsingham, he noted that the funds extracted from pilgrims typically supported houses for the poor and elderly.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "These ideas widely influenced his generation of humanists, both Catholic and Protestant, and the lurid hyperbolic attacks of his half-satire The Praise of Folly were later treated by Protestants as objective reports of near-universal corruption. Furthermore, \"what is said over a glass of wine, ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief,\" such as his proposal to marry all monks to all nuns or to send them all away to fight the Turks and colonize new islands.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "He believed the only vow necessary for Christians should be the vow of Baptism, and others such as the vows of the evangelical counsels, while admirable in content, were now mainly counter-productive.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "The Protestant Reformation began in the year following the publication of his pathbreaking edition of the New Testament in Latin and Greek (1516). The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the church, from which Protestantism later emerged, had become so clear that many intellectuals and churchmen could not escape the summons to join the debate.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "According to historian C. Scott Dixon, Erasmus' not only criticized church failings but questioned many of his Church's basic teachings; however, according to biographer Erika Rummel, \"Erasmus was aiming at the correction of abuses rather than at doctrinal innovation or institutional change.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Erasmus, at the height of his literary fame, was called upon to take sides, but partisanship was foreign to his nature and his habits. Despite all his criticism of clerical corruption and abuses within the Western Church, especially at first he sided with neither party, and eventually shunned the Protestant Reformation movements along with their most radical offshoots.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The world had laughed at his satire, The Praise of Folly, but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work so far had commended itself to the best minds and also to the dominant powers in the religious world. Erasmus chose to write in Latin (and Greek), the languages of scholars. He did not build a large body of supporters in the unlettered; his critiques reached a small but elite audience.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "Erasmus and Luther impacted each other greatly. Each had misgivings about each other from the beginning (Erasmus on Luther's rash and antagonistic character, Luther on Erasmus' focus on morality rather than grace) but strategically agreed not to be negative about the other in public.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Noting Luther's criticism of corruption in the Church, Erasmus at one time described him as \"a mighty trumpet of gospel truth\" while agreeing, \"It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed.\" Behind the scenes Erasmus forbade his publisher Froben from handling the works of Luther and tried to keep the reform movement focused on institutional rather than theological issues, yet he also privately wrote to authorities to prevent Luther's persecution.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Luther hoped for his cooperation in a work which seemed only the natural outcome of Erasmus' own, and spoke with admiration of Erasmus's superior learning. In their early correspondence, Luther expressed boundless admiration for all Erasmus had done in the cause of a sound and reasonable Christianity and urged him to join the Lutheran party. Erasmus declined to commit himself, arguing that to do so would endanger the cause for Latin: bonae litterae which he regarded as one of his purposes in life. Only as an independent scholar could he hope to influence the reform of religion. When Erasmus hesitated to support him, the straightforward Luther became angered that Erasmus was avoiding the responsibility due either to cowardice or a lack of purpose.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "However, any hesitancy on the part of Erasmus may have stemmed, not from lack of courage or conviction, but rather from a concern over the mounting disorder and violence of the reform movement. To Philip Melanchthon in 1524 he wrote:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "I know nothing of your church; at the very least it contains people who will, I fear, overturn the whole system and drive the princes into using force to restrain good men and bad alike. The gospel, the word of God, faith, Christ, and Holy Spirit – these words are always on their lips; look at their lives and they speak quite another language.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Though he sought to remain firmly neutral in doctrinal disputes, each side accused him of siding with the other, perhaps because of his perceived influence and what they regarded as his dissembling neutrality, which he regarded as peacemaking accommodation:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "I detest dissension because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "By 1523 Erasmus had been convinced that Luther's ideas on necessity/free will were a subject of core disagreement deserving a public airing, and strategized with friends and correspondents on how to respond with proper moderation without making the situation worse for all, especially for the humanist reform agenda.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "The publication of his brief book On Free Will initiated what has been called \"The greatest debate of that era\" which still has ramifications today, bypassing discussion on reform which they agreed on in general, and instead dealing with biblical justifications of synergism versus monergism in relation to salvation.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Luther responded with On the Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio) (1525). Erasmus replied to this in his lengthy two volume Hyperaspistes and other works.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "Apart from the perceived moral failings among followers of the Reformers, an important sign for Erasmus, he also dreaded any change in doctrine, citing the long history of the Church as a bulwark against innovation. He put the matter bluntly to Luther:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now with a few followers, although the leading men of your flock do not agree either with you or among themselves – indeed though you do not even agree with yourself, since in this same Assertion you say one thing in the beginning and something else later on, recanting what you said before.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Continuing his chastisement of Luther – and undoubtedly put off by the notion of there being \"no pure interpretation of Scripture anywhere but in Wittenberg\" – Erasmus touches upon another important point of the controversy:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "In 1529, Erasmus wrote \"An epistle against those who falsely boast they are Evangelicals\" to Vulturius Neocomus (Gerardus Geldenhouwer). Here Erasmus complains of the doctrines and morals of the Reformers:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists; against our prayers, fasts, and Masses; and you are not content to retrench the abuses that may be in these things, but must needs abolish them entirely. ...Look around on this 'Evangelical' generation, and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it. ...The solemn prayers of the Church are abolished, but now there are very many who never pray at all. ...I have never entered their conventicles, but I have sometimes seen them returning from their sermons, the countenances of all of them displaying rage, and wonderful ferocity, as though they were animated by the evil spirit. ...Who ever beheld in their meetings any one of them shedding tears, smiting his breast, or grieving for his sins? ...Confession to the priest is abolished, but very few now confess to God. ...They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "A test of the Reformation was the doctrine of the sacraments, and the crux of this question was the observance of the Eucharist. Erasmus was concerned that the sacramentarians, headed by Œcolampadius of Basel, were claiming Erasmus held views similar to their own in order to try to claim him for their schismatic and \"erroneous\" movement. In 1530, Erasmus published a new edition of the orthodox treatise of Algerus against the heretic Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century. He added a dedication, affirming his belief in the reality of the Body of Christ after consecration in the Eucharist, commonly referred to as transubstantiation.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Erasmus wrote books against aspects of the teaching, impacts or threats of several other Reformers:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "However, Erasmus maintained friendly relations with other Protestants, notably the irenic Melancthon and Albrecht Duerer.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "A common accusation, supposedly started by antagonistic monk-theologians, made Erasmus responsible for Martin Luther and the Reformation: \"Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it.\" Erasmus wittily dismissed the charge, claiming that Luther had \"hatched a different bird entirely.\" Erasmus-reader Peter Canisius commented: \"Certainly there was no lack of eggs for Luther to hatch.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Erasmus has a problematic standing in the history of philosophy: whether he should be called a philosopher at all, (as, indeed, some question whether he should be considered a theologian either.) Erasmus deemed himself to be a rhetorician or grammarian rather than a philosopher. He was particularly influenced by satirist and rhetorician Lucian. Erasmus' writings shifted \"an intellectual culture from logical disputation about things to quarrels about texts, contexts, and words.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "An important concept to Erasmus was \"the Folly of the Cross\" (which The Praise of Folly explored): the view that Truth belongs to the exuberant, perhaps ecstatic, world of what is foolish, strange and unexpected to us, rather than the cold worlds that intricate scholastic dialectical and syllogistic philosophical argument generate; this produced in Erasmus a profound disinterest in hyper-rationality, and an emphasis on verbal, rhetorical, mystical, pastoral and personal/political moral concerns instead.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "(Not to be confused with his Italian contemporary Chrysostom Javelli's Philosophia Christiana.)",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "Erasmus approached classical philosophers theologically and rhetorically: their value was in how they pre-saged, explained or amplified the unique teachings of Christ (particularly the Sermon on the Mount): the philosophia Christi. \"A great part of the teaching of Christ is to be found in some of the philosophers, particularly Socrates, Diogenes and Epictetus. But Christ taught it much more fully, and exemplified it better...\" (Paraclesis) In fact, Christ was \"the very father of philosophy\" (Anti-Barbieri.)",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "In works such as his Enchiridion, The Education of a Christian Prince and the Colloquies, Erasmus developed his idea of the philosophia Christi, a life lived according to the teachings of Jesus taken as a (spiritual-ethical-social-political-legal) philosophy:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "Christ the heavenly teacher has founded a new people on earth,…Having eyes without guile, these folk know no spite or envy; having freely castrated themselves, and aiming at a life of angels while in the flesh, they know no unchaste lust; they know not divorce, since there is no evil they will not endure or turn to the good; they have not the use of oaths, since they neither distrust nor deceive anyone; they know not the hunger for money, since their treasure is in heaven, nor do they itch for empty glory, since they refer all things to the glory of Christ.…these are the new teachings of our founder, such as no school of philosophy has ever brought forth.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "In philosopher Étienne Gilson's summary: \"the quite precise goal he pursues is to reject Greek philosophy outside of Christianity, into which the Middle Ages introduced Greek philosophy with the risk of corrupting this Christian Wisdom.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "Useful \"philosophy\" needed to be limited to (or re-defined as) the practical and moral:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "You must realize that 'philosopher' does not mean someone who is clever at dialectics or science but someone who rejects illusory appearance and undauntedly seeks out and follows what is true and good. Being a philosopher is in practice the same as being a Christian; only the terminology is different.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Erasmus syncretistically took phrases, ideas and motifs from many classical philosophers to furnish discussions of Christian themes: academics have identified aspects of his thought as variously Platonist (duality), Cynical (asceticism), Stoic (adiaphora), Epicurean (ataraxia, pleasure as virtue), realist/non-voluntarist, and Isocratic (rhetoric, political education, syncretism.) However, his Christianized version of Epicureanism is regarded as his own.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Erasmus was sympathetic to a kind of Scepticism:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "A Sceptic is not someone who doesn't care to know what is true or false…but rather someone who does not make a final decision easily or fight to the death for his own opinion, but rather accepts as probable what someone else accepts as certain…I explicitly exclude from Scepticism whatever is set forth in Sacred Scripture or whatever has been handed down to us by the authority of the Church.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "He eschewed metaphysical, epistemological and logical philosophy as found in Aristotle, in particular the curriculum and systematic methods of the post-Aquinas Schoolmen (Scholastics) and their dry, useless Aristoteleanism: \"What has Aristotle to do with Christ?\" We should avoid philosophical factionalism and so \"make the whole world Christian.\" Indeed, Erasmus thought that Scholastic philosophy actually distracted participants from their proper focus on immediate morality, unless used moderately. And, by \"excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation.\"",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Erasmus wrote in terms of a tri-partite nature of man, with the soul the seat of free will:",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "The body is purely material; the spirit is purely divine; the soul…is tossed back and forwards between the two according to whether it resists or gives way to the temptations of the flesh. The spirit makes us gods; the body makes us beasts; the soul makes us men.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 142,
"text": "According to theologian George van Kooten, Erasmus was the first modern scholar \"to note the similarities between Plato's Symposium and John's Gospel\", first in the Enchiridion then in the Adagia, pre-dating other scholarly interest by 400 years.",
"title": "Thought and views"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 143,
"text": "Erasmus wrote for educated audiences on both Christian subjects and those of general human interest. By the 1530s, the writings of Erasmus accounted for 10 to 20 percent of all book sales in Europe. \"Undoubtedly he was the most read author of his age.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 144,
"text": "His letter to Ulrich von Hutten on Thomas More's household has been called \"the first real biography in the real modern sense.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 145,
"text": "With the collaboration of Publio Fausto Andrelini, he made a collection of Latin proverbs and adages, commonly known as the Adagia. It includes the adage \"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.\" He coined the adage \"Pandora's box\", arising through an error in his translation of Hesiod's Pandora in which he confused pithos (storage jar) with pyxis (box).",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 146,
"text": "Examples of Adages are: more haste, less speed; a dung beetle hunting an eagle.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 147,
"text": "Erasmus later spent nine months in Venice at the Aldine Press expanding the Adagia to over three thousand entries; in the course of 27 editions, it expanded to over four thousand entries in Basel at the Froben press. It \"introduced a fairly wide audience to the actual words and thoughts of the ancients.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 148,
"text": "His more serious writings begin early with the Enchiridion militis Christiani, the \"Handbook of the Christian Soldier\" (1501 and re-issued in 1518 with an expanded preface – translated into English in 1533 by the young William Tyndale). (A more literal translation of enchiridion – \"dagger\" – has been likened to \"the spiritual equivalent of the modern Swiss Army knife.\") In this short work, Erasmus outlines the views of the normal Christian life, which he was to spend the rest of his days elaborating. He has been described as \"evangelical in his beliefs and pietistic in his practise.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 149,
"text": "Erasmus's best-known work is The Praise of Folly, written in 1509, published in 1511 under the double title Moriae encomium (Greek, Latinised) and Laus stultitiae (Latin). It is inspired by De triumpho stultitiae written by Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli. A satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society in general and in the Western Church in particular, it was dedicated to Sir Thomas More, whose name the title puns.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 150,
"text": "De Copia (or Foundations of the Abundant Style or On Copiousness) is a textbook designed to teach aspects of classical rhetoric: having a large supply of words, phrases and grammatical forms is a gateway to formulating and expressing thoughts, especially for \"forensic oratory\", with mastery and freshness. Perhaps as a joke, its full title is \"The twofold copia of words and arguments in a double commentary\" (Latin: De duplici copia verborum ac rerum commentarii duo). It was \"the most often printed rhetoric textbook written in the renaissance, with 168 editions between 1512 and 1580.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 151,
"text": "The first part of the book is about verborum (words). It famously includes 147 variations on \"Your letter pleased me very much\", and 203 variations on \"Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 152,
"text": "The second part of the book is about rerum (arguments) to learn critical thinking and advocacy. Erasmus advised students to practice the rhetorical techniques of copiousness by writing letters to each other arguing both side of an issue (Latin: in utramque parte).",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 153,
"text": "In a similar vein to the Adages was his translation of Plutarch's Moralia: parts were published from 1512 onwards and collected as the Opuscula plutarchi (c1514).",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 154,
"text": "This was the basis of 1531's Apophthegmatum opus (Apophthegms), which ultimately contained over 3,000 aphophthegms: \"certainly the fullest and most influential Renaissance collection of Cynic sayings and anecdotes\", particular of Diogenes (from Diogenes Laertius.)",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 155,
"text": "One of these was published independently, as How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend, dedicated to England's Henry VIII.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 156,
"text": "Julius excluded from Heaven is a biting satire usually attributed to Erasmus perhaps for private circulation, though he publicly denied writing it, calling its author a fool. The recently deceased Pope Julius arrives at the gates of heaven in his armour with his dead army, demanding from St Peter to be let in based on his glory and exploits. St Peter turns him away.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 157,
"text": "Erasmus's Sileni Alcibiadis is one of his most direct assessments of the need for Church reform. It started as a small entry in the 1508 Adagia citing Plato's Symposium and expanded to several hundred sentences. Johann Froben published it first within a revised edition of the Adagia in 1515, then as a stand-alone work in 1517.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 158,
"text": "Sileni is the plural (Latin) form of Silenus, a creature often related to the Roman wine god Bacchus and represented in pictorial art as inebriated, merry revellers, variously mounted on donkeys, singing, dancing, playing flutes, etc. In particular, the Sileni that Erasmus referred to were small, coarse, ugly or distasteful carved figures which opened up to reveal a beautiful deity or valuables inside.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 159,
"text": "Alcibiades was a Greek politician in the 5th century BCE and a general in the Peloponnesian War; he figures here more as a character written into some of Plato's dialogues – an externally-attractive, young, debauched playboy whom Socrates tries to convince to seek truth instead of pleasure, wisdom instead of pomp and splendor.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 160,
"text": "The term Sileni – especially when juxtaposed with the character of Alcibiades – can therefore be understood as an evocation of the notion that something on the inside is more expressive of a person's character than what one sees on the outside. For instance, something or someone ugly on the outside can be beautiful on the inside, which is one of the main points of Plato's dialogues featuring Alcibiades and in the Symposium, in which Alcibiades also appears.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 161,
"text": "On the other hand, Erasmus lists several Sileni and then controversially questions whether Christ is the most noticeable Silenus of them all. The Apostles were Sileni since they were ridiculed by others. The scriptures are a Silenus too.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 162,
"text": "The work then launches into a biting endorsement of the need for high church officials (especially the Pope) to follow the evangelical counsel of poverty (simplicity): this condemnation of wealth and power was a full two years before the notional start of the Reformation; the church must be able to act as a moderating influence on the ambition and selfishness of princes.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 163,
"text": "The Institutio principis Christiani or \"Education of a Christian Prince\" (Basel, 1516) was written as advice to the young king Charles of Spain (later Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor), to whom the Preface is addressed. Erasmus applies the general principles of honor and sincerity to the special functions of the Prince, whom he represents throughout as the servant of the people. Education was published in 1516, three years after Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince was written; a comparison between the two is worth noting. Machiavelli stated that, to maintain control by political force, it is safer for a prince to be feared than loved. Erasmus preferred for the prince to be loved, and strongly suggested a well-rounded education in order to govern justly and benevolently and avoid becoming a source of oppression.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 164,
"text": "Erasmus produced this first edition of his corrected Latin and Greek New Testament in 1516, in Basel at the print of Johann Froben, and took it through multiple revisions and editions. An integral part was the substantial philological annotations. Erasmus independently brought out Paraphrases of the books of the New Testament, suited for a less academic readership.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 165,
"text": "Erasmus had, for his time, relatively little interest in the Old Testament, apart from the Psalms. \"To Erasmus, Judaism was obsolete. To Reuchlin, something of Judaism remained of continuing value to Christianity.\"</ref> Similarly, he was relatively disinterested in the Book of Revelation, which he did not produce a paraphrase for, and he provocatively reported the doubts in the early Greek church about its status in the canon: Erasmus had none of the apocalypticism of his times which so animated Savonarolan and Protestant rhetoric: only one percent of his Annotations on the New Testament concerned the Book of Revelation.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 166,
"text": "Erasmus had been working for years on two related projects to help theologians: philological notes on the Latin and Greek texts and a fresh Latin New Testament. He examined all the Latin versions he could find to create a critical text. Then he polished the language. He declared, \"It is only fair that Paul should address the Romans in somewhat better Latin.\" In the earlier phases of the project, he never mentioned a Greek text.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 167,
"text": "While his intentions for publishing a fresh Latin translation are clear, it is less clear why he included the Greek text. Though some speculate that he long intended to produce a critical Greek text or that he wanted to beat the Complutensian Polyglot into print, there is no evidence to support this. He wrote, \"There remains the New Testament translated by me, with the Greek facing, and notes on it by me.\" He further demonstrated the reason for the inclusion of the Greek text when defending his work:",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 168,
"text": "But one thing the facts cry out, and it can be clear, as they say, even to a blind man, that often through the translator's clumsiness or inattention the Greek has been wrongly rendered; often the true and genuine reading has been corrupted by ignorant scribes, which we see happen every day, or altered by scribes who are half-taught and half-asleep.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 169,
"text": "So he included the Greek text to permit qualified readers to verify the quality of his Latin version. But by first calling the final product Novum Instrumentum omne (\"All of the New Teaching\") and later Novum Testamentum omne (\"All of the New Testament\") he also indicated clearly that he considered a text in which the Greek and the Latin versions were consistently comparable to be the essential core of the church's New Testament tradition.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 170,
"text": "Erasmus said the printing of the first edition was \"precipitated rather than published\", resulting in a number of transcription errors. After comparing what writings he could find, Erasmus wrote corrections between the lines of the manuscripts he was using (among which was Minuscule 2) and sent them as proofs to Froben. His access to Greek manuscripts was limited compared to modern scholars and he had to rely on Jerome's late-4th century Vulgate to fill in the blanks.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 171,
"text": "His effort was hurriedly published by his friend Johann Froben of Basel in 1516 and thence became the first published Greek New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum omne, diligenter ab Erasmo Rot. Recognitum et Emendatum. Erasmus used several Greek manuscript sources because he did not have access to a single complete manuscript. Most of the manuscripts were, however, late Greek manuscripts of the Byzantine textual family and Erasmus used the oldest manuscript the least because \"he was afraid of its supposedly erratic text.\" He also ignored some manuscripts that were at his disposal which are now deemed older and better.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 172,
"text": "In the second (1519) edition, the more familiar term Testamentum was used instead of Instrumentum. Together, the first and second editions sold 3,300 copies. By comparison, only 600 copies of the Complutensian Polyglot were ever printed. This edition was used by Martin Luther in his German translation of the Bible, written for people who could not understand Latin. The first and second edition texts did not include the passage (1 John 5:7–8) that has become known as the Comma Johanneum. Erasmus had been unable to find those verses in any Greek manuscript, but one was supplied to him during production of the third edition.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 173,
"text": "The third edition of 1522 was probably used by William Tyndale for the first English New Testament (Worms, 1526) and was the basis for the 1550 Robert Stephanus edition used by the translators of the Geneva Bible and King James Version of the English Bible. Erasmus published a fourth edition in 1527 containing parallel columns of Greek, Latin Vulgate and Erasmus's Latin texts. In this edition Erasmus also supplied the Greek text of the last six verses of Revelation (which he had translated from Latin back into Greek in his first edition) from Cardinal Ximenez's Biblia Complutensis. In 1535 Erasmus published the fifth (and final) edition which dropped the Latin Vulgate column but was otherwise similar to the fourth edition. Later versions of the Greek New Testament by others, but based on Erasmus's Greek New Testament, became known as the Textus Receptus.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 174,
"text": "Erasmus dedicated his work to Pope Leo X as a patron of learning and regarded this work as his chief service to the cause of Christianity. Immediately afterwards, he began the publication of his Paraphrases of the New Testament, a popular presentation of the contents of the several books. These, like all of his writings, were published in Latin but were quickly translated into other languages with his encouragement.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 175,
"text": "Lady Peace complains about warmongering. This book was written at the request of the Burgundian Chancellor, who was then seeking a peace deal with France, to influence the zeitgeist.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 176,
"text": "On the use of battle standards featuring crosses:",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 177,
"text": "That cross is the standard of him who conquered, not by fighting, but by dying; who came, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them. It is a standard, the very sight of which might teach you what sort of enemies you have to war against, if you are a christian, and how you may be sure to gain the victory. I see you, while the standard of salvation is in one hand, rushing on with a sword in the other, to the murder of your brother; and, under the banner of the cross, destroying the life of one who to the cross owes his salvation.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 178,
"text": "The final paragraph of The Complaint of Peace finishes with the command Latin: resipiscite, meaning a voluntary return from madness and unconsiousness:",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 179,
"text": "At last! Enough and more than enough blood has been spilled, human blood, and if that were little, even Christian blood. Enough has been squandered in mutual destruction, enough already sacrificed to Orcus and the Furies and to nourish the eyes of the Turks. The comedy is at an end. Finally, after tolerating far too long the miseries of war, repent!",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 180,
"text": "However, the subsequent European wars of religion which accompanied the Reformation resulted in the deaths of between 7 and 18 million Europeans, including up to one third of the population of Germany.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 181,
"text": "Erasmus described his editorial intent with the Paraphrases of the New Testament as philological rather than theological: \"to fill in the gaps, to soften the abrupt ones, to digest the confused ones, to develop the developed ones, to explain the knotty ones, to add light to the dark ones, to give Hebraicisms a Roman polish ... and thus to moderate παραφρασιννε παραφρόνησις: that is, 'to say otherwise so as not to say otherwise.'\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 182,
"text": "He brought out the Paraphrases progressively: Romans (1517), Corinthians (1519), the rest of the Epistles throughout 1520 and 1521, and the four Gospels and Acts from 1522 to 1524. He did not put out a paraphrase of the Book of Revelation.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 183,
"text": "According to Erasmus: \"A paraphrase is not a translation but something looser, a kind of commentary in which the writer and his author retain separate roles.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 184,
"text": "The Paraphrases allowed Erasmus to amplify the text of the New Testament by integrating philological and theological points from his scholarly Annotations, allowing more of a role for his personal opinions or angles, but in a less scholarly format.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 185,
"text": "The Paraphrases were very well-received, particularly in England, by most parties.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 186,
"text": "Biographer Roland Bainton nominated this passage as \"the essence of Erasmus\" (its positivity to natural affection has none of the Lutheran total depravity doctrine, and it accords with the Catholic analogia entis pattern):",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 187,
"text": "\"Now in the natural love of this father for his son behold the goodness of God, who is far more clement to sinful man, if only he repents and despises himself, than any father to his son, however tenderly he may love him.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 188,
"text": "The Colloquia familiaria began as simple spoken Latin exercises for schoolboys to encourage fluency in colloquial Latin interaction, but expanded in number, ambition and audience. The sensational nature of many of the Colloquies made it a prime target for censorship.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 189,
"text": "Notable Colloquies include the exciting Naufragium (Shipwreck), the philosophical and path-forging The Epicurean, and the zany catalogue of fantastic animal stories Friendship.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 190,
"text": "For example, A Religious Pilgrimage deals with many serious subjects humorously, and scandalously includes a letter supposedly written by a Statue of the Virgin Mary, in which, while it first thanks a reformer for following Luther against needlessly invoking saints (where the listed invocations are all for sinful or wordly things), becomes a warning against iconoclasm and stripping altars.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 191,
"text": "As a result of his reformatory activities, Erasmus found himself at odds with some reformers and some Catholic churchmen. His last years were made difficult by controversies with men toward whom he was sympathetic.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 192,
"text": "Notable among these was Ulrich von Hutten, once a friend, a brilliant but erratic genius who had thrown himself into the Lutheran cause (and militant German nationalism ) and declared that Erasmus, if he had a spark of honesty, would do the same. In his reply in 1523, Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni, Erasmus accused Hutten of having misinterpreted his utterances about reform and reiterates his determination never to break with the Catholic Church.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 193,
"text": "Historian Francis Aidan Gasquet regarded this book as necessary for understanding Erasmus' true position on Rome, quoting:",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 194,
"text": "\"I have never approved of (the Roman See's) tyranny, rapacity, and other vices about which of old common complaints were heard from good men. Neither do I sweepingly condemn ‘Indulgences,’ though I have always disliked any barefaced traffic in them. What I think about ceremonies, many places in my works plainly show.… What it may mean ‘to reduce the Pope to order’ I do not rightly understand. First, I think it must be allowed that Rome is a Church, for no number of evils can make it cease to be a Church, otherwise we should have no Churches whatever. Moreover, I hold it to be an orthodox Church; and this Church, it must be admitted, has a Bishop. Let him be allowed also to be Metropolitan, seeing there are very many archbishops in countries where there has been no apostle, and Rome, without controversy, had certainly SS. Peter and Paul, the two chief apostles. Then how is it absurd that among Metropolitans the chief place be granted to the Roman Pontiff?\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 195,
"text": "Erasmus noted that he would not renounce old friends because they took sides for or against Luther, noting that several had changed their minds again.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 196,
"text": "The paradoxes of Luther are not worth dying for. “There is no question of articles of faith, but of such matters as ‘Whether the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff was established by Christ:’ ‘whether cardinals are necessary to the Christian Church:’ ‘whether confession is de jure divino:’ ‘whether bishops can make their laws binding under pain of mortal sin:’ ‘whether free will is necessary for salvation:’ ‘whether faith alone assures salvation,’ &c. If Christ gave him grace,” Erasmus hopes that “he would be a martyr for His truth, but he has no desire whatever to be one for Luther.”",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 197,
"text": "Erasmus wrote On Free Will (De libero arbitrio) (1524) against Luther's view on free will: that everything happens by strict necessity.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 198,
"text": "Erasmus lays down both sides of the argument impartially. In this controversy Erasmus lets it be seen that, from the thrust of Scripture, he would like to claim more for free will than St. Paul and St. Augustine seem to allow according to Luther's interpretation. For Erasmus the essential point is that humans have the freedom of choice, when responding to prior grace (synergism).",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 199,
"text": "In response, Luther wrote his De servo arbitrio (On the Bondage of the Will) (1525), which attacked \"On Free Will\" and Erasmus himself, going so far as to claim that Erasmus was not a Christian. \"Free will does not exist\", according to Luther in that sin makes human beings completely incapable of bringing themselves to God (monergism).",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 200,
"text": "Erasmus responded with a lengthy, two-part book Hyperaspistes (1526–27).",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 201,
"text": "Editions: 1523, 1525, 1529",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 202,
"text": "This liturgy for a Catholic Mass, with sequences and a homily teaching that for Mary, and the Saints, imitation should be the chief part of veneration.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 203,
"text": "Fair choir of angels, take up the zither, take up the lyre. The Virgin Mother must be celebrated in song, in a virginal ode. The angels, joining in the song, will re-echo your voice. For they love virgins, being virgins themselves.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 204,
"text": "The liturgy re-framed the existing Marian devotions: as a substitute for mentioning the Holy House of Loreto, he used the meaning of Loreto as 'laurel', as in the champion's laurel wreath. The work also may have been intended to demonstrate the proper application of indulgences, as it came with one from the archbishop of Besançon.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 205,
"text": "The writings of Erasmus exhibit a continuing concern with language, and in 1525 he devoted an entire treatise to the subject, Lingua. This and several of his other works are said to have provided a starting point for a philosophy of language, though Erasmus did not produce a completely elaborated system.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 206,
"text": "The Institutio matrimonii was published in 1526 as treatise about marriage. He did not follow the contemporary mainstream which saw the woman as a subject to the man, but suggested the man was to love the woman similar as he would Christ, who also descended to earth to serve. He saw the role of the woman as a socia (partner) to the man.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 207,
"text": "The relationship should be of amicitia (sweet and mutual fondness). Erasmus suggested that true marriage between devout Christians required a true friendship (contrary to contemporary legal theories that required community consensus or consummation); and because true friendship never dies, divorce of a true marriage was impossible; the seeking of a divorce was a sign that the true friendship (and so the true marriage) never existed and so the divorce should be allowed, after investigation and protecting the individuals.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 208,
"text": "As far as sex in marriage is concerned, Erasmus' gentle, gradualist asceticism promoted that a mutually-agreed celibate marriage, if God had made this doable by the partners, could be the ideal: in theory it allowed more opportunity for spiritual pursuits. But he controversially noted",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 209,
"text": "Since everything else has been designed for a purpose, it hardly seems probable that in this one matter alone nature was asleep. I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and that venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 210,
"text": "The Ciceronianus came out in 1528, attacking the style of Latin that was based exclusively and fanatically on Cicero's writings. Étienne Dolet wrote a riposte titled Erasmianus in 1535. Erasmus' own Latin style was late classical (i.e., from Terence to Jerome) as far as syntax and grammar, but freely used medievalisms in its vocabulary.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 211,
"text": "In his catechism (entitled Explanation of the Apostles' Creed) (1530), Erasmus took a stand against Luther's recent Catechisms by asserting the unwritten Sacred Tradition as just as valid a source of revelation as the Bible, by enumerating the Deuterocanonical books in the canon of the Bible and by acknowledging seven sacraments. He identified anyone who questioned the perpetual virginity of Mary as blasphemous. However, he supported lay access to the Bible.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 212,
"text": "In a letter to Nikolaus von Amsdorf, Luther objected to Erasmus's catechism and called Erasmus a \"viper\", \"liar\", and \"the very mouth and organ of Satan\".",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 213,
"text": "Erasmus's last major work, published the year of his death, is the Ecclesiastes or \"Gospel Preacher\" (Basel, 1536), a massive manual for preachers of around a thousand pages. Though somewhat unwieldy because Erasmus was unable to edit it properly in his old age, it is in some ways the culmination of all of Erasmus's literary and theological learning and, according to some scholars, of the previous millennium of preaching manuals since Augustine. It offered prospective preachers advice on important aspects of their vocation with abundant reference to classical and biblical sources.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 214,
"text": "According to Ernest Barker, \"Besides his work on the New Testament, Erasmus laboured also, and even more arduously, on the early Fathers. Among the Latin Fathers he edited the works of St Jerome, St Hilary, and St Augustine; among the Greeks he worked on Irenaeus, Origen and Chrysostom.\"",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 215,
"text": "In 1530, Erasmus, in his fourth edition of the works of Cyprian, introduced a treatise De duplici martyrio ad Fortunatum, which he attributed to Cyprian and presented as having been found by chance in an old library. This text, close to the works of Erasmus, both in content (hostility to the confusion between virtue and suffering) and in form, and of which no manuscript is known, contains at least one flagrant anachronism: an allusion to the persecution of Diocletian, persecution that took place long after the death of Cyprian. In 1544, the Dominican Henricus Gravius [de] denounced the work as inauthentic and attributed its authorship to Erasmus or an imitator of Erasmus. In the twentieth century, the hypothesis of a fraud by Erasmus was rejected a priori by most of the great Erasmians, for example Percy Stafford Allen, but it is adopted by academics like Anthony Grafton.",
"title": "Notable writings"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 216,
"text": "Erasmus was given the sobriquet \"Prince of the Humanists\", and has been called \"the crowning glory of the Christian humanists\". He has also been called \"the most illustrious rhetorician and educationalist of the Renaissance\".",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 217,
"text": "Since the origin of Christianity there have been perhaps only two other men—St Augustine and Voltaire—whose influence can be paralleled with Erasmus.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 218,
"text": "No man before or since acquired such undisputed sovereignty in the republic of letters... The reform which he set in motion went beyond him, and left him behind. In some of his opinions, however, he was ahead of his age, and anticipated a more modern stage of Protestantism. He was as much a forerunner of Rationalism as of the Reformation.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 219,
"text": "French biographer Désiré Nisard characterized him as a lens or focal point: \"the whole of the Renaissance in Western Europe in the sixteenth century converged towards him.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 220,
"text": "",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 221,
"text": "Erasmians: Erasmus frequently mentioned that he did not want office nor to be the founder or figurehead of a sect or movement, despite his vigorous branding and self-promotion. Nevertheless, historians do identify de facto \"Erasmians\" (ranging from the early Jesuits to the early reformers, and both Thomas More and William Tyndale)—Christian humanists who picked up on some or other aspects of Erasmus' agenda.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 222,
"text": "Erasmianism: This has been described as a \"more intellectual form of spiritualized Christianity\". It had a notable influence in Spain. The near election of Reginald Pole as pope in 1546 has been attributed to Erasmianism in the electors. However, a precise definition is not possible; it is not, for example, a set of doctrinal propositions.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 223,
"text": "French historian Jean-Claude Margolin has noted an Erasmian stream in French culture putting \"the concrete before the abstract and the ethical before the speculative\", though it is not clear whether Erasmus influenced the French or vice versa.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 224,
"text": "Erasmian Reformation: Some historians such as Edward Gibbon and Hugh Trevor-Roper have even claimed an \"'Erasmianism after Erasmus,' a secret stream which meandered to and fro across the Catholic/Protestant divide, creating oases of rational thought impartially on either side.\" For some, this amounted to a third church: or even that \"Luther's and Calvin's Reformations were minor affairs\" compared to the Reformation of Erasmus and the humanists' which swept away the Middle Ages.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 225,
"text": "Erasmian liberalism: This has had an enduring run: described by philosopher Edwin Curley that \"the spirit of Erasmian liberalism was to emphasize the ethical aspects of Christianity at the expense of the doctrinal, to suspend judgment on many theological issues, and to insist that the faith actually required for salvation was a simple and uncontroversial one.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 226,
"text": "Protestant historian Roland Bainton is quoted \"no-one did more than Erasmus to break down the theory and practice of the medieval variety of intolerance.\" Other popular or scholarly writers have suggested that Erasmus' tolerant but idealistic agenda failed, certainly at the political level, evidenced by the wars and persecutions of the Protestant Reformation.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 227,
"text": "Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education! (R.R. Bolger) … with greater confidence it can be claimed that Erasmus is the greatest man we come across in the history of education in the sixteenth century. …It may also be claimed that Erasmus was one of the most important champions of women's rights in his century.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 228,
"text": "According to scholar Gerald J. Luhrman, \"the system of secondary education, as developed in a number of European countries, is inconceivable without the efforts of humanist educationalists, particularly Erasmus. His ideas in the field of language acquisition were systematized and realized to a large extent in the schools founded by the Jesuits...\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 229,
"text": "In England, he wrote the first curriculum for St Paul's School and his Latin grammar (written with Lily and Colet) \"continued to be used, in adapted form, into the Twentieth Century.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 230,
"text": "His system of pronouncing ancient Greek was adopted for teaching in the major Western European nations.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 231,
"text": "Erasmus \"tried to realize a practical goal: a modern education as preparation for administrators from the higher estates.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 232,
"text": "The popularity of his books is reflected in the number of editions and translations that have appeared since the sixteenth century. Ten columns of the catalogue of the British Library are taken up with the enumeration of the works and their subsequent reprints. The greatest names of the classical and patristic world are among those translated, edited, or annotated by Erasmus, including Ambrose, Aristotle, Augustine, Basil, John Chrysostom, Cicero and Jerome.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 233,
"text": "In his native Rotterdam, the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus Bridge, Erasmus MC and Gymnasium Erasmianum have been named in his honor. Between 1997 and 2009, one of the main metro lines of the city was named Erasmuslijn. The Foundation Erasmus House (Rotterdam), is dedicated to celebrating Erasmus's legacy. Three moments in Erasmus's life are celebrated annually. On 1 April, the city celebrates the publication of his best-known book The Praise of Folly. On 11 July, the Night of Erasmus celebrates the lasting influence of his work. His birthday is celebrated on 28 October.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 234,
"text": "Erasmus became extraordinarily popular and influential in Spain, including in and around the talent pool that formed the early Jesuits. There were at least 120 translations, editions, or adaptations of Erasmian writings between 1520 and 1552. Erasmians and their associated faced, at times, extraordinary pushback from the theologians at Salamanca and Vallodolid, for being associated with the alumbrado and illuminist tendencies, with many (notably Ignatius of Loyola) resorting to exile rather than facing the Inquisition, imprisonment or worse. However, at times the heads of the Inquisition were themselves Erasmians.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 235,
"text": "Erasmus faced a notable semi-secret trial in Vallodolid in 1527, attended by numerous bishops, abbots and theologians. Its records still exist. It disbanded without condemning Erasmus as a heretic, as most of his contentious beliefs were regarded as respectable by at least some important bishops, and the fanciful interpretations of the accusers did not stand up to scrutiny.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 236,
"text": "Erasmus' grammar, Adages, Copia, and other books continued as the core Latin educational material in England for the following centuries.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 237,
"text": "His translated Gospel paraphrases were legally required to be chained for public access in every church, in the reign of Edward VI.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 238,
"text": "After reading Erasmus' 1516 New Testament, Thomas Bilney \"felt a marvellous comfort and quietness,\" and won over his Cambridge friends, future notable bishops, Matthew Parker and Hugh Latimer to reformist biblicism. One of William Tyndale's earliest works was his translation of Erasmus' Enchiridion (1522,1533). Both Tyndale and his theological opponent Thomas More are considered Erasmians.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 239,
"text": "Historian Lucy Wooding argues (in Christopher Haigh's paraphrases) that \"England nearly had a Catholic Reformation along Erasmian lines –but it was cut short by (Queen) Mary’s death and finally torpedoed by the Council of Trent\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 240,
"text": "The initial Henrican closure of smaller monasteries followed the Erasmian agenda, which was also shared by Catholic humanists such as Reginald Pole; however the later violent closures and iconoclasm were far from Erasmus' program.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 241,
"text": "For some Restoration Anglicans, both those promoting enforced anti-extremism and latitudinarians, and into the Age of Enlightenment, Erasmus' moderation represented \"an alternative to the belligerent Protestantism that characterized English political and social discourse\". It has been claimed that William of Orange's Toleration Act owed to Erasmus' inspiration.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 242,
"text": "For Edward Gibbon, Erasmus was \"the father of rational theology.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 243,
"text": "Erasmus's reputation and the interpretations of his work have varied over time. Moderate Catholics recognized him as a leading figure in attempts to reform the Church, while Protestants recognized his initial support for (and, in part, inspiration of) Luther's ideas and the groundwork he laid for the future Reformation, especially in biblical scholarship.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 244,
"text": "Erasmus was continually protected by popes, bishops and kings during his lifetime. The following generation of saints and scholars included many influenced by Erasmian humanism, notably Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Ávila.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 245,
"text": "However, Erasmus attracted enemies in contemporary theologians in Paris, Louvain, Salamanca and Rome, notably Sepulveda, Stunica, Edward Lee, Noël Beda, as well as Alberto Pío, Prince of Carpi, who read his work with dedicated suspicion. These were theologians, usually from the mendicant orders that were Erasmus' particular target (such as Dominicans, Carmelites and Franciscans), who held a positive \"linear view of history\" for theology that privileged recent late-medieval theology and rejected the ad fontes methodology. Erasmus believed the vehemence of the attacks on Luther was a strategem to blacken humanism (and himself) by association, part of the centuries-long power struggle of university theologians with humanism.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 246,
"text": "Erasmus spent considerable effort defending himself in writing, which he could not do after his death.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 247,
"text": "The Council of Trent addressed many of the controversies Erasmus had been involved with: including free will, accumulated errors in the Vulgate, and priestly training.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 248,
"text": "By the 1560s, there was a marked downturn in reception: at various times and durations, some of Erasmus' works, especially in Protestantized editions, were placed on the various Roman, Dutch, French, Spanish and Mexican Indexes of Prohibited Books, either to not be read, or to be censored and expurgated: each area had different censorship considerations and severity.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 249,
"text": "For the Roman Index as it emerged at the close of the Council of Trent, Erasmus' works were completely banned (1559), mostly unbanned (1564), completely banned again (1590), and then mostly unbanned again with strategic revisions (1596) by the Indexes of successive Popes. The Colloquies were especially but not universally frowned on for school use, and many of Erasmus' tendentious prefaces and notes to his scholarly editions required adjustment. In Spain's Index, the translation of the Enchiridion only needed the phrase \"Monkishness is not piety\" removed to become acceptable.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 250,
"text": "Because Erasmus' scholarly editions were frequently the only sources of Patristic information in print, the strict bans were often impractical, so theologians worked to produce replacement editions building on, or copying, Erasmus' editions.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 251,
"text": "The Jesuits received a dispensation from the Roman Inquisitor General to read and use Erasmus' work, as did priests working near Protestant areas such as Francis de Sales.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 252,
"text": "Early Dutch Jesuit scholar Peter Canisius (fl. 1547 - 1597), who produced several works superseding Erasmus', is known to have read, or used phrases from, Erasmus' New Testament (including the Annotations and Notes) and perhaps the Paraphrases, his Jerome biography and complete works, the Adages, the Copia, and the Colloquies: Canisius, having actually read Erasmus, had an ambivalent view on Erasmus that contrasted with the negative line of some of his contemporaries:",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 253,
"text": "Very many people applied also to Erasmus, declaring: 'Either Erasmus speaks like Luther or Luther like Erasmus' (Aut Erasmus Lutherizat, aut Lutherus Erasmizat). And yet, we must say, if we would like to render an honest judgment, that Erasmus and Luther were very different. Erasmus always remained a Catholic. ... Erasmus criticized religion 'with craft rather than with force', often applying considerable caution and moderation to either his own opinions or errors. ...Erasmus passed judgment on what he thought required censure and correction in the teaching of theologians and in the Church.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 254,
"text": "In contrast, Robert Bellarmine's Controversies mentions Erasmus (as presented by Erasmus' opponent Albert Pío) negatively over 100 times, categorizing him as a \"forerunner of the heretics\"; though not a heretic. Alphonsus Ligouri, who also had not read Erasmus, judged that Erasmus \"died with the character of an unsound Catholic but not a heretic,\" putting it all in the context of a dispute between Theologians and Rhetoricians.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 255,
"text": "His patristic scholarship continued to be valued by academics, as were un-controversial parts of his biblical scholarship, though Catholic biblical scholars started to criticize Erasmus' limited range of manuscripts for his direct New Testament as undermining his premise of correcting the Latin from the \"original\" Greek.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 256,
"text": "The Jesuit mission to China, lead by Matteo Ricci, adopted the approach of cultural accommodation linked to Erasmus. The early Jesuits were exposed to Erasmus at their colleges, and their positioning of Confucius echoed Erasmus' positioning of \"Saint\" Socrates.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 257,
"text": "Salesian scholars have noted Erasmus' significant influence on Francis de Sales: \"in the approach and the spirit he (de Sales) took to reform his diocese and more importantly on how individual Christians could become better together,\" his optimism, civility, esteem of marriage. and, according to historian Charles Béné, a piety addressed to the laity, the acceptance of mental prayer, and the valuing of pagan wisdom.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 258,
"text": "A famous 17th century Dominican library featured statues of famous churchmen on one side and of famous \"heretics\" (in chains) on the other: those foes including the two leading anti-mendicant Catholic voices William of Saint-Amour (fl. 1250) and Erasmus.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 259,
"text": "From 1648 to 1794 and then 1845 to the present, the mainly-Jesuit Bollandist Society has been progressively publishing Lives of the Saints, in 61 volumes and supplements. Historian John C. Olin notes an accord of approach with the hitherto \"unique\" method, mixing critical standards and devotional/rhetorical purpose, that Erasmus had laid out in his Life of St Jerome.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 260,
"text": "By the 1700s, Erasmus' even indirect influence on Catholic thought had waned. A historian has written that \"a number of Erasmus' modern Catholic critics do not display an accurate knowledge of his writings but misrepresent him, often by relying upon hostile secondary sources,\" naming Yves Congar as an example.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 261,
"text": "A major turning point in the popular Catholic appraisal of Erasmus occurred in 1900 with rosy Benedictine historian (and, later, Cardinal) Francis Aidan Gasquet's The Eve of the Reformation which included a whole chapter on Erasmus based on a re-reading of his books and letters. Gasquet wrote \"Erasmus, like many of his contemporaries, is often perhaps injudicious in the manner in which he advocated reforms. But when the matter is sifted to the bottom, it will commonly be found that his ideas are just.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 262,
"text": "Over the last century, Erasmus has been un-cancelled and his Catholic reputation has gradually started to be rehabilitated: favourable factors may include:",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 263,
"text": "His instrumentalist approach to Christian humanism has been compared to that of John Henry Newman and the personalism of John Paul II, but also has been criticized as treating the Church's doctrines merely as aids to piety.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 264,
"text": "The Catholic scholar Thomas Cummings saw parallels between Erasmus' vision of Church reform and the vision of Church reform that succeeded at the Second Vatican Council. Theologian J. Coppens noted the \"Erasmian themes\" of Lumen Gentium (e.g. para 12), such as the sensus fidei fidelium and the dignity of all the baptized. Another scholar writes \"in our days, especially after Vatican II, Erasmus is more and more regarded as an important defender of the Christian religion.\" John O'Malley has commented on connections between Erasmus and Dei Verbum.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 265,
"text": "In 1963, Thomas Merton wrote \"If there had been no Luther, Erasmus would now be regarded by everyone as one of the great Doctors of the Catholic Church. I like his directness, his simplicity, and his courage.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 266,
"text": "Notably, since the 1950s, the Roman Catholic Easter Vigil mass has included a Renewal of Baptismal Promises, an innovation first proposed by Erasmus in his Paraphrases.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 267,
"text": "In his 1987 collection The Spirituality of Erasmus of Rotterdam historian Richard deMolen, later a Catholic priest, called for Erasmus' canonization.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 268,
"text": "Protestant views on Erasmus fluctuated depending on region and period, with continual support in his native Netherlands and in cities of the Upper Rhine area. However, following his death and in the late sixteenth century, many Reformation supporters saw Erasmus's critiques of Luther and lifelong support for the universal Catholic Church as damning, and second-generation Protestants were less vocal in their debts to the great humanist.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 269,
"text": "There was a tendency to downplay that many of the usages fundamental to Luther, Melancthon and Calvin, such as the forensic imputation of righteousness, grace as divine favour or mercy (rather than a medicine-like substance or habit), faith as trust (rather than a persuasion only), \"repentance\" over \"doing penance\" (as used by Luther in the first theses of the 95 Theses), owed to Erasmus.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 270,
"text": "Luther had attempted a Biblical analogy to justify his dismissal of Erasmus' thought: \"He has done what he was ordained to do: he has introduced the ancient languages, in the place of injurious scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab…I would rather he would entirely abstain from explaining and paraphrasing the Scriptures, for he is not up to this work…to lead into the land of promise, is not his business…\" \"Erasmus of Rotterdam is the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth…He is a very Caiaphas.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 271,
"text": "Some historians have even said that \"the spread of Lutheranism was checked by Luther’s antagonizing (of) Erasmus and the humanists.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 272,
"text": "Erasmus' reception is also demonstrable among Swiss Protestants in the sixteenth century: he had an indelible influence on the biblical commentaries of, for example, Konrad Pellikan, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin, all of whom used both his annotations on the New Testament and his paraphrases of same in their own New Testament commentaries. Huldrych Zwingli, the founder of the Reformed tradition, had a conversion experience after reading Erasmus' poem, 'Jesus' Lament to Mankind.' Zwingli's moralism, hermeneutics and attitude to patristic authority owe to Erasmus, and contrast with Luther's.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 273,
"text": "Anabaptist scholars have suggested an 'intellectual dependence' of Anabaptists on Erasmus.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 274,
"text": "For evangelical Christianity, Erasmus had a strong influence on Arminius.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 275,
"text": "Erasmus' promotion of the recognition of adiaphora and toleration within bounds was taken up by many kinds of Protestants.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 276,
"text": "Erasmus' Greek New Testament was the basis of the Textus Receptus bibles, which were used for all Protestant bible translations from 1600 to 1900, notably including the Luther Bible and the King James Version.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 277,
"text": "Writers have often explained Erasmus' failure to adopt their favoured position as manifesting some deep character flaw.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 278,
"text": "Luther's antipathy to Erasmus has continued to more recent times in some Lutheran teachers:",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 279,
"text": "Oh how Erasmus placed honor above truth! To seek honor is a human frailty. To ever permit it to go to the point of placing honor and for that matter friendship, expediency, or anything else, above truth is to be blinded by the devil himself and to set a snare for others to be entrapped in his delusions. Such delusions Erasmus would support in pride, weakness, vacillation, and false love for peace and harmony.\" \"Erasmus, the Judas of the Reformation\" \"this cultured and eloquent theological midget",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 280,
"text": "The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917) explained \"His inborn vanity and self-complacency were thereby increased almost to the point of becoming a disease; at the same time he sought, often by the grossest flattery, to obtain the favour and material support of patrons or to secure the continuance of such benefits.\" According to Catholic historian Joseph Lortz (1962) \"Erasmus remained in the church…but as a half Catholic…indecisive, hesitating, suspended in the middle.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 281,
"text": "A 1920s American historian wrote \"Erasmus's ambitions, fed by an innate vanity which at times repels by its frank self-seeking, included both fame and fortune\" yet pulls back on another historian's view that his \"irritable self-conceit, shameless importunity,…may lead one to a sense of contempt for the scholar\", pointing out the reality of Erasmus' dire poverty in Paris.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 282,
"text": "In the 20th century, various pyschoanalyses were made of Erasmus by practitioners: these diagnosed him variously as \"supremely egotistic, neurasthenic, morbidly sensitive, volatile, variable, and vacillating, injudicious, irritable, and querulous, yet always ... a baffling but interesting chararacter\"; a \"volatile neurotic, latent homosexual, hypochondriac, and psychasthenic\"; having \"a form of narcissistic character disorder,\" a spiritualized, vengeful, \"paranoid disposition\" driven by \"injured narcissism\", \"repeated persecutory preoccupations...(with) delusional states of paranoia toward the end of his life\", repressed anger directed \"father figures such as prelates and teachers,\" needing a \"sense of victimization\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 283,
"text": "Huizinga's biography (1924) treats him more sympathically, with phrases such as: a great and sincere need for concord and affection, profoundly in need of (physical and spiritual) purity, a delicate soul (with a delicate constitution), fated to an immoderate love of liberty, having a dangerous fusion between inclination and conviction, restless but precipitate, a continual intermingling of explosion and reserve, fastidious, bashful, coquettish, a white-lier, evasive, suspicious, and feline. Yet \"compared with most of his contemporaries he remains moderate and refined.\"",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 284,
"text": "Erasmus is credited with numerous quotes; many of them are not exactly original to him but are taken from his collections of sayings such as Adages or Apophthegmata.",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 285,
"text": "He is also blamed for the mistranslation from Greek of \"to call a bowl a bowl\" as \"to call a spade a spade\", and the rendering of Pandora's \"jar\" as \"box\".",
"title": "Legacy and evaluations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 286,
"text": "Until Erasmus received his (1505 and 1517) Papal dispensations to wear clerical garb, Erasmus wore versions of the local habit of his order, the Canons regular of St Augustine, which varied by region and house, unless traveling: in general, a white or perhaps black cassock with linen and lace choir rochet for liturgical contexts or sarotium (scarf), almuce (cape), perhaps with an asymmetrical black cope of cloth or sheepskin (cacullae) or long black cloak.",
"title": "Personal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 287,
"text": "From 1505, and certainly after 1517, he dressed as a scholar-priest. He preferred warm and soft garments: according to one source, he arranged for his clothing to be stuffed with fur to protect him against the cold, and his habit counted with a collar of fur which usually covered his nape.",
"title": "Personal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 288,
"text": "All Erasmus' portraits show him wearing a knitted scholar's bonnet.",
"title": "Personal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 289,
"text": "Erasmus chose the Roman god of borders and boundaries Terminus as a personal symbol and had a signet ring with a herm he thought depicted Terminus carved into a carnelian. The herm was presented to him in Rome by his student Alexander Stewart and in reality depicted the Greek god Dionysus. The ring was also depicted in a portrait of his by the Flemish painter Quentin Matsys.",
"title": "Personal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 290,
"text": "The herm became part of the Erasmus branding at Froben, and is on his tombstone. In the early 1530s, Erasmus was portrayed as Terminus by Hans Holbein the Younger.",
"title": "Personal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 291,
"text": "He chose Concedo Nulli (Lat. I concede to no-one) as his personal motto. The obverse of the medal by Quintin Matsys featured the Terminus herm, the motto, and along the circumference \"Contemplate the end of a long life\" and Horace's \"Death is the ultimate boundary of things,\" which re-casts the motto as a memento mori.",
"title": "Personal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 292,
"text": "In 1928, the site of Erasmus' grave was dug up, and a body identified in the bones and examined. In 1974, a body was dug up in a slightly different location, accompanied by an Erasmus medal. Both bodies have been claimed to be Erasmus'. However, it is possible neither is.",
"title": "Personal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 293,
"text": "The Catalogue of the Works of Erasmus (2023) runs to 444 entries (120 pages), almost all from the latter half of his life.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 294,
"text": "The Collected Works of Erasmus (or CWE) is an 84 volume set of English translations and commentary from the University of Toronto Press. As of May 2023, 66 of 84 volumes have been released. The Erasmi opera omni, known as the Amsterdam Edition or ASD, is a 65 volume set of the original Latin works. As of 2022, 59 volumes have been released.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 295,
"text": "The best sources for the world of European Renaissance Humanism in the early sixteenth century is the correspondence of Erasmus.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 296,
"text": "Erasmus wrote or answered up to 40 letters per day. Over 3,000 letters exist for a 52-year period, including to and from most Western popes, emperors, kings and their staff, as well as to leading intellectuals, bishops, reformers, fans, friends, and enemies.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 297,
"text": "\"I have never censured anything but human superstition and abuses. I only wish that I could drag the universal church to where I was struggling to lead it, so that, throwing off superstition, hypocrisy, worldly attachments, and frivolous little questions, we would all serve the Lord with pure hearts, each in his own vocation.\"",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 298,
"text": "The 1516 edition had Erasmus' corrected Vulgate Latin and Greek versions. The subsequent revised editions had Erasmus' new Latin version and the Greek. The 1527 edition had both the Vulgate and Erasmus' new Latin with the Greek. These were accompanied by substantial annotations, methodological notes and paraphrases, in separate volumes.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 299,
"text": "For the patristic and classical editions Erasmus was variously supervising editor and editor or translator, often working with others. He also contributed prefaces, notes and biographies.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 300,
"text": "Late in his publishing career, Erasmus produced editions of two pre-scholastic but post-patristic writers:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 301,
"text": "Classical writers whose works Erasmus translated or edited include Lucian (1506), Euripides (1508), Pseudo-Cato (1513), Curtius (1517), Suetonius (1518), Cicero (1523), Ovid and Prudentius (1524), Galen (1526), Seneca (1515, 1528), Plutarch (1512-1531), Aristotle (1531, Introduction to edition of Simon Grynaeus), Demosthenes (1532), Terence (1532), Ptolemy (1533), as well as Livy, Pliny, Libanius, Galen, Isocrates and Xenophon. Many of the Adagia translate adages from ancient and classical sources, notably from Aesop; many of Apophthegmata are from Platonists or Cynics.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 302,
"text": "Also:",
"title": "Endmatter"
}
]
| Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist and philosopher. Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture. He was an important figure in classical scholarship who wrote in a spontaneous, copious and natural Latin style. As a Catholic priest developing humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament, which raised questions that would be influential in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style and many other works. Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation. He developed a biblical humanistic theology in which he advocated tolerance, concord and free thinking on matters of indifference. He remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the Church from within. He promoted the traditional doctrine of synergism, which some prominent Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected in favor of the doctrine of monergism. His middle-road approach disappointed, and even angered, partisans in both camps. | 2001-11-29T00:30:27Z | 2023-12-31T04:52:21Z | [
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10,153 | Encyclopedia Brown | Encyclopedia Brown is a series of books featuring the adventures of boy detective Leroy Brown, nicknamed "Encyclopedia" for his intelligence and range of knowledge. The series of 29 children's novels was written (one co-written) by Donald J. Sobol, with the first book published in 1963 and the last published posthumously in 2012. In addition to the main books, the Encyclopedia Brown series has spawned a comic strip, a TV series, and compilation books of puzzles and games.
Sobol's first Encyclopedia Brown book was written in two weeks; subsequent books took about six months to write. Its main publisher was Bantam Skylark.
Each book in the Encyclopedia Brown mystery series is self contained in that the reader is not required to have read earlier books in order to understand the stories. The major characters, settings, etc. are usually introduced (or reintroduced) in each book.
Books featuring Brown are subdivided into a number—usually ten or more—of (possibly interlinked) short stories, each of which presents a mystery. The mysteries are intended to be solved by the reader, thanks to the placement of a logical or factual inconsistency somewhere within the text. This is very similar to the layout of Donald Sobol's other book series, Two-Minute Mysteries. Many of the mysteries involve Brown helping his father, the local police chief, solve a crime: Brown outwitting town bully Bugs Meany, the leader of a gang known as the Tigers; or Brown being aided by Sally Kimball, his partner, close friend, and bodyguard. Brown, his father, or Sally invariably solves the case by exposing this inconsistency, detailed in the "Answers" section in the back of the book.
Often, these books follow a formula where the first chapter involves Brown solving a case at the dinner table for his father, the local police chief in the fictional seaside town of Idaville in an unspecified state. When Chief Brown barely tastes his meal, that is a cue he was handed a difficult case. He pulls out his casebook and goes over it with the family. Encyclopedia solves these cases by briefly closing his eyes while he thinks deeply, then asking a single question which directly leads to him finding the solution.
The second mystery often begins in the Brown garage on Rover Avenue, where Encyclopedia has set up his own detective agency to help neighborhood children solve cases for "25 cents per day, plus expenses - No case too small." This second case usually involves the town bully and mischief maker Bugs Meany, leader of a gang who call themselves the Tigers, who, after being foiled, will attempt revenge in the third mystery.
In the third mystery, the plot involves Encyclopedia's partner, close friend, and bodyguard, Sally Kimball, the one person under 14 years of age to physically stand up to Bugs. She is the only reason neither Bugs nor any of his Tigers ever try to physically attack Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia tends to dislike anyone whom Sally has a crush on, possibly indicating that he has a crush on her. Also intelligent, Sally once attempted—in the first book of the series—to prove herself smarter than Encyclopedia by stumping him with a mystery of her own creation. Ironically, the contest was held at the Tigers' clubhouse, with Bugs and the others cheering him on. However, she was beaten in the contest (although Encyclopedia admitted that she almost tricked him), after which she became his friend. In subsequent storylines Bugs or his gang usually set up some sort of trap to get Encyclopedia or Sally in trouble. However, as in the previous story, they make a key mistake which Encyclopedia exposes.
Later cases may find Encyclopedia assisting his father at a crime scene (rarely more serious than larceny, and Encyclopedia is always discreet when helping his father) or interacting with people around town, often exposing scams. One such example is a high school dropout and would-be con artist named Wilford Wiggins who spends time trying to dream up schemes to fleece kids out of their money. Like Bugs, his schemes have an inconsistency which Encyclopedia exposes.
In some cases it is Sally and not Encyclopedia who figures it out because, as she tells Encyclopedia, "You are a boy." In other words, she notices things that only a girl would find inconsistent. Sally further displays her intelligence in the various mysteries in that she often can deduce who committed the crime, or whether a certain person is lying, but she simply cannot always prove it.
The Encyclopedia Brown books have experienced some enduring popularity.
In 1976, the Mystery Writers of America honored Sobol and his Encyclopedia Brown series with a special Edgar Award.
Educators have used Encyclopedia Brown in classrooms to instruct students in skills such as writing reports. In 1986, the Society for Visual Education, Inc. published a filmstrip series, produced and written by Lynne V. Gibbs, with accompanying audio cassette tapes and workbooks for elementary and middle schools' use. The following four Encyclopedia Brown stories were utilized: The Case of the Missing Statue, The Case of the Happy Nephew, The Case of the Kidnapped Pigs, and The Case of the Marble Shooter. According to WorldCat's library catalog listing, "As super-sleuth Encyclopedia Brown solves four mysteries, he shows students how he fills out his reports, including selecting a topic, gathering information, taking notes, making an outline, and revising and editing."
From December 3, 1978, to September 20, 1980, Encyclopedia Brown was a daily and Sunday comic strip syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. The artwork was done by Frank Bolle, and Donald J. Sobol was credited as the writer. When the strips were collected into books in the mid-1980s, the strip was credited to Elliot Caplin, based on Sobol's characters. The strips adapted Sobol stories, both ones that had originally been Encyclopedia Brown tales and ones that had been part of Sobol's syndicated Two-Minute Mysteries features.
A live action television series adaptation, also called Encyclopedia Brown, ran on HBO starting in 1989. Scott Bremner played the title role, with Laura Bridge playing Sally. The series ran for eight episodes. It was produced by Howard David Deutsch and directed by Savage Steve Holland. Parts of the series were filmed in Provo, Utah.
The series began with an hour-long special, "The Case of the Missing Time Capsule", and subsequent six episodes were 30 minutes long.
Many of these episodes were later released on VHS.
In June 2013, Warner Bros. optioned the Encyclopedia Brown books into a feature film. Matt Johnson was in talks to write the movie. Roy Lee and Howard David Deutsch (producer of the 1989 Encyclopedia Brown TV series) and Jonathan Zakin were announced as producing.
The Encyclopedia Brown books, in order of publication (parentheses indicate numbers on original release cover art):
From January 15 to June 30, 1989, a special Solve-It-Yourself Mystery Sweepstakes was held in conjunction with the Encyclopedia Brown books and Bantam Books. In the back of specially marked copies of Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt, Sobol presented an unsolved mystery for the contestant to solve and submit an answer for a chance to win a prize. The mystery for the contest was called "The Case of the Missing Birthday Gift", wherein Encyclopedia had to solve the case of a stolen bicycle that was given as a birthday gift to Willie Grant on his tenth birthday. The Tigers make an appearance as the suspects in the case; Bugs Meany, Jack Beck, and Rocky Graham all show up at the Tigers' clubhouse.
Contestants were allowed to enter as many times as they wished, provided they used a separate envelope for each entry. The sweepstakes was only available to USA and Canada residents. No purchase was necessary, as one could either use the official form in the back of specially marked copies of Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt or send in a 3" by 5" index card with the solution and the contestant's contact information.
The satirical newspaper The Onion ran an article in 2003 titled "Idaville Detective 'Encyclopedia' Brown Found Dead In Library Dumpster", which stated that Encyclopedia Brown, now a middle-aged police detective, had been murdered. The article parodied the books' tendency to have crimes solved through knowledge of trivia, and ended with Bugs Meany, who was now police commissioner, stating that he had an alibi for the murder in that "I was at the North Pole watching the penguins." (Penguins reside almost exclusively south of the Equator, and so there are none in the northern polar regions.)
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal: Last of the Innocent graphic novel features a reference to Encyclopedia Brown, with a grown-up analogue of Encyclopedia featured in the comic, as confirmed by Ed Brubaker himself.
The comic strip FoxTrot ran a 2000 storyline where Jason and Marcus try their hand at being private investigators, out to solve a theft perpetrated on their girlfriends. One agency name they tried was "Encyclopedias Brown And White" (because Marcus is African-American and Jason is Caucasian), which became the title of FoxTrot's next book of comics.
The protagonist of the 2020 film The Kid Detective is a former child prodigy detective, now an unsuccessful adult, living in a small town.
In The Simpsons episode "500 Keys", the grave of Encyclopedia Brown is shown briefly next to those of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, to which Lisa comments "Jeez, they're dropping like flies". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Encyclopedia Brown is a series of books featuring the adventures of boy detective Leroy Brown, nicknamed \"Encyclopedia\" for his intelligence and range of knowledge. The series of 29 children's novels was written (one co-written) by Donald J. Sobol, with the first book published in 1963 and the last published posthumously in 2012. In addition to the main books, the Encyclopedia Brown series has spawned a comic strip, a TV series, and compilation books of puzzles and games.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Sobol's first Encyclopedia Brown book was written in two weeks; subsequent books took about six months to write. Its main publisher was Bantam Skylark.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Each book in the Encyclopedia Brown mystery series is self contained in that the reader is not required to have read earlier books in order to understand the stories. The major characters, settings, etc. are usually introduced (or reintroduced) in each book.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Books featuring Brown are subdivided into a number—usually ten or more—of (possibly interlinked) short stories, each of which presents a mystery. The mysteries are intended to be solved by the reader, thanks to the placement of a logical or factual inconsistency somewhere within the text. This is very similar to the layout of Donald Sobol's other book series, Two-Minute Mysteries. Many of the mysteries involve Brown helping his father, the local police chief, solve a crime: Brown outwitting town bully Bugs Meany, the leader of a gang known as the Tigers; or Brown being aided by Sally Kimball, his partner, close friend, and bodyguard. Brown, his father, or Sally invariably solves the case by exposing this inconsistency, detailed in the \"Answers\" section in the back of the book.",
"title": "Style"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Often, these books follow a formula where the first chapter involves Brown solving a case at the dinner table for his father, the local police chief in the fictional seaside town of Idaville in an unspecified state. When Chief Brown barely tastes his meal, that is a cue he was handed a difficult case. He pulls out his casebook and goes over it with the family. Encyclopedia solves these cases by briefly closing his eyes while he thinks deeply, then asking a single question which directly leads to him finding the solution.",
"title": "Formula"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The second mystery often begins in the Brown garage on Rover Avenue, where Encyclopedia has set up his own detective agency to help neighborhood children solve cases for \"25 cents per day, plus expenses - No case too small.\" This second case usually involves the town bully and mischief maker Bugs Meany, leader of a gang who call themselves the Tigers, who, after being foiled, will attempt revenge in the third mystery.",
"title": "Formula"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the third mystery, the plot involves Encyclopedia's partner, close friend, and bodyguard, Sally Kimball, the one person under 14 years of age to physically stand up to Bugs. She is the only reason neither Bugs nor any of his Tigers ever try to physically attack Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia tends to dislike anyone whom Sally has a crush on, possibly indicating that he has a crush on her. Also intelligent, Sally once attempted—in the first book of the series—to prove herself smarter than Encyclopedia by stumping him with a mystery of her own creation. Ironically, the contest was held at the Tigers' clubhouse, with Bugs and the others cheering him on. However, she was beaten in the contest (although Encyclopedia admitted that she almost tricked him), after which she became his friend. In subsequent storylines Bugs or his gang usually set up some sort of trap to get Encyclopedia or Sally in trouble. However, as in the previous story, they make a key mistake which Encyclopedia exposes.",
"title": "Formula"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Later cases may find Encyclopedia assisting his father at a crime scene (rarely more serious than larceny, and Encyclopedia is always discreet when helping his father) or interacting with people around town, often exposing scams. One such example is a high school dropout and would-be con artist named Wilford Wiggins who spends time trying to dream up schemes to fleece kids out of their money. Like Bugs, his schemes have an inconsistency which Encyclopedia exposes.",
"title": "Formula"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In some cases it is Sally and not Encyclopedia who figures it out because, as she tells Encyclopedia, \"You are a boy.\" In other words, she notices things that only a girl would find inconsistent. Sally further displays her intelligence in the various mysteries in that she often can deduce who committed the crime, or whether a certain person is lying, but she simply cannot always prove it.",
"title": "Formula"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The Encyclopedia Brown books have experienced some enduring popularity.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In 1976, the Mystery Writers of America honored Sobol and his Encyclopedia Brown series with a special Edgar Award.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Educators have used Encyclopedia Brown in classrooms to instruct students in skills such as writing reports. In 1986, the Society for Visual Education, Inc. published a filmstrip series, produced and written by Lynne V. Gibbs, with accompanying audio cassette tapes and workbooks for elementary and middle schools' use. The following four Encyclopedia Brown stories were utilized: The Case of the Missing Statue, The Case of the Happy Nephew, The Case of the Kidnapped Pigs, and The Case of the Marble Shooter. According to WorldCat's library catalog listing, \"As super-sleuth Encyclopedia Brown solves four mysteries, he shows students how he fills out his reports, including selecting a topic, gathering information, taking notes, making an outline, and revising and editing.\"",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "From December 3, 1978, to September 20, 1980, Encyclopedia Brown was a daily and Sunday comic strip syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. The artwork was done by Frank Bolle, and Donald J. Sobol was credited as the writer. When the strips were collected into books in the mid-1980s, the strip was credited to Elliot Caplin, based on Sobol's characters. The strips adapted Sobol stories, both ones that had originally been Encyclopedia Brown tales and ones that had been part of Sobol's syndicated Two-Minute Mysteries features.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A live action television series adaptation, also called Encyclopedia Brown, ran on HBO starting in 1989. Scott Bremner played the title role, with Laura Bridge playing Sally. The series ran for eight episodes. It was produced by Howard David Deutsch and directed by Savage Steve Holland. Parts of the series were filmed in Provo, Utah.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The series began with an hour-long special, \"The Case of the Missing Time Capsule\", and subsequent six episodes were 30 minutes long.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Many of these episodes were later released on VHS.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In June 2013, Warner Bros. optioned the Encyclopedia Brown books into a feature film. Matt Johnson was in talks to write the movie. Roy Lee and Howard David Deutsch (producer of the 1989 Encyclopedia Brown TV series) and Jonathan Zakin were announced as producing.",
"title": "Adaptations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Encyclopedia Brown books, in order of publication (parentheses indicate numbers on original release cover art):",
"title": "Books"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "From January 15 to June 30, 1989, a special Solve-It-Yourself Mystery Sweepstakes was held in conjunction with the Encyclopedia Brown books and Bantam Books. In the back of specially marked copies of Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt, Sobol presented an unsolved mystery for the contestant to solve and submit an answer for a chance to win a prize. The mystery for the contest was called \"The Case of the Missing Birthday Gift\", wherein Encyclopedia had to solve the case of a stolen bicycle that was given as a birthday gift to Willie Grant on his tenth birthday. The Tigers make an appearance as the suspects in the case; Bugs Meany, Jack Beck, and Rocky Graham all show up at the Tigers' clubhouse.",
"title": "Solve-It-Yourself Mystery Sweepstakes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Contestants were allowed to enter as many times as they wished, provided they used a separate envelope for each entry. The sweepstakes was only available to USA and Canada residents. No purchase was necessary, as one could either use the official form in the back of specially marked copies of Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt or send in a 3\" by 5\" index card with the solution and the contestant's contact information.",
"title": "Solve-It-Yourself Mystery Sweepstakes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The satirical newspaper The Onion ran an article in 2003 titled \"Idaville Detective 'Encyclopedia' Brown Found Dead In Library Dumpster\", which stated that Encyclopedia Brown, now a middle-aged police detective, had been murdered. The article parodied the books' tendency to have crimes solved through knowledge of trivia, and ended with Bugs Meany, who was now police commissioner, stating that he had an alibi for the murder in that \"I was at the North Pole watching the penguins.\" (Penguins reside almost exclusively south of the Equator, and so there are none in the northern polar regions.)",
"title": "Parodies and tributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal: Last of the Innocent graphic novel features a reference to Encyclopedia Brown, with a grown-up analogue of Encyclopedia featured in the comic, as confirmed by Ed Brubaker himself.",
"title": "Parodies and tributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The comic strip FoxTrot ran a 2000 storyline where Jason and Marcus try their hand at being private investigators, out to solve a theft perpetrated on their girlfriends. One agency name they tried was \"Encyclopedias Brown And White\" (because Marcus is African-American and Jason is Caucasian), which became the title of FoxTrot's next book of comics.",
"title": "Parodies and tributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The protagonist of the 2020 film The Kid Detective is a former child prodigy detective, now an unsuccessful adult, living in a small town.",
"title": "Parodies and tributes"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In The Simpsons episode \"500 Keys\", the grave of Encyclopedia Brown is shown briefly next to those of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, to which Lisa comments \"Jeez, they're dropping like flies\".",
"title": "Parodies and tributes"
}
]
| Encyclopedia Brown is a series of books featuring the adventures of boy detective Leroy Brown, nicknamed "Encyclopedia" for his intelligence and range of knowledge. The series of 29 children's novels was written by Donald J. Sobol, with the first book published in 1963 and the last published posthumously in 2012. In addition to the main books, the Encyclopedia Brown series has spawned a comic strip, a TV series, and compilation books of puzzles and games. Sobol's first Encyclopedia Brown book was written in two weeks; subsequent books took about six months to write. Its main publisher was Bantam Skylark. | 2001-11-29T01:08:05Z | 2023-12-18T02:07:21Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Brown |
10,158 | Empire | An empire is a political unit made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, different populations have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor or empress; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or are ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians (the Central African Empire, and some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples).
There have been "ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign" empires. An important distinction has been between land empires made up solely of contiguous territories, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Russian Empire; and those created by sea-power, which include territories that are remote from the 'home' country of the empire, such as the Median Empire (Iran) and British Empire. Aside from the more formal usage, the word empire can also refer colloquially to a large-scale business enterprise (e.g. a transnational corporation), a political organization controlled by a single individual (a political boss), or a group (political bosses). The concept of empire is associated with other such concepts as imperialism, colonialism, and globalization, with imperialism referring to the creation and maintenance of unequal relationships between nations and not necessarily the policy of a state headed by an emperor or empress. Empire is often used as a term to describe displeasure to overpowering situations.
An empire is an aggregate of many separate states or territories under a supreme ruler or oligarchy. This is in contrast to a federation, which is an extensive state voluntarily composed of autonomous states and peoples. An empire is a large polity which rules over territories outside of its original borders.
Definitions of what physically and politically constitutes an empire vary. It might be a state affecting imperial policies or a particular political structure. Empires are typically formed from diverse ethnic, national, cultural, and religious components. 'Empire' and 'colonialism' are used to refer to relationships between a powerful state or society versus a less powerful one; Michael W. Doyle has defined empire as "effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society".
Tom Nairn and Paul James define empires as polities that "extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces to extract or accrue value". Rein Taagepera has defined an empire as "any relatively large sovereign political entity whose components are not sovereign".
The terrestrial empire's maritime analogue is the thalassocracy, an empire composed of islands and coasts which are accessible to its terrestrial homeland, such as the Athenian-dominated Delian League.
Furthermore, empires can expand by both land and sea. Stephen Howe notes that empires by land can be characterized by expansion over terrain, "extending directly outwards from the original frontier" while an empire by sea can be characterized by colonial expansion and empire building "by an increasingly powerful navy".
However, sometimes an empire is only a semantic construction, such as when a ruler assumes the title of "emperor". That polity over which the ruler reigns logically becomes an "empire", despite having no additional territory or hegemony. Examples of this form of empire are the Central African Empire, Mexican Empire, or the Korean Empire proclaimed in 1897 when Korea, far from gaining new territory, was on the verge of being annexed by the Empire of Japan, one of the last to use the name officially. Among the last states in the 20th century known as empires in this sense were the Central African Empire, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Manchukuo, Russia, Germany, and Korea.
Scholars distinguish empires from nation-states. In an empire, there is a hierarchy whereby one group of people (usually, the metropole) has command over other groups of people, and there is a hierarchy of rights and prestige for different groups of people. Josep Colomer distinguished between empires and nation-states in the following way:
Empires originated as different types of states, although they commonly began as powerful monarchies. Ideas about empires have changed over time, ranging from public approval to universal distaste. Empires are built out of separate units with some kind of diversity – ethnic, national, cultural, religious – and imply at least some inequality between the rulers and the ruled. Without this inequality, the system would be seen as a commonwealth. Throughout history, the major powers of the world constantly seek to conquer other parts of the world. Imperialism is the idea of a major power controlling another nation or land with the intentions to use the native people and resources to help the mother country in any way possible. Many empires were the result of military conquest, incorporating the vanquished states into a political union, but imperial hegemony can be established in other ways. The Athenian Empire, the Roman Empire, and the British Empire developed at least in part under elective auspices. The Empire of Brazil declared itself an empire after separating from the Portuguese Empire in 1822. France has twice transitioned from being called the French Republic to being called the French Empire while it retained an overseas empire.
Europeans began applying the designation of "empire" to non-European monarchies, such as the Qing Empire and the Mughal Empire, as well as the Maratha Empire, eventually leading to the looser denotations applicable to any political structure meeting the criteria of "imperium". Some monarchies styled themselves as having greater size, scope, and power than the territorial, politico-military, and economic facts support. As a consequence, some monarchs assumed the title of "emperor" (or its corresponding translation, tsar, empereur, kaiser, shah etc.) and renamed their states as "The Empire of ...". Empires were seen as an expanding power, administration, ideas and beliefs followed by cultural habits from place to place. Some empires tended to impose their culture on the subject states to strengthen the imperial structure; others opted for multicultural and cosmopolitan policies. Cultures generated by empires could have notable effects that outlasted the empire itself. Most histories of empires have been hostile, especially if the authors were promoting nationalism. Stephen Howe, although himself hostile, listed positive qualities: the guaranteed stability, security, and legal order for their subjects. They tried to minimize ethnic and religious antagonism inside the empire. The aristocracies that ruled them were often more cosmopolitan and broad-minded than their nationalistic successors.
There are two main ways to establish and maintain an imperial political structure: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force or (ii) as a coercive, hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power. The former method provides greater tribute and direct political control, yet limits further expansion because it absorbs military forces to fixed garrisons. The latter method provides less tribute and indirect control, but avails military forces for further expansion. Territorial empires (e.g. the Macedonian Empire and Byzantine Empire) tend to be contiguous areas. The term, on occasion, has been applied to maritime republics or thalassocracies (e.g. the Athenian and British empires) with looser structures and more scattered territories, often consisting of many islands and other forms of possessions which required the creation and maintenance of a powerful navy. Empires such as the Holy Roman Empire also came together by electing the emperor with votes from member realms through the Imperial election.
Stephen Howe writes that with the exception of the Roman, Chinese and "perhaps ancient Egyptian states", early empires seldom survived the death of their founder and were usually limited in scope to conquest and collection of tribute, having little impact on the everyday lives of their subjects.
With the exception of Rome, the periods of dissolution following imperial falls were equally short. Successor states seldom outlived their founders and disappeared in the next and often larger empire. Some empires, like the Neo-Babylonian, Median and Lydian were outright conquered by a larger empire. The historical pattern was not a simple rise-and-fall cycle; rather it was rise, fall, and greater rise, or as Raoul Naroll put it, "expanding pulsation."
Empires were limited in scope to conquest, as Howe observed, but conquest is a considerable scope. Many fought to the death to avoid it or to be liberated from it. Imperial conquests and attempts of conquest significantly contributed to the list of wars by death toll. The imperial impact on subjects can be regarded as "little," but only on those subjects who survived the imperial conquest and rule. We cannot ask the inhabitants of Carthage and Masada, for example, whether empire had little impact on their lives, we seldom hear the voices of subject peoples because history is mostly written by winners. But one rich primary source of the subject population is the Hebrew Prophetic books. The hatred towards the ruling empires expressed in this source makes impression of an impact more serious than estimated by Howe. A classical writer and adherent of empire, Orosius explicitly preferred to avoid the views of subject populations. And another classical Roman patriot, Lucan confessed that "words cannot express how bitterly we are hated" by subject peoples.
The earliest known empire appeared in southern Egypt sometime around 3200 BC. Southern Egypt was divided by three kingdoms each centered on a powerful city. Hierapolis conquered the other two cities over two centuries, and later grew into the country of Egypt. The Akkadian Empire, established by Sargon of Akkad (24th century BC), was an early all-Mesopotamian empire which spread into Anatolia, the Levant and Ancient Iran. This imperial achievement was repeated by Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria and Hammurabi of Babylon in the 19th and 18th centuries BC. In the 15th century BC, the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, ruled by Thutmose III, was ancient Africa's major force upon incorporating Nubia and the ancient city-states of the Levant.
c. 1500 BC in China rose the Shang Empire which was succeeded by the Zhou Empire c. 1100 BC. Both equalled or surpassed in territory their contemporary Near Eastern empires such as the Middle Assyrian Empire, Hittite Empire, Egyptian Empire and those of the Mitanni and Elamites. The Zhou Empire dissolved in 770 BC into feudal multi-state system which lasted for five and a half centuries until the universal conquest of Qin in 221 BC. The first empire comparable to Rome in organization was the Neo-Assyrian Empire (916–612 BC). The Median Empire was the first empire within the territory of Persia. By the 6th century BC, after having allied with the Babylonians, Scythians and Cimmerians to defeat the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Medes were able to establish their own empire, which was the largest of its day and lasted for about sixty years.
The Axial Age (mid-First Millennium BC) witnessed unprecedented imperial expansion in the Indo-Mediterranean region and China. The successful and extensive Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), also known as the first Persian Empire, covered Mesopotamia, Egypt, parts of Greece, Thrace, the Middle East, much of Central Asia, and North-Western India. It is considered the first great empire in history or the first "world empire". It was overthrown and replaced by the short-lived empire of Alexander the Great. His Empire was succeeded by three Empires ruled by the Diadochi—the Seleucid, Ptolemaic, and Macedonian, which, despite being independent, are called the "Hellenistic Empire" by virtue of their similarities in culture and administration.
Meanwhile, in the western Mediterranean the Empires of Carthage and Rome began their rise. Having decisively defeated Carthage in 202 BC, Rome defeated Macedonia in 200 BC and the Seleucids in 190–189 BC to establish an all-Mediterranean Empire. The Seleucid Empire broke apart and its former eastern part was absorbed by the Parthian Empire. In 30 BC Rome annexed Ptolemaic Egypt.
In India during the Axial Age appeared the Maurya Empire—a geographically extensive and powerful empire, ruled by the Mauryan dynasty from 321 to 185 BC. The empire was founded in 322 BC by Chandragupta Maurya through the help of Chanakya, who rapidly expanded his power westward across central and western India, taking advantage of the disruptions of local powers following the withdrawal by Alexander the Great. By 320 BC, the Maurya Empire had fully occupied northwestern India as well as defeating and conquering the satraps left by Alexander. Under Emperor Ashoka the Great, the Maurya Empire became the first Indian empire to conquer the whole Indian Peninsula — an achievement repeated only twice, by the Gupta and Mughal Empires. In the reign of Ashoka Buddhism spread to become the dominant religion in many parts of the ancient India.
In 221 BC, China became an empire when the State of Qin ended the chaotic Warring States period through its conquest of the other six states and proclaimed the Qin Empire (221–207 BC). The Qin Empire is known for the construction of the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army, as well as the standardization of currency, weights, measures and writing system. It laid the foundation for China's first golden age, the Han Empire (202 BC–AD 9, AD 25–220). The Han Empire expanded into Central Asia and established trade through the Silk Road. Confucianism was, for the first time, adopted as an official state ideology. During the reign of the Emperor Wu of Han, the Xiongnu were pacified. By this time, only four empires stretched between the Pacific and the Atlantic: the Han Empire of China, the Kushan Empire, the Parthian Empire of Persia, and the Roman Empire. The collapse of the Han Empire in AD 220 saw China fragmented into the Three Kingdoms, only to be unified once again by the Jin Empire (AD 266–420). The relative weakness of the Jin Empire plunged China into political disunity that would last from AD 304 to AD 589 when the Sui Empire (AD 581–618) reunited China.
The Romans were the first people to invent and embody the concept of empire in their two mandates: to wage war and to make and execute laws. They were the most extensive Western empire until the early modern period, and left a lasting impact on European society. Many languages, cultural values, religious institutions, political divisions, urban centers, and legal systems can trace their origins to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire governed and rested on exploitative actions. They took slaves and money from the peripheries to support the imperial center. However, the absolute reliance on conquered peoples to carry out the empire's fortune, sustain wealth, and fight wars would ultimately lead to the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Romans were strong believers in what they called their "civilizing mission". This term was legitimized and justified by writers like Cicero who wrote that only under Roman rule could the world flourish and prosper. This ideology, that was envisioned to bring a new world order, was eventually spread across the Mediterranean world and beyond. People started to build houses like Romans, eat the same food, wear the same clothes and engage in the same games. Even rights of citizenship and authority to rule were granted to people not born within Roman territory.
The Latin word imperium, referring to a magistrate's power to command, gradually assumed the meaning "The territory in which a magistrate can effectively enforce his commands", while the term "imperator" was originally an honorific meaning "commander". The title was given to generals who were victorious in battle. Thus, an "empire" may include regions that are not legally within the territory of a state, but are under either direct or indirect control of that state, such as a colony, client state, or protectorate. Although historians use the terms "Republican Period" and "Imperial Period" to identify the periods of Roman history before and after absolute power was assumed by Augustus, the Romans themselves continued to refer to their government as a republic, and during the Republican Period, the territories controlled by the republic were referred to as "Imperium Romanum". The emperor's actual legal power derived from holding the office of "consul", but he was traditionally honored with the titles of imperator (commander) and princeps (first man or, chief). Later, these terms came to have legal significance in their own right; an army calling their general "imperator" was a direct challenge to the authority of the current emperor.
The legal systems of France and its former colonies are strongly influenced by Roman law. Similarly, the United States was founded on a model inspired by the Roman Republic, with upper and lower legislative assemblies, and executive power vested in a single individual, the president. The president, as "commander-in-chief" of the armed forces, reflects the ancient Roman titles imperator princeps. The Roman Catholic Church, founded in the early Imperial Period, spread across Europe, first by the activities of Christian evangelists, and later by official imperial promulgation.
In Western Asia, the term "Persian Empire" came to denote the Iranian imperial states established at different historical periods of pre–Islamic and post–Islamic Persia.
In East Asia, various Chinese empires dominated the political, economic and cultural landscapes during this era, the most powerful of which was probably the Tang Empire (618–690, 705–907). Other influential Chinese empires during the post-classical period include the Sui Empire (581–618), the Great Liao Empire, the Song Empire, the Western Xia Empire (1038–1227), the Great Jin Empire (1115–1234), the Western Liao Empire (1124–1218), the Great Yuan Empire (1271–1368), and the Great Ming Empire (1368–1644). During this period, Japan and Korea underwent voluntary Sinicization. The Sui, Tang and Song empires had the world's largest economy and were the most technologically advanced during their time; the Great Yuan Empire was the world's ninth largest empire by total land area; while the Great Ming Empire is famous for the seven maritime expeditions led by Zheng He.
The Ajuran Sultanate was a Somali empire in the medieval times that dominated the Indian Ocean trade. It was a Somali Muslim sultanate that ruled over large parts of the Horn of Africa in the Middle Ages. Through a strong centralized administration and an aggressive military stance towards invaders, the Ajuran Sultanate successfully resisted an Oromo invasion from the west and a Portuguese incursion from the east during the Gaal Madow and the Ajuran-Portuguese wars. Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re-established, and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished with ships sailing to and coming from many kingdoms and empires in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Middle East, North Africa and East Africa.
In the 7th century, Maritime Southeast Asia witnessed the rise of a Buddhist thallasocracy, the Srivijaya Empire, which thrived for 600 years and was succeeded by the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire that ruled from the 13th to 15th centuries. In the Southeast Asian mainland, the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire was centered in the city of Angkor and flourished from the 9th to 13th centuries. Following the demise of the Khmer Empire, the Siamese Empire flourished alongside the Burmese and Lan Chang Empires from the 13th through the 18th centuries.
In Southeastern and Eastern Europe, during 917, the Eastern Roman Empire, sometimes called the Byzantine Empire, was forced to recognize the Imperial title of Bulgarian ruler Simeon the Great, who were then called Tsar, the first ruler to hold that precise imperial title. The Bulgarian Empire, established in the region in 680-681, remained a major power in Southeast Europe until its fall in the late 14th century. Bulgaria gradually reached its cultural and territorial apogee in the 9th century and early 10th century under Prince Boris I and Simeon I, when its early Christianization in 864 allowed it to develop into the cultural and literary center of Slavic Europe, as well as one of the largest states in Europe, thus the period is considered the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture. Major events included the development of the Cyrillic script at the Preslav Literary School, declared official in 893, and the establishment of the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian.
At the time, in the Medieval West, the title "empire" had a specific technical meaning that was exclusively applied to states that considered themselves the heirs and successors of the Roman Empire. Among these were the "Byzantine Empire", which was the actual continuation of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire, the Carolingian Empire, the largely Germanic Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire. Yet, these states did not always fit the geographic, political, or military profiles of empires in the modern sense of the word. To legitimise their imperium, these states directly claimed the title of Empire from Rome. The sacrum Romanum imperium (Holy Roman Empire), which lasted from 800 to 1806, claimed to have exclusively comprehended Christian principalities, and was only nominally a discrete imperial state. The Holy Roman Empire was not always centrally-governed, as it had neither core nor peripheral territories, and was not governed by a central, politico-military elite. Hence, Voltaire's remark that the Holy Roman Empire "was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire" is accurate to the degree that it ignores German rule over Italian, French, Provençal, Polish, Flemish, Dutch, and Bohemian populations, and the efforts of the ninth-century Holy Roman Emperors (i.e., the Ottonians) to establish central control. Voltaire's "nor an empire" observation applies to its late period.
In 1204, after the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople, the crusaders established a Latin Empire (1204–1261) in that city, while the defeated Byzantine Empire's descendants established two smaller, short-lived empires in Asia Minor: the Empire of Nicaea (1204–1261) and the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461). Constantinople was retaken in 1261 by the Byzantine successor state centered in Nicaea, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire until 1453, by which time the Turkish-Muslim Ottoman Empire (ca. 1300–1918), had conquered most of the region. The Ottoman Empire was a successor of the Abbasid Empire and it was the most powerful empire to succeed the Abbasi empires at the time, as well as one of the most powerful empires in the world. They became the successors after the Abbasid Empire fell from the Mongols (Hülegü Khan). The Ottoman Empire centered on modern day Turkey, dominated the eastern Mediterranean, overthrew the Byzantine Empire to claim Constantinople and it would start battering at Austria and Malta, which were countries that were key to central and to south-west Europe respectively — mainly for their geographical location. The reason these occurrences of batterings were so important was because the Ottomans were Muslim, and the rest of Europe was Christian, so there was a sense of religious fighting going on. This was not just a rivalry of East and West but a rivalry between Christians and Muslims. Both the Christians and Muslims had alliances with other countries, and they had problems in them as well. The flows of trade and of cultural influences across the supposed great divide never ceased, so the countries never stopped bartering with each other. These epochal clashes between civilizations profoundly shaped many people's thinking back then, and continues to do so in the present day. Modern hatred against Muslim communities in South-Eastern Europe, mainly in Bosnia and Kosovo, has often been articulated in terms of seeing them as unwelcome residues of this imperialism: in short, as Turks. Moreover, Eastern Orthodox imperialism was not re-established until the coronation of Ivan the Terrible as Emperor of Russia in 1547. Likewise, with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), the Austrian Empire (1804–1867) emerged reconstituted as the Empire of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), having "inherited" the imperium of Central and Western Europe from the losers of said wars.
In the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire to be the largest contiguous empire in the world. However, within two generations, the empire was separated into four discrete khanates under Genghis Khan's grandsons. One of them, Kublai Khan, conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty with the imperial capital at Beijing. One family ruled the whole Eurasian land mass from the Pacific to the Adriatic and Baltic Seas. The emergence of the Pax Mongolica had significantly eased trade and commerce across Asia. The Safavid Empire of Iran was also founded.
The Islamic gunpowder empires started to develop from the 15th century. In the Indian subcontinent, the Delhi Sultanate conquered most of the Indian peninsula and spread Islam across it. It later disintegrated with the establishment of the Bengal, Gujarat, and Bahmani Sultanate. In the 15th century, the Mughal Empire was founded by Timur and Genghis Khan's direct descendant Babur. His successors such Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan extended the empire. In the 17th century, Aurangzeb expanded the Mughal Empire, controlling most of the South Asia through Sharia, which became the world's largest economy and leading manufacturing power with a nominal GDP that valued a quarter of world GDP, superior than the combination of Europe's GDP. It has been estimated that the Mughal emperors controlled an unprecedented one-fourth of the world's entire economy and was home to one-fourth of the world's population at the time. After the death of Aurangzeb, which marks the end of the medieval India and the beginning of European invasion in India, the empire was weakened by Nader Shah's invasion.
The Mysore Empire was soon established by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, who allied with Napoleon Bonaparte. Other independent empires were also established, such as those ruled by the Nawabs of Bengal and Nizam of Hyderabad.
In the pre-Columbian Americas, two Empires were prominent—the Azteca in Mesoamerica and Inca in Peru. Both existed for several generations before the arrival of the Europeans. Inca had gradually conquered the whole of the settled Andean world as far south as today Santiago in Chile.
In Oceania, the Tonga Empire was a lonely empire that existed from the Late Middle Ages to the Modern period.
In the 15th century, Castile (Spain) landing in the so-called "New World" (first, the Americas, and later Australia), along with Portuguese travels around the Cape of Good Hope and along the coast of Africa bordering the southeast Indian Ocean, proved ripe opportunities for the continent's Renaissance-era monarchies to establish colonial empires like those of the ancient Romans and Greeks. In the Old World, colonial imperialism was attempted and established on the Canary Islands and Ireland. These conquered lands and people became de jure subordinates of the empire, rather than de facto imperial territories and subjects. Such subjugation often elicited "client-state" resentment that the empire unwisely ignored, leading to the collapse of the European colonial imperial system in the late 19th through the mid-20th century. Portuguese discovery of Newfoundland in the New World gave way to many expeditions led by England (later Britain), Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. In the 18th century, the Spanish Empire was at its height because of the great mass of goods taken from conquered territory in the Americas (nowadays Mexico, parts of the United States, the Caribbean, most of Central America, and South America) and the Philippines.
The British established their first empire (1583–1783) in North America by colonising lands that made up British America, including parts of Canada, the Caribbean and the Thirteen Colonies. In 1776, the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies declared itself independent from the British Empire, thus beginning the American Revolution. Britain turned towards Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa, with subsequent exploration and conquests leading to the rise of the Second British Empire (1783–1815), which was followed by the Industrial Revolution and Britain's Imperial Century (1815–1914). It became the largest empire in world history, encompassing one quarter of the world's land area and one fifth of its population. The impacts of this period are still prominent in the current age "including widespread use of the English language, belief in Protestant religion, economic globalization, modern precepts of law and order, and representative democracy."
The Great Qing Empire of China (1636–1912) was the fifth largest empire in world history by total land area, and laid the foundation for the modern territorial claims of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. Apart from having direct control over much of East Asia, the empire also exerted domination over other states through the Chinese tributary system. The multiethnic and multicultural nature of the Great Qing Empire was crucial to the subsequent birth of the nationalistic concept of zhonghua minzu. The empire reached its peak during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, after which the empire entered a period of prolonged decline, culminating in its collapse as a result of the Xinhai Revolution.
The Ashanti Empire (or Confederacy), also Asanteman (1701–1896), was a West African state of the Ashanti, the Akan people of the Ashanti Region, Akanland in modern-day Ghana. The Ashanti (or Asante) were a powerful, militaristic and highly disciplined people in West Africa. Their military power, which came from effective strategy and an early adoption of European firearms, created an empire that stretched from central Akanland (in modern-day Ghana) to present day Benin and Ivory Coast, bordered by the Dagomba kingdom to the north and Dahomey to the east. Due to the empire's military prowess, sophisticated hierarchy, social stratification and culture, the Ashanti empire had one of the largest historiographies of any indigenous Sub-Saharan African political entity.
The Sikh Empire (1799–1846) was established in the Punjab region of India. The empire collapsed when its founder, Ranjit Singh, died and its army fell to the British. During the same period, the Maratha Empire (also known as the Maratha Confederacy) was a Hindu state located in present-day India. It existed from 1674 to 1818, and at its peak, the empire's territories covered much of Southern Asia. The empire was founded and consolidated by Shivaji. After the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, it expanded greatly under the rule of the Peshwas. In 1761, the Maratha army lost the Third Battle of Panipat, which halted the expansion of the empire. Later, the empire was divided into a confederacy of states which, in 1818, were lost to the British during the Anglo-Maratha wars.
France was a dominant empire possessing many colonies in various locations around the world. During Louis XIV's long reign, from 1643 to 1715, France was the leading European power as Europe's most populous, richest and powerful country. The Empire of the French (1804–1814), also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire, but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire, was also the dominant power of much of continental Europe and, it ruled over 90 million people and was the sole power in Europe if not the world as Britain was the only main rival during the early 19th Century. From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10,000,000 km2 (3,900,000 sq mi), the second largest empire in the world at the time behind only the Spanish Empire. It had many possesstions around the world, mainly in the Americas, Asia and Africa. At its peak in 1750, French India had an area of 1.5 million km2 and a totaled population of 100 million people and was the most populous colony under French rule. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire extended over 13,500,000 km (5,200,000 sq mi) of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s with a totaled population of 150 million people. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 13,500,000 km (5,200,000 sq mi) at the time, which is 10.0% of the Earth's total land area. The total area of the French colonial empire, with the first (mainly in the Americas and Asia) and second (mainly in Africa and Asia), the French colonial empires combined, reached 24,000,000 km2 (9,300,000 sq mi), the second largest in the world (the first being the British Empire).
The Empire of Brazil (1822–1889) was the only South American modern monarchy, established by the heir of the Portuguese Empire as an independent nation eventually became an emerging international power. The new country was huge but sparsely populated and ethnically diverse. In 1889 the monarchy was overthrown in a sudden coup d'état led by a clique of military leaders whose goal was the formation of a republic.
The German Empire (1871–1918), another "heir to the Holy Roman Empire", arose in 1871.
The fall of the western half of the Roman Empire is seen as one of the most pivotal points in all of human history. This event traditionally marks the transition from classical civilization to the birth of Europe. The Roman Empire started to decline at the end of the reign of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius in 161–180 A.D. There is still a debate over the cause of the fall of one of the largest empires in history. Piganiol argues that the Roman Empire under its authority can be described as "a period of terror", holding its imperial system accountable for its failure. Another theory blames the rise of Christianity as the cause, arguing that the spread of certain Christian ideals caused internal weakness of the military and state. In the book The Fall of the Roman Empire, by Peter Heather, he contends that there are many factors, including issues of money and manpower, which produce military limitations and culminate in the Roman army's inability to effectively repel invading barbarians at the frontier. The Western Roman economy was already stretched to its limit in the 4th and 5th Centuries C.E. due to continual conflict and loss of territory which, in turn, generated loss of revenue from the tax base. There was also the looming presence of the Persians which, at any time, took a large percentage of the fighting force's attention. At the same time the Huns, a nomadic warrior people from the steppes of Asia, are also putting extreme pressure on the German tribes outside of the Roman frontier, which gave the German tribes no other choice, geographically, but to move into Roman territory. At this point, without increased funding, the Roman army could no longer effectively defend its borders against major waves of Germanic tribes. This inability is illustrated by the crushing defeat at Adrianople in 378 C.E. and, later, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 C.E.
In time, an empire may change from one political entity to another. For example, the Holy Roman Empire, a German re-constitution of the Roman Empire, metamorphosed into various political structures (i.e., federalism), and eventually, under Habsburg rule, re-constituted itself in 1804 as the Austrian Empire, an empire of much different politics and scope, which in turn became the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. The Roman Empire, perennially reborn, also lived on as the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) – temporarily splitting into the Latin Empire, the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond before its remaining territory and centre became part of the Ottoman Empire. A similarly persistent concept of empire saw the Mongol Empire become the Khanate of the Golden Horde, the Yuan Empire of China, and the Ilkhanate before resurrection as the Timurid Empire and as the Mughal Empire. After 1945 the Empire of Japan retained its Emperor but lost its colonial possessions and became the State of Japan. Despite the semantic reference to imperial power, Japan is a de jure constitutional monarchy, with a homogeneous population of 127 million people that is 98.5 percent ethnic Japanese, making it one of the largest nation-states.
An autocratic empire can become a republic (e.g., the Central African Empire in 1979), or it can become a republic with its imperial dominions reduced to a core territory (e.g., Weimar Germany shorn of the German colonial empire (1918–1919), or the Ottoman Empire (1918–1923)). The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after 1918 provides an example of a multi-ethnic superstate broken into constituent nation-oriented states: the republics, kingdoms, and provinces of Austria, Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechoslovakia, Ruthenia, Galicia, et al. In the aftermath of World War I the Russian Empire also broke up and became reduced to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) before re-forming as the USSR (1922–1991) – sometimes seen as the core of a Soviet Empire. The latter also disintegrated in 1989-91.
After the Second World War (1939–1945), the deconstruction of colonial empires quickened and became commonly known as decolonisation. The British Empire evolved into a loose, multinational Commonwealth of Nations, while the French colonial empire metamorphosed to a Francophone commonwealth. The same process happened to the Portuguese Empire, which evolved into a Lusophone commonwealth, and to the former territories of the extinct Spanish Empire, which alongside the Lusophone countries of Portugal and Brazil, created an Ibero-American commowealth. France returned the French territory of Kwang-Chou-Wan to China in 1946. The British gave Hong Kong back to China in 1997 after 150 years of rule. The Portuguese territory of Macau reverted to China in 1999. Macau and Hong Kong did not become part of the provincial structure of China; they have autonomous systems of government as Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China.
France still governs overseas territories (French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Guadeloupe, French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF), Wallis and Futuna, Saint Barthélemy, and Mayotte), and exerts hegemony in Francafrique ("French Africa"; 29 francophone countries such as Chad, Rwanda, etc.). Fourteen British Overseas Territories remain under British sovereignty. Fifteen countries of the Commonwealth of Nations share their head of state, King Charles III, as Commonwealth realms.
Contemporaneously, the concept of empire is politically valid, yet is not always used in the traditional sense. One of widely discussed cases is the United States. Characterizing aspects of the US in regards to its territorial expansion, foreign policy, and its international behavior as "American Empire" is common. The term "American Empire" refers to the United States' cultural ideologies and foreign policy strategies. The term is most commonly used to describe the U.S.'s status since the 20th century, but it can also be applied to the United States' world standing before the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. The US itself was at one point a colony in the British Empire. However, founding fathers such as George Washington noted after the Revolution that the US was an empire in its infancy, and others like Thomas Jefferson agreed, describing the constitution as the perfect foundation for an "extensive Empire". Jefferson in the 1780s while awaiting the fall of the Spanish empire, said: "till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece".
Even so, the ideology that the US was founded on anti-imperialist principles has prevented many from acknowledging America's status as an empire. This active rejection of imperialist status is not limited to high-ranking government officials, as it has been ingrained in American society throughout its entire history. As David Ludden explains, "journalists, scholars, teachers, students, analysts, and politicians prefer to depict the U.S. as a nation pursuing its own interests and ideals". This often results in imperialist endeavors being presented as measures taken to enhance state security. Ludden explains this phenomenon with the concept of "ideological blinders", which he says prevent American citizens from realizing the true nature of America's current systems and strategies. These "ideological blinders" that people wear have resulted in an "invisible" American empire of which most American citizens are unaware. Besides its anti-imperialist principles, the United States is not traditionally recognized as an empire, because the U.S. adopted a different political system from those that previous empires had used.
Despite the anti-imperial ideology and systematic differences, the political objectives and strategies of the United States government have been quite similar to those of previous empires. Throughout the 19th century, the United States government attempted to expand its territory by any means necessary. Regardless of the supposed motivation for this constant expansion, all of these land acquisitions were carried out by imperialistic means. This was done by financial means in some cases, and by military force in others. Most notably, the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Texas Annexation (1845), and the Mexican Cession (1848) highlight the imperialistic goals of the United States during this "modern period" of imperialism. The U.S. government has stopped adding additional territories, where they permanently and politically take over since the early 20th century, and instead have established 800 military bases as their outposts. With this overt but subtile military control of other countries, scholars consider U.S. foreign policy strategies to be imperialistic. Academic Krishna Kumar argues that the distinct principles of nationalism and imperialism may result in common practice; that is, the pursuit of nationalism can often coincide with the pursuit of imperialism in terms of strategy and decision making. Stuart Creighton Miller posits that the public's sense of innocence about Realpolitik (politics based on practical considerations, rather than ideals) impacts popular recognition of US imperial conduct since it governed other countries via surrogates. These surrogates were domestically-weak, right-wing governments that would collapse without US support.
Former President G. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said: "We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic; we never have been." This was said in the context of the international opposition to the Iraq War led by the United States in manner widely regarded as imperial. In his book review of Empire (2000) by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Mehmet Akif Okur posits that since the September 11 attacks in the United States, the international relations determining the world's balance of power (political, economic, military) have been altered. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq underway, historian Sidney Lens argued that from its inception, the US has used every means available to dominate foreign peoples and states. The same time, Eliot A. Cohen suggested: "The Age of Empire may indeed have ended, but then an age of American hegemony has begun, regardless of what one calls it." Some scholars did not bother how to call it: "When it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck."
Mehmet Akif Okur finds trends in political science that perceive the contemporary world's order via the re-territorialization of political space, the re-emergence of classical imperialist practices (such as the duality between those who are "inside" and those who are "outside"), the deliberate weakening of international organizations, the restructured international economy, economic nationalism, the expanded arming of most countries, the proliferation of nuclear weapon capabilities and the politics of identity emphasizing a state's subjective perception of its place in the world, as a nation and as a civilization. These changes constitute the "Age of Nation Empires". Nation-empire regionalism claims sovereignty over their respective (regional) political (social, economic, ideologic), cultural, and military spheres and denotes the return of geopolitical power from global power blocs to regional power blocs. The European Union is one such power bloc.
Since the European Union was formed as a polity in 1993, it has established its own currency, its own citizenship, established discrete military forces, and exercises its limited hegemony in the Mediterranean, eastern parts of Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The big size and high development index of the EU economy often has the ability to influence global trade regulations in its favor. The political scientist Jan Zielonka suggests that this behavior is imperial because it coerces its neighbouring countries into adopting its European economic, legal, and political structures. Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP of the United Kingdom, opposed the European integration policies of the European Union by saying, "I think they're (the European Union) building an empire there, they want us (the United Kingdom) to be a part of their empire and I don't want that."
In the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, political scientist Agnia Grigas argued that Moscow pursues the policy of "reimperialization." Two days after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Historian specializing on empires, Niall Ferguson, interpreted the policy of Putin as an attempt to bring back the tsarist Russian Empire. By this time, the "neo-imperialism," or "neo-imperial ambitions" of Russia became widely claimed. When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, says another historian of empires Timothy Snyder, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors saw themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision.
Vladimir Putin himself used to state: "For Russia to survive, it must remain an empire." In June 2022, on the 350 anniversary of the birth of the 18th-century Russian tsar Peter the Great, Putin has compared himself to him associating their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands. For critics this association implied that Putin's "complaints about historical injustice, eastward Nato expansion, and other grievances with the west were all a facade for a traditional war of conquest" and imperialism. "After months of denials that Russia is driven by imperial ambitions in Ukraine, Putin appeared to embrace that mission." On the same occasion, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian government, suggested Russia's "de-imperialization," instead of Russia's official war aim of "de-nazification" of Ukraine.
Later that year, Anne Applebaum approached the new Russian Empire as a fact and opined that this Empire must be defeated. Other pundits described the new Russian Empire as a failed attempt because Russia failed to annex the whole of Ukraine.
The chart below shows a timeline of polities that have been called empires. Dynastic changes are marked with a white line.
Empires have been the dominant international organization in world history:
The fact that tribes, peoples, and nations have made empires points to a fundamental political dynamic, one that helps explain why empires cannot be confined to a particular place or era but emerged and reemerged over thousands of years and on all continents.
Empires ... can be traced as far back as the recorded history goes; indeed, most history is the history of empires ... It is the nation-state—an essentially 19th-century ideal—that is the historical novelty and that may yet prove to be the more ephemeral entity.
Our field's fixation on the Westphalian state has tended to obscure the fact that the main actors in global politics, for most of time immemorial, have been empires rather than states ... In fact, it is a very distorted view of even the Westphalian era not to recognize that it was always at least as much about empires as it was states. Almost all of the emerging European states no sooner began to consolidate than they were off on campaigns of conquest and commerce to the farthest reaches of the globe... Ironically, it was the European empires that carried the idea of the sovereign territorial state to the rest of the world ...
Empire has been the historically predominant form of order in world politics. Looking at a time frame of several millennia, there was no global anarchic system until the European explorations and subsequent imperial and colonial ventures connected disparate regional systems, doing so approximately 500 years ago. Prior to this emergence of a global-scope system, the pattern of world politics was characterized by regional systems. These regional systems were initially anarchic and marked by high levels of military competition. But almost universally, they tended to consolidate into regional empires ... Thus it was empires—not anarchic state systems—that typically dominated the regional systems in all parts of the world ... Within this global pattern of regional empires, European political order was distinctly anomalous because it persisted so long as an anarchy.
Similarly, Anthony Pagden, Eliot A. Cohen, Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper estimate that "empires have always been more frequent, more extensive political and social forms than tribal territories or nations have ever been." Many empires endured for centuries, while the age of the ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Japanese Empires is counted in millennia. "Most people throughout history have lived under imperial rule."
Empires have played a long and critical part in human history ... [Despite] efforts in words and wars to put national unity at the center of political imagination, imperial politics, imperial practices, and imperial cultures have shaped the world we live in ... Rome was evoked as a model of splendor and order into the Twentieth century and beyond... By comparison, the nation-state appears as a blip on the historical horizon, a state form that emerged recently from under imperial skies and whose hold on the world's political imagination may well prove partial or transitory... The endurance of empire challenges the notion that the nation-state is natural, necessary, and inevitable ...
Political scientist Hedley Bull wrote that "in the broad sweep of human history ... the form of states system has been the exception rather than the rule". His colleague Robert Gilpin confirmed this conclusion for the pre-modern period:
The history of interstate relations was largely that of successive great empires. The pattern of international political change during the millennia of the pre-modern era has been described as an imperial cycle ... World politics was characterized by the rise and decline of powerful empires, each of which in turn unified and ordered its respective international system. The recurrent pattern in every civilization of which we have knowledge was for one state to unify the system under its imperial domination. The propensity toward universal empire was the principal feature of pre-modern politics.
Historian Michael Doyle who undertook an extensive research on empires extended the observation into the modern era:
Empires have been the key actors in world politics for millennia. They helped create the interdependent civilizations of all the continents ... Imperial control stretches through history, many say, to the present day. Empires are as old as history itself ... They have held the leading role ever since.
The author of The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background, Hans Kohn, acknowledged that it was the opposite idea—of imperialism—that was, perhaps, the most influential single idea for two millennia, the ordering of human society through unified dominion and common civilization.
Expert on warfare Quincy Wright generalized on what he called "universal empire"—empire unifying all the contemporary system:
Balance of power systems have in the past tended, through the process of conquest of lesser states by greater states, towards reduction in the number of states involved, and towards less frequent but more devastating wars, until eventually a universal empire has been established through the conquest by one of all those remaining.
German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck finds that the macro-historic process of imperial expansion gave rise to global history in which the formations of universal empires were most significant stages. A later group of political scientists, working on the phenomenon of the current unipolarity, in 2007 edited research on several pre-modern civilizations by experts in respective fields. The overall conclusion was that the balance of power was inherently unstable order and usually soon broke in favor of imperial order. Yet before the advent of the unipolarity, world historian Arnold Toynbee and political scientist Martin Wight had drawn the same conclusion with an unambiguous implication for the modern world:
When this [imperial] pattern of political history is found in the New World as well as in the Old World, it looks as if the pattern must be intrinsic to the political history of societies of the species we call civilizations, in whatever part of the world the specimens of this species occur. If this conclusion is warranted, it illuminates our understanding of civilization itself.
Most states systems have ended in universal empire, which has swallowed all the states of the system. The examples are so abundant that we must ask two questions: Is there any states system which has not led fairly directly to the establishment of a world empire? Does the evidence rather suggest that we should expect any states system to culminate in this way? ... It might be argued that every state system can only maintain its existence on the balance of power, that the latter is inherently unstable, and that sooner or later its tensions and conflicts will be resolved into a monopoly of power.
The earliest thinker to approach the phenomenon of universal empire from a theoretical point of view was Polybius (2:3):
In previous times events in the world occurred without impinging on one another ... [Then] history became a whole, as if a single body; events in Italy and Libya came to be enmeshed with those in Asia and Greece, and everything gets directed towards one single goal.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, having witnessed the battle at Jena in 1806 when Napoleon overwhelmed Prussia, described what he perceived as a deep historical trend:
There is necessary tendency in every cultivated State to extend itself generally ... Such is the case in Ancient History ... As the States become stronger in themselves and cast off that [Papal] foreign power, the tendency towards a Universal Monarchy over the whole Christian World necessarily comes to light ... This tendency ... has shown itself successively in several States which could make pretensions to such a dominion, and since the fall of the Papacy, it has become the sole animating principle of our History ... Whether clearly or not—it may be obscurely—yet has this tendency lain at the root of the undertakings of many States in Modern Times ... Although no individual Epoch may have contemplated this purpose, yet is this the spirit which runs through all these individual Epochs, and invisibly urges them onward.
Fichte's later compatriot, Geographer Alexander von Humboldt, in the mid-Nineteenth century observed a macro-historic trend of imperial growth in both Hemispheres: "Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under influence of one idea, the purity of which was utterly unknown to them." The imperial expansion filled the world c. 1900. Two famous contemporary observers—Frederick Turner and Halford Mackinder described the event and drew implications, the former predicting American overseas expansion and the latter stressing that the world empire is now in sight.
In 1870, Argentine diplomat, jurist and political theorist Juan Bautista Alberdi described imperial consolidation. As von Humboldt, he found this trend unplanned and irrational but evident beyond doubt in the "unwritten history of events." He linked this trend to the recent Evolution theory: Nations gravitate towards the formation of a single universal society. The laws that lead the nations in that direction are the same natural laws that has formed societies and are part of evolution. These evolutionary laws exist disregarding whether men recognize them.
Similarly, Friedrich Ratzel observed that the "drive toward the building of continually larger states continues throughout the entirety of history" and is active in the present. He drew "Seven Laws of Expansionism". His seventh law stated: "The general trend toward amalgamation transmits the tendency of territorial growth from state to state and increases the tendency in the process of transmission." He commented on this law to make its meaning clear: "There is on this small planet sufficient space for only one great state."
Two other contemporaries—Kang Youwei and George Vacher de Lapouge—stressed that imperial expansion cannot indefinitely proceed on the definite surface of the globe and therefore world empire is imminent. Kang Youwei in 1885 believed that the imperial trend will culminate in the contest between Washington and Berlin and Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 estimated that the final contest will be between Russia and America in which America is likely to triumph.
The above envisaged contests indeed took place, known to us as World War I and II. Writing during the Second, political scientists Derwent Whittlesey, Robert Strausz-Hupé and John H. Herz concluded: "Now that the earth is at last parceled out, consolidation has commenced." In "this world of fighting superstates there could be no end to war until one state had subjected all others, until world empire had been achieved by the strongest. This undoubtedly is the logical final stage in the geopolitical theory of evolution."
The world is no longer large enough to harbor several self-contained powers ... The trend toward world domination or hegemony of a single power is but the ultimate consummation of a power-system engrafted upon an otherwise integrated world.
Writing in the last year of the War, American Theologian Parley Paul Wormer, German Historian Ludwig Dehio,and Hungarian-born writer Emery Reves drew similar conclusions. Fluctuating but persistent movement occurred through the centuries toward ever greater unity. The forward movement toward ever larger unities continues and there is no reason to conclude that it has come to an end. More likely, the greatest convergence of all time is at hand. "Possibly this is the deeper meaning of the savage world conflicts" of the 20th century.
[T]he old European tendency toward division is now being thrust aside by the new global trend toward unification. And the onrush of this trend may not come to rest until it has asserted itself throughout our planet ... The global order still seems to be going through its birth pangs ... With the last tempest barely over, a new one is gathering.
The famous Anatomy of Peace by Reves, written and published in 1945, supposed that without the industrial power of the United States, Hitler already might have established world empire. Proposing world federalism, the book warned: Every dynamic force, every economic and technological reality, every "law of history" and logic "indicates that we are on the verge of a period of empire building," which is "the last phase of the struggle for the conquest of the world." As an elimination contest, one of the three remaining powers or a combination "will achieve by force that unified control made mandatory by the times we live in… Anyone of three, by defeating the other two, would conquer and rule the world." If we fail to institute a unified control over the world in democratic way, the "iron law of history" would compel us to wage wars until world empire is finally attained through conquest. Since the former way is improbable due human blindness, we should precipitate the unification by conquest as quickly as possible and start the restoration of human liberties within the world empire.
Reves added "Postscript" to the Anatomy, opening: "A few weeks after the publication of this book, the first atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima…" This new physical fact however has changed nothing in the political situation. The world empire remains inevitable and nothing else in the book would have been said differently had it been written after August 6, 1945. Not much chance we have to establish world government before the next horrible war between the two superpowers and whoever is victorious would establish the world empire. The book sold an exceptional 800,000 copies in thirty languages, was endorsed by Albert Einstein and numerous other prominent figures, and in 1950 Reves was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The year after the War and in the first year of the nuclear age, Einstein and British Philosopher Bertrand Russell, known as prominent pacifists, outlined for the near future a perspective of world empire (world government established by force). Einstein believed that, unless world government is established by agreement, an imperial world government would come by war or wars. Russell expected a third World War to result in a world government under the empire of the United States. Three years later, another prominent pacifist, Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, generalized on the ancient Empires of Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Greece to imply for the modern world: "The analogy in present global terms would be the final unification of the world through the preponderant power of either America or Russia, whichever proved herself victorious in the final struggle."
Russian colleague of Russell and Neighbour, Georgy Fedotov, wrote in 1945: All empires are but stages on the way to the sole Empire which must swallow all others. The only question is who will build it and on which foundations. Universal unity is the only alternative to annihilation. Unity by conference is utopian but unity by conquest by the strongest Power is not and probably the uncompleted in this War will be completed in the next. "Pax Atlantica" is the best of possible outcomes.
Originally drafted as a secret study for the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA) in 1944 and published as a book three years later, The Struggle for the World... by James Burnham concludes: If either of the two Superpowers wins, the result would be a universal empire which in our case would also be a world empire. The historical stage for a world empire had already been set prior to and independently of the discovery of atomic weapons but these weapons make a world empire inevitable and imminent. "The atomic weapons ... will not permit the world to wait." Only a world empire can establish monopoly on atomic weapons and thus guarantee the survival of civilization. A world empire "is in fact the objective of the Third World War which, in its preliminary stages, has already began". The issue of a world empire "will be decided, and in our day. In the course of the decision, both of the present antagonists may, it is true, be destroyed, but one of them must be."
The next year, world historian Crane Brinton similarly supposed that the bomb may in the hands of a very skillful and lucky nation prove to be the weapon that permits that nation to unify the world by imperial conquest, to do what Napoleon and Hitler failed to do. Combined with other "wonders of science," it would permit a quick and easy conquest of the world. In 1951, Hans Morgenthau concluded that the "best" outcome of World War III would be world empire:
Today war has become an instrument of universal destruction, an instrument that destroys the victor and the vanquished ... At worst, victor and loser would be undistinguishable under the leveling impact of such a catastrophe ... At best, the destruction on one side would not be quite as great as on the other; the victor would be somewhat better off than the loser and would establish, with the aid of modern technology, his domination over the world.
Expert on earlier civilizations, Toynbee, further developed the subject of World War III leading to world empire:
The outcome of the Third World War ... seemed likely to be the imposition of an ecumenical peace of the Roman kind by the victor whose victory would leave him with a monopoly on the control of atomic energy in his grasp ... This denouement was foreshadowed, not only by present facts, but by historical precedents, since, in the histories of other civilizations, the time of troubles had been apt to culminate in the delivery of a knock-out blow resulting in the establishment of a universal state ...
The year this volume of A Study of History was published, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced "a knock-out blow" as an official doctrine, a detailed Plan was elaborated and Fortune magazine mapped the design. Section VIII, "Atomic Armaments", of the famous National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68), approved by President Harry Truman in 1951, uses the term "blow" 17 times, mostly preceded by such adjectives as "powerful", "overwhelming", or "crippling". Another term applied by the strategists was "Sunday punch".
A pupil of Toynbee, William McNeill, associated with the case of ancient China, which "put a quietus upon the disorders of the warring states by erecting an imperial bureaucratic structure ... The warring states of the Twentieth century seem headed for a similar resolution of their conflicts." The ancient "resolution" McNeill evoked was one of the most sweeping universal conquests in world history, performed by Qin in 230–221 BC. Chinese classic Sima Qian (d. 86 BC) described the event (6:234): "Qin raised troops on a grand scale" and "the whole world celebrated a great bacchanal". Herman Kahn of the RAND Corporation criticized an assembled group of SAC officers for their war plan (SIOP-62). He did not use the term bacchanal but he coined on the occasion an associating word: "Gentlemen, you do not have a war plan. You have a war orgasm!" History did not completely repeat itself but it passed close.
According to the circumscription theory of Robert Carneiro, "the more sharply circumscribed area, the more rapidly it will become politically unified." The Empires of Egypt, China and Japan are named the most durable political structures in human history. Correspondingly, these are the three most circumscribed civilizations in human history. The Empires of Egypt (established by Narmer c. 3000 BC) and China (established by Cheng in 221 BC) endured for over two millennia. German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck, criticizing the Western idea of progress, emphasized that China and Egypt remained at one particular stage of development for millennia. This stage was universal empire. The development of Egypt and China came to a halt once their empires "reached the limits of their natural habitat". Sinology does not recognize the Eurocentric view of the "inevitable" imperial fall; Egyptology and Japanology pose equal challenges.
Carneiro explored the Bronze Age civilizations. Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little and William Wohlforth researched the next three millennia, comparing eight civilizations. They conclude: The "rigidity of the borders" contributed importantly to hegemony in every concerned case. Hence, "when the system's borders are rigid, the probability of hegemony is high".
The circumscription theory was stressed in the comparative studies of the Roman and Chinese Empires. The circumscribed Chinese Empire recovered from all falls, while the fall of Rome, by contrast, was fatal. "What counteracted this [imperial] tendency in Europe ... was a countervailing tendency for the geographical boundaries of the system to expand." If "Europe had been a closed system, some great power would eventually have succeeded in establishing absolute supremacy over the other states in the region".
The ancient Chinese system was relatively enclosed, whereas the European system began to expand its reach to the rest of the world from the onset of system formation... In addition, overseas provided outlet for territorial competition, thereby allowing international competition on the European continent to ... trump the ongoing pressure toward convergence.
In the 1945 book, The Precarious Balance, on four centuries of the European power struggle, Ludwig Dehio explained the durability of the European states system by its overseas expansion: "Overseas expansion and the system of states were born at the same time; the vitality that burst the bounds of the Western world also destroyed its unity." In a more famous 1945 book, Reves similarly argued that the era of outward expansion is forever closed and the historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers. Edward Carr causally linked the end of the overseas outlet for imperial expansion and World Wars. In the nineteenth century, he wrote during the Second World War, imperialist wars were waged against "primitive" peoples. "It was silly for European countries to fight against one another when they could still ... maintain social cohesion by continuous expansion in Asia and Africa. Since 1900, however, this has no longer been possible: "the situation has radically changed". Now wars are between "imperial powers." Hans Morgenthau wrote that the very imperial expansion into relatively empty geographical spaces in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, in Africa, Eurasia, and western North America, deflected great power politics into the periphery of the earth, thereby reducing conflict. For example, the more attention Russia, France and the United States paid to expanding into far-flung territories in imperial fashion, the less attention they paid to one another, and the more peaceful, in a sense, the world was. But by the late nineteenth century, the consolidation of the great nation-states and empires of the West was consummated, and territorial gains could only be made at the expense of one another. John H. Herz outlined one "chief function" of the overseas expansion and the impact of its end:
[A] European balance of power could be maintained or adjusted because it was relatively easy to divert European conflicts into overseas directions and adjust them there. Thus the openness of the world contributed to the consolidation of the territorial system. The end of the 'world frontier' and the resulting closedness of an interdependent world inevitably affected the system's effectiveness.
Some later commentators drew similar conclusions:
For some commentators, the passing of the Nineteenth century seemed destined to mark the end of this long era of European empire building. The unexplored and unclaimed "blank" spaces on the world map were rapidly diminishing ... and the sense of "global closure" prompted an anxious fin-de-siècle debate about the future of the great empires ... The "closure" of the global imperial system implied ... the beginning of a new era of intensifying inter-imperial struggle along borders that now straddled the globe.
The opportunity for any system to expand in size seems almost a necessary condition for it to remain balanced, at least over the long haul. Far from being impossible or exceedingly improbable, systemic hegemony is likely under two conditions: "when the boundaries of the international system remain stable and no new major powers emerge from outside the system." With the system becoming global, further expansion is precluded. The geopolitical condition of "global closure" will remain to the end of history. Since "the contemporary international system is global, we can rule out the possibility that geographic expansion of the system will contribute to the emergence of a new balance of power, as it did so many times in the past." As Quincy Wright had put it, "this process can no longer continue without interplanetary wars."
One of leading experts on world-system theory, Christopher Chase-Dunn, noted that the circumscription theory is applicable for the global system, since the global system is circumscribed. In fact, within less than a century of its circumscribed existence the global system overcame the centuries-old balance of power and reached the unipolarity. Given "constant spatial parameters" of the global system, its unipolar structure is neither historically unusual nor theoretically surprising.
Randall Schweller theorized that a "closed international system", such as the global became a century ago, would reach "entropy" in a kind of thermodynamic law. Once the state of entropy is reached, there is no going back. The initial conditions are lost forever. Stressing the curiosity of the fact, Schweller writes that since the moment the modern world became a closed system, the process has worked in only one direction: from many poles to two poles to one pole. Thus unipolarity might represent the entropy—stable and permanent loss of variation—in the global system.
Chalmers Johnson argues that the US global network of hundreds of military bases already represents a global empire in its initial form:
For a major power, prosecution of any war that is not a defense of the homeland usually requires overseas military bases for strategic reasons. After the war is over, it is tempting for the victor to retain such bases and easy to find reasons to do so. Commonly, preparedness for a possible resumption of hostilities will be invoked. Over time, if a nation's aims become imperial, the bases form the skeleton of an empire.
Simon Dalby associates the network of bases with the Roman imperial system:
Looking at these impressive facilities which reproduce substantial parts of American suburbia complete with movie theatres and restaurant chains, the parallels with Roman garrison towns built on the Rhine, or on Hadrian's wall in England, where the remains are strikingly visible on the landscape, are obvious ... Less visible is the sheer scale of the logistics to keep garrison troops in residence in the far-flung reaches of empire ... That [military] presence literally builds the cultural logic of the garrison troops into the landscape, a permanent reminder of imperial control.
Kenneth Pomeranz and Harvard Historian Niall Ferguson share the above-cited views: "With American military bases in over 120 countries, we have hardly seen the end of empire." This "vast archipelago of US military bases … far exceeds 19th-century British ambitions. Britain's imperium consisted of specific, albeit numerous, colonies and clients; the American imperial vision is much more global…"
Conventional maps of US military deployments understate the extent of America's military reach. A Defense Department map of the world, which shows the areas of responsibility of the five major regional commands, suggests that America's sphere of military influence is now literally global ... The regional combatant commanders—the 'pro-consuls' of this imperium—have responsibility for swaths of territory beyond the wildest imaginings of their Roman predecessors.
Another Harvard Historian Charles S. Maier opens his Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors with these words: "What a substratum for empire! Compared with which, the foundation of the Macedonian, the Roman and the British, sink into insignificance."
One of the most accepted distinctions between earlier empires and the American Empire is the latter's "global" or "planetary" scope. French former Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine wondered: "The situation is unprecedented: What previous empire subjugated the entire world...?" The quests for universal empire are old but the present quest outdoes the previous in "the notable respect of being the first to actually be global in its reach." Another historian Paul Kennedy, who wrote prediction talks of the imminent US "imperial overstretch," in 2002 acknowledged about the present world system:
Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power. The Pax Britannica was run on the cheap. Napoleon's France and Philip II's Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar system. Charlemagne's empire was merely western European in stretch. The Roman Empire stretched further afield, but there was another great empire in Persia and a larger one in China. There is ... no comparison.
Walter Russell Mead observes that the United States attempts to repeate "globally" what the ancient empires of Egypt, China and Rome had each accomplished on a regional basis. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, Zygmunt Bauman, concludes that due to its planetary dimension, the new empire cannot be drawn on a map:
The new 'empire' is not an entity that could be drawn on a map... Drawing a map of the empire would also be a pointless exercise because the most conspicuously 'imperial' trait of the new empire's mode of being consists in viewing and treating the whole of the planet ... as a potential grazing ground...
Times Atlas of Empires numbers 70 empires in the world history. Niall Ferguson lists numerous parallels between them and the United States. He concludes: "To those who would still insist on American exceptionalism, the historian of empires can only retort: as exceptional as all the other 69 empires." Fareed Zakaria stressed one element not exceptional for the American Empire—the concept of exceptionalism. All dominant empires thought they were special.
In 1945, Historian Ludwig Dehio predicted global unification due to the circumscription of the global system, although he did not use this term. Being global, the system can neither expand nor be subject to external intrusion as the European states system had been for centuries:
In all previous struggles for supremacy, attempts to unite the European peninsula in a single state have been condemned to failure primarily through the intrusion of new forces from outside the old Occident. The Occident was an open area. But the globe was not, and, for that very reason, ultimately destined to be unified... And this very process [of unification] was clearly reflected in both World Wars.
Fifteen years later, Dehio confirmed his hypothesis: The European system owed its durability to its overseas outlet. "But how can a multiple grouping of world states conceivably be supported from outside in the framework of a finite globe?"
During the same time, Quincy Wright developed a similar concept. Balance-of-power politics has aimed less at preserving peace than at preserving the independence of states and preventing the development of world empire. In the course of history, the balance of power repeatedly reemerged, but on ever-wider scale. Eventually, the scale became global. Unless we proceed to "interplanetary wars," this pattern can no longer continue. In spite of significant reversals, the "trend towards world unity" can "scarcely be denied." World unity appears to be "the limit toward which the process of world history seems to tend."
The same "interplanetary" motif is present also in the Anatomy of Peace: The era of outward expansion is forever closed. "Until and unless we are able to communicate with another planet, the theater of human history will be limited to geographically determined, constant and known dimensions." The historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers. Multiplied by modern technology, the centripetal forces will accomplish what the greatest empires of the past failed. "For the first time in human history, one power can conquer and rule the world."
The "Father of American Anthropology," Franz Boas, known for his historical particularism and cultural relativism, outlined the "inexorable laws of history" by which political units grow larger in size and smaller in number. The process began in the earliest times and has continued almost always in the same direction. In the long run, the tendency to unification has been more powerful than of disintegration. "Thus the history of mankind shows us the grand spectacle of the grouping of man in units of ever increasing size." The progress in the direction of unification has been so regular and so marked that we must needs conclude that the same tendencies will govern our history in the future. Today the unity of the world is not less conceivable than the modern nations were in the early history. The practical difficulties that stand in the way of the formation of still larger units count for nothing before the "inexorable laws of history."
Five later scholars—Hornell Hart, Raoul Naroll, Louis Morano, Rein Taagepera and the author of the circumscription theory Robert Carneiro—researched expanding imperial cycles. All argued that these cycles represent an historical trend leading to world empire. Naroll and Carneiro also found this outcome "close at hand," c. 2200 and 2300 respectively.
The founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, writing yet in 1943, drew a more specific and immediate future imperial project: After the War America is bound "to take over the command of the skies." The danger of "the utter annihilation of all enemy towns and lands" can "only be prevented by the air superiority of a single power ... America's air role is the only alternative to intercontinental wars." Despite his outstanding anti-imperialism, Coudenhove-Kalergi detailed:
No imperialism, but technical and strategic problems of security urge America to rule the skies of the globe, just as Britain during the last century ruled the seas of the world... Pacifists and anti-imperialists will be shocked by this logic. They will try to find an escape. But they will try in vain... At the end of the war the crushing superiority of American plane production will be an established fact... The solution of the problem ... is by no means ideal, nor even satisfactory. But it is the minor evil...
Coudenhove-Kalergi envisaged a kind of Pax Americana modeled on "Pax Romana":
During the third century BC the Mediterranean world was divided on five great powers—Roma and Carthage, Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. The balance of power led to a series of wars until Rome emerged the queen of the Mediterranean and established an incomparable era of two centuries of peace and progress, the 'Pax Romana'... It may be that America's air power could again assure our world, now much smaller than the Mediterranean at that period, two hundred years of peace...
This period would be necessary transitory stage before World State is eventually established, though he did not specify how the last transformation is expected to occur. Coudenhove-Kalergi's follower in the teleological theory of World State, Toynbee, supposed the traditional way of universal conquest and emphasized that the world is ripe for conquest: "...Hitler's eventual failure to impose peace on the world by the force of arms was due, not to any flaw in his thesis that the world was ripe for conquest, but to an accidental combination of incidental errors in his measures..." But "in falling by so narrow a margin to win the prize of world-dominion for himself, Hitler had left the prize dangling within the reach of any successor capable of pursuing the same aims of world-conquest with a little more patience, prudence, and tact." With his "revolution of destruction," Hitler has performed the "yeoman service" for "some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica... For a post-Hitlerian empire-builder, Hitler's derelict legacy was a gift of the Gods."
The next "architect of a Pax Ecumenica," known more commonly as Pax Americana, demonstrated "more patience, prudence, and tact." Consequently, as President Dwight Eisenhower put it, the NATO allies became "almost psychopathic" whenever anyone talked about a US withdrawal, and the reception of his successor John F. Kennedy in Berlin was "almost hysterical," as Chancellor Conrad Adenauer characterized it. John Ikenberry finds that the Europeans wanted a stronger, more formal and more imperial system than the United States was initially willing to provide. In the end the United States settled for this "form of empire—a Pax Americana with formal commitments to Europe." According to a much debated thesis, the United States became "empire by invitation." The period discussed in the thesis (1945–1952) ended precisely the year Toynbee theorized on "some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica."
Dissociating America from Rome, Eisenhower gave a pessimistic forecast. In 1951, before he became President, he had written on West Europe: "We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not, politically, our frontiers. What we must do is to assist these [West European] peoples." Two years later, he wrote: When it was decided to deploy US divisions to Europe, no one had "for an instant" thought that they would remain there for "several decades"—that the United States could "build a sort of Roman Wall with its own troops and so protect the world."
Eisenhower assured Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev on Berlin in 1959: "Clearly we did not contemplate 50 years in occupation there." It lasted, remarks Marc Trachtenberg, from July 1945 to September 1994, 10 months short of 50 years. Notably, when the US troops eventually left, they left eastward. Confirming the theory of the "empire by invitation," with their first opportunity East European states extended the "invitation."
Chalmers Johnson regards the global military reach of the United States as empire in its "initial" form. Dimitri Simes finds that most of the world sees the United States as a "nascent" imperial power. Some scholars concerned how this empire would look in its ultimate form. The ultimate form of empire was described by Michael Doyle in his Empires. It is empire in which its two main components—the ruling core and the ruled periphery—merged to form one integrated whole. At this stage the empire as defined ceases to exist and becomes world state. Doyle examplifies the transformation on the case of the Roman Emperor Caracalla whose legislation in AD 212 extended the Roman citizenship to all inhabitants of the Mediterranean world.
Doyle's case of the Roman Empire had also been evoked by Susan Strange in her 1988 article, "The Future of the American Empire." Strange emphasized that the most persistent empires were those which best managed to integrate the ruling core and the peripheral allies. The article is partly a reply on the published a year earlier bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers which predicted imminent US "imperial overstretch." Strange found this outcome unlikely, stressing the fact that the peripheral allies have been successfully recruited into the American Empire.
Envisaging a world empire of either the United States or the Soviet Union (whoever is victorious in World War III), Bertrand Russell projected the Roman scenario too: "Like the Romans, they will, in the course of time, extend citizenship to the vanquished. There will then be a true world state, and it will be possible to forget that it will have owed its origin to conquest." International Relations scholar Alexander Wendt supposes world empire by universal conquest and subsequent consolidation, provided the conquering power recognizes all conquered members. For his example he also invokes the Roman Empire.
To the case of Caracalla, Toynbee added the Abbasid cosmopolitan reformation of 750 AD. Both "were good auguries for the prospect that, in a post-Modern chapter of Western history, a supranational commonwealth originally based on the hegemony of a paramount power over its satellites might eventually be put on the sounder basis of a constitutional partnership in which all the people of all the partner states would have their fare share in the conduct of common affairs." To the cases of Caracalla and the Abbasid revolution, Max Ostrovsky added the Han overthrow of Qin in 206 BC and more gradual cosmopolitan reformations he finds characteristic to all persistent empires and expected in the future global empire.
Crane Brinton expected that the world empire would not be built instantly but not as slowly as Rome, for much in the modern world has been speeded up. Charles Galton Darwin, a grandson of the father of Evolution Theory, suggested that China, as an isolated and enduring civilization, seems to provide the most relevant model for the global future. As the Chinese Empire, the regions of the world, periodically albeit more rarely, will be united by force into an uneasy world-empire, which will endure for a period until it falls. Along China, Ostrovsky mentions Egypt as a model for the future but, by contrast, estimates that the intermediate periods of the global empire will be shorter and rarer. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An empire is a political unit made up of several territories and peoples, \"usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries\". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, different populations have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor or empress; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or are ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians (the Central African Empire, and some Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in early England being examples).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "There have been \"ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign\" empires. An important distinction has been between land empires made up solely of contiguous territories, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Russian Empire; and those created by sea-power, which include territories that are remote from the 'home' country of the empire, such as the Median Empire (Iran) and British Empire. Aside from the more formal usage, the word empire can also refer colloquially to a large-scale business enterprise (e.g. a transnational corporation), a political organization controlled by a single individual (a political boss), or a group (political bosses). The concept of empire is associated with other such concepts as imperialism, colonialism, and globalization, with imperialism referring to the creation and maintenance of unequal relationships between nations and not necessarily the policy of a state headed by an emperor or empress. Empire is often used as a term to describe displeasure to overpowering situations.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "An empire is an aggregate of many separate states or territories under a supreme ruler or oligarchy. This is in contrast to a federation, which is an extensive state voluntarily composed of autonomous states and peoples. An empire is a large polity which rules over territories outside of its original borders.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Definitions of what physically and politically constitutes an empire vary. It might be a state affecting imperial policies or a particular political structure. Empires are typically formed from diverse ethnic, national, cultural, and religious components. 'Empire' and 'colonialism' are used to refer to relationships between a powerful state or society versus a less powerful one; Michael W. Doyle has defined empire as \"effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society\".",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Tom Nairn and Paul James define empires as polities that \"extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces to extract or accrue value\". Rein Taagepera has defined an empire as \"any relatively large sovereign political entity whose components are not sovereign\".",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The terrestrial empire's maritime analogue is the thalassocracy, an empire composed of islands and coasts which are accessible to its terrestrial homeland, such as the Athenian-dominated Delian League.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Furthermore, empires can expand by both land and sea. Stephen Howe notes that empires by land can be characterized by expansion over terrain, \"extending directly outwards from the original frontier\" while an empire by sea can be characterized by colonial expansion and empire building \"by an increasingly powerful navy\".",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "However, sometimes an empire is only a semantic construction, such as when a ruler assumes the title of \"emperor\". That polity over which the ruler reigns logically becomes an \"empire\", despite having no additional territory or hegemony. Examples of this form of empire are the Central African Empire, Mexican Empire, or the Korean Empire proclaimed in 1897 when Korea, far from gaining new territory, was on the verge of being annexed by the Empire of Japan, one of the last to use the name officially. Among the last states in the 20th century known as empires in this sense were the Central African Empire, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Manchukuo, Russia, Germany, and Korea.",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Scholars distinguish empires from nation-states. In an empire, there is a hierarchy whereby one group of people (usually, the metropole) has command over other groups of people, and there is a hierarchy of rights and prestige for different groups of people. Josep Colomer distinguished between empires and nation-states in the following way:",
"title": "Definition"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Empires originated as different types of states, although they commonly began as powerful monarchies. Ideas about empires have changed over time, ranging from public approval to universal distaste. Empires are built out of separate units with some kind of diversity – ethnic, national, cultural, religious – and imply at least some inequality between the rulers and the ruled. Without this inequality, the system would be seen as a commonwealth. Throughout history, the major powers of the world constantly seek to conquer other parts of the world. Imperialism is the idea of a major power controlling another nation or land with the intentions to use the native people and resources to help the mother country in any way possible. Many empires were the result of military conquest, incorporating the vanquished states into a political union, but imperial hegemony can be established in other ways. The Athenian Empire, the Roman Empire, and the British Empire developed at least in part under elective auspices. The Empire of Brazil declared itself an empire after separating from the Portuguese Empire in 1822. France has twice transitioned from being called the French Republic to being called the French Empire while it retained an overseas empire.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Europeans began applying the designation of \"empire\" to non-European monarchies, such as the Qing Empire and the Mughal Empire, as well as the Maratha Empire, eventually leading to the looser denotations applicable to any political structure meeting the criteria of \"imperium\". Some monarchies styled themselves as having greater size, scope, and power than the territorial, politico-military, and economic facts support. As a consequence, some monarchs assumed the title of \"emperor\" (or its corresponding translation, tsar, empereur, kaiser, shah etc.) and renamed their states as \"The Empire of ...\". Empires were seen as an expanding power, administration, ideas and beliefs followed by cultural habits from place to place. Some empires tended to impose their culture on the subject states to strengthen the imperial structure; others opted for multicultural and cosmopolitan policies. Cultures generated by empires could have notable effects that outlasted the empire itself. Most histories of empires have been hostile, especially if the authors were promoting nationalism. Stephen Howe, although himself hostile, listed positive qualities: the guaranteed stability, security, and legal order for their subjects. They tried to minimize ethnic and religious antagonism inside the empire. The aristocracies that ruled them were often more cosmopolitan and broad-minded than their nationalistic successors.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "There are two main ways to establish and maintain an imperial political structure: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force or (ii) as a coercive, hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power. The former method provides greater tribute and direct political control, yet limits further expansion because it absorbs military forces to fixed garrisons. The latter method provides less tribute and indirect control, but avails military forces for further expansion. Territorial empires (e.g. the Macedonian Empire and Byzantine Empire) tend to be contiguous areas. The term, on occasion, has been applied to maritime republics or thalassocracies (e.g. the Athenian and British empires) with looser structures and more scattered territories, often consisting of many islands and other forms of possessions which required the creation and maintenance of a powerful navy. Empires such as the Holy Roman Empire also came together by electing the emperor with votes from member realms through the Imperial election.",
"title": "Characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Stephen Howe writes that with the exception of the Roman, Chinese and \"perhaps ancient Egyptian states\", early empires seldom survived the death of their founder and were usually limited in scope to conquest and collection of tribute, having little impact on the everyday lives of their subjects.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "With the exception of Rome, the periods of dissolution following imperial falls were equally short. Successor states seldom outlived their founders and disappeared in the next and often larger empire. Some empires, like the Neo-Babylonian, Median and Lydian were outright conquered by a larger empire. The historical pattern was not a simple rise-and-fall cycle; rather it was rise, fall, and greater rise, or as Raoul Naroll put it, \"expanding pulsation.\"",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Empires were limited in scope to conquest, as Howe observed, but conquest is a considerable scope. Many fought to the death to avoid it or to be liberated from it. Imperial conquests and attempts of conquest significantly contributed to the list of wars by death toll. The imperial impact on subjects can be regarded as \"little,\" but only on those subjects who survived the imperial conquest and rule. We cannot ask the inhabitants of Carthage and Masada, for example, whether empire had little impact on their lives, we seldom hear the voices of subject peoples because history is mostly written by winners. But one rich primary source of the subject population is the Hebrew Prophetic books. The hatred towards the ruling empires expressed in this source makes impression of an impact more serious than estimated by Howe. A classical writer and adherent of empire, Orosius explicitly preferred to avoid the views of subject populations. And another classical Roman patriot, Lucan confessed that \"words cannot express how bitterly we are hated\" by subject peoples.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The earliest known empire appeared in southern Egypt sometime around 3200 BC. Southern Egypt was divided by three kingdoms each centered on a powerful city. Hierapolis conquered the other two cities over two centuries, and later grew into the country of Egypt. The Akkadian Empire, established by Sargon of Akkad (24th century BC), was an early all-Mesopotamian empire which spread into Anatolia, the Levant and Ancient Iran. This imperial achievement was repeated by Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria and Hammurabi of Babylon in the 19th and 18th centuries BC. In the 15th century BC, the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, ruled by Thutmose III, was ancient Africa's major force upon incorporating Nubia and the ancient city-states of the Levant.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "c. 1500 BC in China rose the Shang Empire which was succeeded by the Zhou Empire c. 1100 BC. Both equalled or surpassed in territory their contemporary Near Eastern empires such as the Middle Assyrian Empire, Hittite Empire, Egyptian Empire and those of the Mitanni and Elamites. The Zhou Empire dissolved in 770 BC into feudal multi-state system which lasted for five and a half centuries until the universal conquest of Qin in 221 BC. The first empire comparable to Rome in organization was the Neo-Assyrian Empire (916–612 BC). The Median Empire was the first empire within the territory of Persia. By the 6th century BC, after having allied with the Babylonians, Scythians and Cimmerians to defeat the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Medes were able to establish their own empire, which was the largest of its day and lasted for about sixty years.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Axial Age (mid-First Millennium BC) witnessed unprecedented imperial expansion in the Indo-Mediterranean region and China. The successful and extensive Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC), also known as the first Persian Empire, covered Mesopotamia, Egypt, parts of Greece, Thrace, the Middle East, much of Central Asia, and North-Western India. It is considered the first great empire in history or the first \"world empire\". It was overthrown and replaced by the short-lived empire of Alexander the Great. His Empire was succeeded by three Empires ruled by the Diadochi—the Seleucid, Ptolemaic, and Macedonian, which, despite being independent, are called the \"Hellenistic Empire\" by virtue of their similarities in culture and administration.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Meanwhile, in the western Mediterranean the Empires of Carthage and Rome began their rise. Having decisively defeated Carthage in 202 BC, Rome defeated Macedonia in 200 BC and the Seleucids in 190–189 BC to establish an all-Mediterranean Empire. The Seleucid Empire broke apart and its former eastern part was absorbed by the Parthian Empire. In 30 BC Rome annexed Ptolemaic Egypt.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In India during the Axial Age appeared the Maurya Empire—a geographically extensive and powerful empire, ruled by the Mauryan dynasty from 321 to 185 BC. The empire was founded in 322 BC by Chandragupta Maurya through the help of Chanakya, who rapidly expanded his power westward across central and western India, taking advantage of the disruptions of local powers following the withdrawal by Alexander the Great. By 320 BC, the Maurya Empire had fully occupied northwestern India as well as defeating and conquering the satraps left by Alexander. Under Emperor Ashoka the Great, the Maurya Empire became the first Indian empire to conquer the whole Indian Peninsula — an achievement repeated only twice, by the Gupta and Mughal Empires. In the reign of Ashoka Buddhism spread to become the dominant religion in many parts of the ancient India.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 221 BC, China became an empire when the State of Qin ended the chaotic Warring States period through its conquest of the other six states and proclaimed the Qin Empire (221–207 BC). The Qin Empire is known for the construction of the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army, as well as the standardization of currency, weights, measures and writing system. It laid the foundation for China's first golden age, the Han Empire (202 BC–AD 9, AD 25–220). The Han Empire expanded into Central Asia and established trade through the Silk Road. Confucianism was, for the first time, adopted as an official state ideology. During the reign of the Emperor Wu of Han, the Xiongnu were pacified. By this time, only four empires stretched between the Pacific and the Atlantic: the Han Empire of China, the Kushan Empire, the Parthian Empire of Persia, and the Roman Empire. The collapse of the Han Empire in AD 220 saw China fragmented into the Three Kingdoms, only to be unified once again by the Jin Empire (AD 266–420). The relative weakness of the Jin Empire plunged China into political disunity that would last from AD 304 to AD 589 when the Sui Empire (AD 581–618) reunited China.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Romans were the first people to invent and embody the concept of empire in their two mandates: to wage war and to make and execute laws. They were the most extensive Western empire until the early modern period, and left a lasting impact on European society. Many languages, cultural values, religious institutions, political divisions, urban centers, and legal systems can trace their origins to the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire governed and rested on exploitative actions. They took slaves and money from the peripheries to support the imperial center. However, the absolute reliance on conquered peoples to carry out the empire's fortune, sustain wealth, and fight wars would ultimately lead to the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Romans were strong believers in what they called their \"civilizing mission\". This term was legitimized and justified by writers like Cicero who wrote that only under Roman rule could the world flourish and prosper. This ideology, that was envisioned to bring a new world order, was eventually spread across the Mediterranean world and beyond. People started to build houses like Romans, eat the same food, wear the same clothes and engage in the same games. Even rights of citizenship and authority to rule were granted to people not born within Roman territory.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Latin word imperium, referring to a magistrate's power to command, gradually assumed the meaning \"The territory in which a magistrate can effectively enforce his commands\", while the term \"imperator\" was originally an honorific meaning \"commander\". The title was given to generals who were victorious in battle. Thus, an \"empire\" may include regions that are not legally within the territory of a state, but are under either direct or indirect control of that state, such as a colony, client state, or protectorate. Although historians use the terms \"Republican Period\" and \"Imperial Period\" to identify the periods of Roman history before and after absolute power was assumed by Augustus, the Romans themselves continued to refer to their government as a republic, and during the Republican Period, the territories controlled by the republic were referred to as \"Imperium Romanum\". The emperor's actual legal power derived from holding the office of \"consul\", but he was traditionally honored with the titles of imperator (commander) and princeps (first man or, chief). Later, these terms came to have legal significance in their own right; an army calling their general \"imperator\" was a direct challenge to the authority of the current emperor.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The legal systems of France and its former colonies are strongly influenced by Roman law. Similarly, the United States was founded on a model inspired by the Roman Republic, with upper and lower legislative assemblies, and executive power vested in a single individual, the president. The president, as \"commander-in-chief\" of the armed forces, reflects the ancient Roman titles imperator princeps. The Roman Catholic Church, founded in the early Imperial Period, spread across Europe, first by the activities of Christian evangelists, and later by official imperial promulgation.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In Western Asia, the term \"Persian Empire\" came to denote the Iranian imperial states established at different historical periods of pre–Islamic and post–Islamic Persia.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In East Asia, various Chinese empires dominated the political, economic and cultural landscapes during this era, the most powerful of which was probably the Tang Empire (618–690, 705–907). Other influential Chinese empires during the post-classical period include the Sui Empire (581–618), the Great Liao Empire, the Song Empire, the Western Xia Empire (1038–1227), the Great Jin Empire (1115–1234), the Western Liao Empire (1124–1218), the Great Yuan Empire (1271–1368), and the Great Ming Empire (1368–1644). During this period, Japan and Korea underwent voluntary Sinicization. The Sui, Tang and Song empires had the world's largest economy and were the most technologically advanced during their time; the Great Yuan Empire was the world's ninth largest empire by total land area; while the Great Ming Empire is famous for the seven maritime expeditions led by Zheng He.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The Ajuran Sultanate was a Somali empire in the medieval times that dominated the Indian Ocean trade. It was a Somali Muslim sultanate that ruled over large parts of the Horn of Africa in the Middle Ages. Through a strong centralized administration and an aggressive military stance towards invaders, the Ajuran Sultanate successfully resisted an Oromo invasion from the west and a Portuguese incursion from the east during the Gaal Madow and the Ajuran-Portuguese wars. Trading routes dating from the ancient and early medieval periods of Somali maritime enterprise were strengthened or re-established, and foreign trade and commerce in the coastal provinces flourished with ships sailing to and coming from many kingdoms and empires in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Middle East, North Africa and East Africa.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "In the 7th century, Maritime Southeast Asia witnessed the rise of a Buddhist thallasocracy, the Srivijaya Empire, which thrived for 600 years and was succeeded by the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit Empire that ruled from the 13th to 15th centuries. In the Southeast Asian mainland, the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire was centered in the city of Angkor and flourished from the 9th to 13th centuries. Following the demise of the Khmer Empire, the Siamese Empire flourished alongside the Burmese and Lan Chang Empires from the 13th through the 18th centuries.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "In Southeastern and Eastern Europe, during 917, the Eastern Roman Empire, sometimes called the Byzantine Empire, was forced to recognize the Imperial title of Bulgarian ruler Simeon the Great, who were then called Tsar, the first ruler to hold that precise imperial title. The Bulgarian Empire, established in the region in 680-681, remained a major power in Southeast Europe until its fall in the late 14th century. Bulgaria gradually reached its cultural and territorial apogee in the 9th century and early 10th century under Prince Boris I and Simeon I, when its early Christianization in 864 allowed it to develop into the cultural and literary center of Slavic Europe, as well as one of the largest states in Europe, thus the period is considered the Golden Age of medieval Bulgarian culture. Major events included the development of the Cyrillic script at the Preslav Literary School, declared official in 893, and the establishment of the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "At the time, in the Medieval West, the title \"empire\" had a specific technical meaning that was exclusively applied to states that considered themselves the heirs and successors of the Roman Empire. Among these were the \"Byzantine Empire\", which was the actual continuation of the Eastern portion of the Roman Empire, the Carolingian Empire, the largely Germanic Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire. Yet, these states did not always fit the geographic, political, or military profiles of empires in the modern sense of the word. To legitimise their imperium, these states directly claimed the title of Empire from Rome. The sacrum Romanum imperium (Holy Roman Empire), which lasted from 800 to 1806, claimed to have exclusively comprehended Christian principalities, and was only nominally a discrete imperial state. The Holy Roman Empire was not always centrally-governed, as it had neither core nor peripheral territories, and was not governed by a central, politico-military elite. Hence, Voltaire's remark that the Holy Roman Empire \"was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire\" is accurate to the degree that it ignores German rule over Italian, French, Provençal, Polish, Flemish, Dutch, and Bohemian populations, and the efforts of the ninth-century Holy Roman Emperors (i.e., the Ottonians) to establish central control. Voltaire's \"nor an empire\" observation applies to its late period.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 1204, after the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople, the crusaders established a Latin Empire (1204–1261) in that city, while the defeated Byzantine Empire's descendants established two smaller, short-lived empires in Asia Minor: the Empire of Nicaea (1204–1261) and the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461). Constantinople was retaken in 1261 by the Byzantine successor state centered in Nicaea, re-establishing the Byzantine Empire until 1453, by which time the Turkish-Muslim Ottoman Empire (ca. 1300–1918), had conquered most of the region. The Ottoman Empire was a successor of the Abbasid Empire and it was the most powerful empire to succeed the Abbasi empires at the time, as well as one of the most powerful empires in the world. They became the successors after the Abbasid Empire fell from the Mongols (Hülegü Khan). The Ottoman Empire centered on modern day Turkey, dominated the eastern Mediterranean, overthrew the Byzantine Empire to claim Constantinople and it would start battering at Austria and Malta, which were countries that were key to central and to south-west Europe respectively — mainly for their geographical location. The reason these occurrences of batterings were so important was because the Ottomans were Muslim, and the rest of Europe was Christian, so there was a sense of religious fighting going on. This was not just a rivalry of East and West but a rivalry between Christians and Muslims. Both the Christians and Muslims had alliances with other countries, and they had problems in them as well. The flows of trade and of cultural influences across the supposed great divide never ceased, so the countries never stopped bartering with each other. These epochal clashes between civilizations profoundly shaped many people's thinking back then, and continues to do so in the present day. Modern hatred against Muslim communities in South-Eastern Europe, mainly in Bosnia and Kosovo, has often been articulated in terms of seeing them as unwelcome residues of this imperialism: in short, as Turks. Moreover, Eastern Orthodox imperialism was not re-established until the coronation of Ivan the Terrible as Emperor of Russia in 1547. Likewise, with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), the Austrian Empire (1804–1867) emerged reconstituted as the Empire of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), having \"inherited\" the imperium of Central and Western Europe from the losers of said wars.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan expanded the Mongol Empire to be the largest contiguous empire in the world. However, within two generations, the empire was separated into four discrete khanates under Genghis Khan's grandsons. One of them, Kublai Khan, conquered China and established the Yuan dynasty with the imperial capital at Beijing. One family ruled the whole Eurasian land mass from the Pacific to the Adriatic and Baltic Seas. The emergence of the Pax Mongolica had significantly eased trade and commerce across Asia. The Safavid Empire of Iran was also founded.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "The Islamic gunpowder empires started to develop from the 15th century. In the Indian subcontinent, the Delhi Sultanate conquered most of the Indian peninsula and spread Islam across it. It later disintegrated with the establishment of the Bengal, Gujarat, and Bahmani Sultanate. In the 15th century, the Mughal Empire was founded by Timur and Genghis Khan's direct descendant Babur. His successors such Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan extended the empire. In the 17th century, Aurangzeb expanded the Mughal Empire, controlling most of the South Asia through Sharia, which became the world's largest economy and leading manufacturing power with a nominal GDP that valued a quarter of world GDP, superior than the combination of Europe's GDP. It has been estimated that the Mughal emperors controlled an unprecedented one-fourth of the world's entire economy and was home to one-fourth of the world's population at the time. After the death of Aurangzeb, which marks the end of the medieval India and the beginning of European invasion in India, the empire was weakened by Nader Shah's invasion.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The Mysore Empire was soon established by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, who allied with Napoleon Bonaparte. Other independent empires were also established, such as those ruled by the Nawabs of Bengal and Nizam of Hyderabad.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In the pre-Columbian Americas, two Empires were prominent—the Azteca in Mesoamerica and Inca in Peru. Both existed for several generations before the arrival of the Europeans. Inca had gradually conquered the whole of the settled Andean world as far south as today Santiago in Chile.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In Oceania, the Tonga Empire was a lonely empire that existed from the Late Middle Ages to the Modern period.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "In the 15th century, Castile (Spain) landing in the so-called \"New World\" (first, the Americas, and later Australia), along with Portuguese travels around the Cape of Good Hope and along the coast of Africa bordering the southeast Indian Ocean, proved ripe opportunities for the continent's Renaissance-era monarchies to establish colonial empires like those of the ancient Romans and Greeks. In the Old World, colonial imperialism was attempted and established on the Canary Islands and Ireland. These conquered lands and people became de jure subordinates of the empire, rather than de facto imperial territories and subjects. Such subjugation often elicited \"client-state\" resentment that the empire unwisely ignored, leading to the collapse of the European colonial imperial system in the late 19th through the mid-20th century. Portuguese discovery of Newfoundland in the New World gave way to many expeditions led by England (later Britain), Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. In the 18th century, the Spanish Empire was at its height because of the great mass of goods taken from conquered territory in the Americas (nowadays Mexico, parts of the United States, the Caribbean, most of Central America, and South America) and the Philippines.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The British established their first empire (1583–1783) in North America by colonising lands that made up British America, including parts of Canada, the Caribbean and the Thirteen Colonies. In 1776, the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies declared itself independent from the British Empire, thus beginning the American Revolution. Britain turned towards Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa, with subsequent exploration and conquests leading to the rise of the Second British Empire (1783–1815), which was followed by the Industrial Revolution and Britain's Imperial Century (1815–1914). It became the largest empire in world history, encompassing one quarter of the world's land area and one fifth of its population. The impacts of this period are still prominent in the current age \"including widespread use of the English language, belief in Protestant religion, economic globalization, modern precepts of law and order, and representative democracy.\"",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Great Qing Empire of China (1636–1912) was the fifth largest empire in world history by total land area, and laid the foundation for the modern territorial claims of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. Apart from having direct control over much of East Asia, the empire also exerted domination over other states through the Chinese tributary system. The multiethnic and multicultural nature of the Great Qing Empire was crucial to the subsequent birth of the nationalistic concept of zhonghua minzu. The empire reached its peak during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, after which the empire entered a period of prolonged decline, culminating in its collapse as a result of the Xinhai Revolution.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The Ashanti Empire (or Confederacy), also Asanteman (1701–1896), was a West African state of the Ashanti, the Akan people of the Ashanti Region, Akanland in modern-day Ghana. The Ashanti (or Asante) were a powerful, militaristic and highly disciplined people in West Africa. Their military power, which came from effective strategy and an early adoption of European firearms, created an empire that stretched from central Akanland (in modern-day Ghana) to present day Benin and Ivory Coast, bordered by the Dagomba kingdom to the north and Dahomey to the east. Due to the empire's military prowess, sophisticated hierarchy, social stratification and culture, the Ashanti empire had one of the largest historiographies of any indigenous Sub-Saharan African political entity.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Sikh Empire (1799–1846) was established in the Punjab region of India. The empire collapsed when its founder, Ranjit Singh, died and its army fell to the British. During the same period, the Maratha Empire (also known as the Maratha Confederacy) was a Hindu state located in present-day India. It existed from 1674 to 1818, and at its peak, the empire's territories covered much of Southern Asia. The empire was founded and consolidated by Shivaji. After the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, it expanded greatly under the rule of the Peshwas. In 1761, the Maratha army lost the Third Battle of Panipat, which halted the expansion of the empire. Later, the empire was divided into a confederacy of states which, in 1818, were lost to the British during the Anglo-Maratha wars.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "France was a dominant empire possessing many colonies in various locations around the world. During Louis XIV's long reign, from 1643 to 1715, France was the leading European power as Europe's most populous, richest and powerful country. The Empire of the French (1804–1814), also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire, but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire, was also the dominant power of much of continental Europe and, it ruled over 90 million people and was the sole power in Europe if not the world as Britain was the only main rival during the early 19th Century. From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10,000,000 km2 (3,900,000 sq mi), the second largest empire in the world at the time behind only the Spanish Empire. It had many possesstions around the world, mainly in the Americas, Asia and Africa. At its peak in 1750, French India had an area of 1.5 million km2 and a totaled population of 100 million people and was the most populous colony under French rule. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire extended over 13,500,000 km (5,200,000 sq mi) of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s with a totaled population of 150 million people. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 13,500,000 km (5,200,000 sq mi) at the time, which is 10.0% of the Earth's total land area. The total area of the French colonial empire, with the first (mainly in the Americas and Asia) and second (mainly in Africa and Asia), the French colonial empires combined, reached 24,000,000 km2 (9,300,000 sq mi), the second largest in the world (the first being the British Empire).",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The Empire of Brazil (1822–1889) was the only South American modern monarchy, established by the heir of the Portuguese Empire as an independent nation eventually became an emerging international power. The new country was huge but sparsely populated and ethnically diverse. In 1889 the monarchy was overthrown in a sudden coup d'état led by a clique of military leaders whose goal was the formation of a republic.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The German Empire (1871–1918), another \"heir to the Holy Roman Empire\", arose in 1871.",
"title": "History of imperialism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "The fall of the western half of the Roman Empire is seen as one of the most pivotal points in all of human history. This event traditionally marks the transition from classical civilization to the birth of Europe. The Roman Empire started to decline at the end of the reign of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius in 161–180 A.D. There is still a debate over the cause of the fall of one of the largest empires in history. Piganiol argues that the Roman Empire under its authority can be described as \"a period of terror\", holding its imperial system accountable for its failure. Another theory blames the rise of Christianity as the cause, arguing that the spread of certain Christian ideals caused internal weakness of the military and state. In the book The Fall of the Roman Empire, by Peter Heather, he contends that there are many factors, including issues of money and manpower, which produce military limitations and culminate in the Roman army's inability to effectively repel invading barbarians at the frontier. The Western Roman economy was already stretched to its limit in the 4th and 5th Centuries C.E. due to continual conflict and loss of territory which, in turn, generated loss of revenue from the tax base. There was also the looming presence of the Persians which, at any time, took a large percentage of the fighting force's attention. At the same time the Huns, a nomadic warrior people from the steppes of Asia, are also putting extreme pressure on the German tribes outside of the Roman frontier, which gave the German tribes no other choice, geographically, but to move into Roman territory. At this point, without increased funding, the Roman army could no longer effectively defend its borders against major waves of Germanic tribes. This inability is illustrated by the crushing defeat at Adrianople in 378 C.E. and, later, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 C.E.",
"title": "Fall of empires"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "In time, an empire may change from one political entity to another. For example, the Holy Roman Empire, a German re-constitution of the Roman Empire, metamorphosed into various political structures (i.e., federalism), and eventually, under Habsburg rule, re-constituted itself in 1804 as the Austrian Empire, an empire of much different politics and scope, which in turn became the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. The Roman Empire, perennially reborn, also lived on as the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) – temporarily splitting into the Latin Empire, the Empire of Nicaea and the Empire of Trebizond before its remaining territory and centre became part of the Ottoman Empire. A similarly persistent concept of empire saw the Mongol Empire become the Khanate of the Golden Horde, the Yuan Empire of China, and the Ilkhanate before resurrection as the Timurid Empire and as the Mughal Empire. After 1945 the Empire of Japan retained its Emperor but lost its colonial possessions and became the State of Japan. Despite the semantic reference to imperial power, Japan is a de jure constitutional monarchy, with a homogeneous population of 127 million people that is 98.5 percent ethnic Japanese, making it one of the largest nation-states.",
"title": "Fall of empires"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "An autocratic empire can become a republic (e.g., the Central African Empire in 1979), or it can become a republic with its imperial dominions reduced to a core territory (e.g., Weimar Germany shorn of the German colonial empire (1918–1919), or the Ottoman Empire (1918–1923)). The dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after 1918 provides an example of a multi-ethnic superstate broken into constituent nation-oriented states: the republics, kingdoms, and provinces of Austria, Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechoslovakia, Ruthenia, Galicia, et al. In the aftermath of World War I the Russian Empire also broke up and became reduced to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) before re-forming as the USSR (1922–1991) – sometimes seen as the core of a Soviet Empire. The latter also disintegrated in 1989-91.",
"title": "Fall of empires"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "After the Second World War (1939–1945), the deconstruction of colonial empires quickened and became commonly known as decolonisation. The British Empire evolved into a loose, multinational Commonwealth of Nations, while the French colonial empire metamorphosed to a Francophone commonwealth. The same process happened to the Portuguese Empire, which evolved into a Lusophone commonwealth, and to the former territories of the extinct Spanish Empire, which alongside the Lusophone countries of Portugal and Brazil, created an Ibero-American commowealth. France returned the French territory of Kwang-Chou-Wan to China in 1946. The British gave Hong Kong back to China in 1997 after 150 years of rule. The Portuguese territory of Macau reverted to China in 1999. Macau and Hong Kong did not become part of the provincial structure of China; they have autonomous systems of government as Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China.",
"title": "Fall of empires"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "France still governs overseas territories (French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, Guadeloupe, French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF), Wallis and Futuna, Saint Barthélemy, and Mayotte), and exerts hegemony in Francafrique (\"French Africa\"; 29 francophone countries such as Chad, Rwanda, etc.). Fourteen British Overseas Territories remain under British sovereignty. Fifteen countries of the Commonwealth of Nations share their head of state, King Charles III, as Commonwealth realms.",
"title": "Fall of empires"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Contemporaneously, the concept of empire is politically valid, yet is not always used in the traditional sense. One of widely discussed cases is the United States. Characterizing aspects of the US in regards to its territorial expansion, foreign policy, and its international behavior as \"American Empire\" is common. The term \"American Empire\" refers to the United States' cultural ideologies and foreign policy strategies. The term is most commonly used to describe the U.S.'s status since the 20th century, but it can also be applied to the United States' world standing before the rise of nationalism in the 20th century. The US itself was at one point a colony in the British Empire. However, founding fathers such as George Washington noted after the Revolution that the US was an empire in its infancy, and others like Thomas Jefferson agreed, describing the constitution as the perfect foundation for an \"extensive Empire\". Jefferson in the 1780s while awaiting the fall of the Spanish empire, said: \"till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece\".",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Even so, the ideology that the US was founded on anti-imperialist principles has prevented many from acknowledging America's status as an empire. This active rejection of imperialist status is not limited to high-ranking government officials, as it has been ingrained in American society throughout its entire history. As David Ludden explains, \"journalists, scholars, teachers, students, analysts, and politicians prefer to depict the U.S. as a nation pursuing its own interests and ideals\". This often results in imperialist endeavors being presented as measures taken to enhance state security. Ludden explains this phenomenon with the concept of \"ideological blinders\", which he says prevent American citizens from realizing the true nature of America's current systems and strategies. These \"ideological blinders\" that people wear have resulted in an \"invisible\" American empire of which most American citizens are unaware. Besides its anti-imperialist principles, the United States is not traditionally recognized as an empire, because the U.S. adopted a different political system from those that previous empires had used.",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Despite the anti-imperial ideology and systematic differences, the political objectives and strategies of the United States government have been quite similar to those of previous empires. Throughout the 19th century, the United States government attempted to expand its territory by any means necessary. Regardless of the supposed motivation for this constant expansion, all of these land acquisitions were carried out by imperialistic means. This was done by financial means in some cases, and by military force in others. Most notably, the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Texas Annexation (1845), and the Mexican Cession (1848) highlight the imperialistic goals of the United States during this \"modern period\" of imperialism. The U.S. government has stopped adding additional territories, where they permanently and politically take over since the early 20th century, and instead have established 800 military bases as their outposts. With this overt but subtile military control of other countries, scholars consider U.S. foreign policy strategies to be imperialistic. Academic Krishna Kumar argues that the distinct principles of nationalism and imperialism may result in common practice; that is, the pursuit of nationalism can often coincide with the pursuit of imperialism in terms of strategy and decision making. Stuart Creighton Miller posits that the public's sense of innocence about Realpolitik (politics based on practical considerations, rather than ideals) impacts popular recognition of US imperial conduct since it governed other countries via surrogates. These surrogates were domestically-weak, right-wing governments that would collapse without US support.",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Former President G. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said: \"We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic; we never have been.\" This was said in the context of the international opposition to the Iraq War led by the United States in manner widely regarded as imperial. In his book review of Empire (2000) by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Mehmet Akif Okur posits that since the September 11 attacks in the United States, the international relations determining the world's balance of power (political, economic, military) have been altered. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq underway, historian Sidney Lens argued that from its inception, the US has used every means available to dominate foreign peoples and states. The same time, Eliot A. Cohen suggested: \"The Age of Empire may indeed have ended, but then an age of American hegemony has begun, regardless of what one calls it.\" Some scholars did not bother how to call it: \"When it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck.\"",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Mehmet Akif Okur finds trends in political science that perceive the contemporary world's order via the re-territorialization of political space, the re-emergence of classical imperialist practices (such as the duality between those who are \"inside\" and those who are \"outside\"), the deliberate weakening of international organizations, the restructured international economy, economic nationalism, the expanded arming of most countries, the proliferation of nuclear weapon capabilities and the politics of identity emphasizing a state's subjective perception of its place in the world, as a nation and as a civilization. These changes constitute the \"Age of Nation Empires\". Nation-empire regionalism claims sovereignty over their respective (regional) political (social, economic, ideologic), cultural, and military spheres and denotes the return of geopolitical power from global power blocs to regional power blocs. The European Union is one such power bloc.",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Since the European Union was formed as a polity in 1993, it has established its own currency, its own citizenship, established discrete military forces, and exercises its limited hegemony in the Mediterranean, eastern parts of Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The big size and high development index of the EU economy often has the ability to influence global trade regulations in its favor. The political scientist Jan Zielonka suggests that this behavior is imperial because it coerces its neighbouring countries into adopting its European economic, legal, and political structures. Tony Benn, a left-wing Labour Party MP of the United Kingdom, opposed the European integration policies of the European Union by saying, \"I think they're (the European Union) building an empire there, they want us (the United Kingdom) to be a part of their empire and I don't want that.\"",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, political scientist Agnia Grigas argued that Moscow pursues the policy of \"reimperialization.\" Two days after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Historian specializing on empires, Niall Ferguson, interpreted the policy of Putin as an attempt to bring back the tsarist Russian Empire. By this time, the \"neo-imperialism,\" or \"neo-imperial ambitions\" of Russia became widely claimed. When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, says another historian of empires Timothy Snyder, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors saw themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision.",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Vladimir Putin himself used to state: \"For Russia to survive, it must remain an empire.\" In June 2022, on the 350 anniversary of the birth of the 18th-century Russian tsar Peter the Great, Putin has compared himself to him associating their twin historic quests to win back Russian lands. For critics this association implied that Putin's \"complaints about historical injustice, eastward Nato expansion, and other grievances with the west were all a facade for a traditional war of conquest\" and imperialism. \"After months of denials that Russia is driven by imperial ambitions in Ukraine, Putin appeared to embrace that mission.\" On the same occasion, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian government, suggested Russia's \"de-imperialization,\" instead of Russia's official war aim of \"de-nazification\" of Ukraine.",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Later that year, Anne Applebaum approached the new Russian Empire as a fact and opined that this Empire must be defeated. Other pundits described the new Russian Empire as a failed attempt because Russia failed to annex the whole of Ukraine.",
"title": "Contemporary usage"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "The chart below shows a timeline of polities that have been called empires. Dynastic changes are marked with a white line.",
"title": "Timeline of empires"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Empires have been the dominant international organization in world history:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "The fact that tribes, peoples, and nations have made empires points to a fundamental political dynamic, one that helps explain why empires cannot be confined to a particular place or era but emerged and reemerged over thousands of years and on all continents.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Empires ... can be traced as far back as the recorded history goes; indeed, most history is the history of empires ... It is the nation-state—an essentially 19th-century ideal—that is the historical novelty and that may yet prove to be the more ephemeral entity.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Our field's fixation on the Westphalian state has tended to obscure the fact that the main actors in global politics, for most of time immemorial, have been empires rather than states ... In fact, it is a very distorted view of even the Westphalian era not to recognize that it was always at least as much about empires as it was states. Almost all of the emerging European states no sooner began to consolidate than they were off on campaigns of conquest and commerce to the farthest reaches of the globe... Ironically, it was the European empires that carried the idea of the sovereign territorial state to the rest of the world ...",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Empire has been the historically predominant form of order in world politics. Looking at a time frame of several millennia, there was no global anarchic system until the European explorations and subsequent imperial and colonial ventures connected disparate regional systems, doing so approximately 500 years ago. Prior to this emergence of a global-scope system, the pattern of world politics was characterized by regional systems. These regional systems were initially anarchic and marked by high levels of military competition. But almost universally, they tended to consolidate into regional empires ... Thus it was empires—not anarchic state systems—that typically dominated the regional systems in all parts of the world ... Within this global pattern of regional empires, European political order was distinctly anomalous because it persisted so long as an anarchy.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Similarly, Anthony Pagden, Eliot A. Cohen, Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper estimate that \"empires have always been more frequent, more extensive political and social forms than tribal territories or nations have ever been.\" Many empires endured for centuries, while the age of the ancient Egyptian, Chinese and Japanese Empires is counted in millennia. \"Most people throughout history have lived under imperial rule.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Empires have played a long and critical part in human history ... [Despite] efforts in words and wars to put national unity at the center of political imagination, imperial politics, imperial practices, and imperial cultures have shaped the world we live in ... Rome was evoked as a model of splendor and order into the Twentieth century and beyond... By comparison, the nation-state appears as a blip on the historical horizon, a state form that emerged recently from under imperial skies and whose hold on the world's political imagination may well prove partial or transitory... The endurance of empire challenges the notion that the nation-state is natural, necessary, and inevitable ...",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Political scientist Hedley Bull wrote that \"in the broad sweep of human history ... the form of states system has been the exception rather than the rule\". His colleague Robert Gilpin confirmed this conclusion for the pre-modern period:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The history of interstate relations was largely that of successive great empires. The pattern of international political change during the millennia of the pre-modern era has been described as an imperial cycle ... World politics was characterized by the rise and decline of powerful empires, each of which in turn unified and ordered its respective international system. The recurrent pattern in every civilization of which we have knowledge was for one state to unify the system under its imperial domination. The propensity toward universal empire was the principal feature of pre-modern politics.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Historian Michael Doyle who undertook an extensive research on empires extended the observation into the modern era:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Empires have been the key actors in world politics for millennia. They helped create the interdependent civilizations of all the continents ... Imperial control stretches through history, many say, to the present day. Empires are as old as history itself ... They have held the leading role ever since.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The author of The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background, Hans Kohn, acknowledged that it was the opposite idea—of imperialism—that was, perhaps, the most influential single idea for two millennia, the ordering of human society through unified dominion and common civilization.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Expert on warfare Quincy Wright generalized on what he called \"universal empire\"—empire unifying all the contemporary system:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Balance of power systems have in the past tended, through the process of conquest of lesser states by greater states, towards reduction in the number of states involved, and towards less frequent but more devastating wars, until eventually a universal empire has been established through the conquest by one of all those remaining.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck finds that the macro-historic process of imperial expansion gave rise to global history in which the formations of universal empires were most significant stages. A later group of political scientists, working on the phenomenon of the current unipolarity, in 2007 edited research on several pre-modern civilizations by experts in respective fields. The overall conclusion was that the balance of power was inherently unstable order and usually soon broke in favor of imperial order. Yet before the advent of the unipolarity, world historian Arnold Toynbee and political scientist Martin Wight had drawn the same conclusion with an unambiguous implication for the modern world:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "When this [imperial] pattern of political history is found in the New World as well as in the Old World, it looks as if the pattern must be intrinsic to the political history of societies of the species we call civilizations, in whatever part of the world the specimens of this species occur. If this conclusion is warranted, it illuminates our understanding of civilization itself.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Most states systems have ended in universal empire, which has swallowed all the states of the system. The examples are so abundant that we must ask two questions: Is there any states system which has not led fairly directly to the establishment of a world empire? Does the evidence rather suggest that we should expect any states system to culminate in this way? ... It might be argued that every state system can only maintain its existence on the balance of power, that the latter is inherently unstable, and that sooner or later its tensions and conflicts will be resolved into a monopoly of power.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "The earliest thinker to approach the phenomenon of universal empire from a theoretical point of view was Polybius (2:3):",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "In previous times events in the world occurred without impinging on one another ... [Then] history became a whole, as if a single body; events in Italy and Libya came to be enmeshed with those in Asia and Greece, and everything gets directed towards one single goal.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Johann Gottlieb Fichte, having witnessed the battle at Jena in 1806 when Napoleon overwhelmed Prussia, described what he perceived as a deep historical trend:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "There is necessary tendency in every cultivated State to extend itself generally ... Such is the case in Ancient History ... As the States become stronger in themselves and cast off that [Papal] foreign power, the tendency towards a Universal Monarchy over the whole Christian World necessarily comes to light ... This tendency ... has shown itself successively in several States which could make pretensions to such a dominion, and since the fall of the Papacy, it has become the sole animating principle of our History ... Whether clearly or not—it may be obscurely—yet has this tendency lain at the root of the undertakings of many States in Modern Times ... Although no individual Epoch may have contemplated this purpose, yet is this the spirit which runs through all these individual Epochs, and invisibly urges them onward.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Fichte's later compatriot, Geographer Alexander von Humboldt, in the mid-Nineteenth century observed a macro-historic trend of imperial growth in both Hemispheres: \"Men of great and strong minds, as well as whole nations, acted under influence of one idea, the purity of which was utterly unknown to them.\" The imperial expansion filled the world c. 1900. Two famous contemporary observers—Frederick Turner and Halford Mackinder described the event and drew implications, the former predicting American overseas expansion and the latter stressing that the world empire is now in sight.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "In 1870, Argentine diplomat, jurist and political theorist Juan Bautista Alberdi described imperial consolidation. As von Humboldt, he found this trend unplanned and irrational but evident beyond doubt in the \"unwritten history of events.\" He linked this trend to the recent Evolution theory: Nations gravitate towards the formation of a single universal society. The laws that lead the nations in that direction are the same natural laws that has formed societies and are part of evolution. These evolutionary laws exist disregarding whether men recognize them.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Similarly, Friedrich Ratzel observed that the \"drive toward the building of continually larger states continues throughout the entirety of history\" and is active in the present. He drew \"Seven Laws of Expansionism\". His seventh law stated: \"The general trend toward amalgamation transmits the tendency of territorial growth from state to state and increases the tendency in the process of transmission.\" He commented on this law to make its meaning clear: \"There is on this small planet sufficient space for only one great state.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Two other contemporaries—Kang Youwei and George Vacher de Lapouge—stressed that imperial expansion cannot indefinitely proceed on the definite surface of the globe and therefore world empire is imminent. Kang Youwei in 1885 believed that the imperial trend will culminate in the contest between Washington and Berlin and Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 estimated that the final contest will be between Russia and America in which America is likely to triumph.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The above envisaged contests indeed took place, known to us as World War I and II. Writing during the Second, political scientists Derwent Whittlesey, Robert Strausz-Hupé and John H. Herz concluded: \"Now that the earth is at last parceled out, consolidation has commenced.\" In \"this world of fighting superstates there could be no end to war until one state had subjected all others, until world empire had been achieved by the strongest. This undoubtedly is the logical final stage in the geopolitical theory of evolution.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "The world is no longer large enough to harbor several self-contained powers ... The trend toward world domination or hegemony of a single power is but the ultimate consummation of a power-system engrafted upon an otherwise integrated world.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Writing in the last year of the War, American Theologian Parley Paul Wormer, German Historian Ludwig Dehio,and Hungarian-born writer Emery Reves drew similar conclusions. Fluctuating but persistent movement occurred through the centuries toward ever greater unity. The forward movement toward ever larger unities continues and there is no reason to conclude that it has come to an end. More likely, the greatest convergence of all time is at hand. \"Possibly this is the deeper meaning of the savage world conflicts\" of the 20th century.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "[T]he old European tendency toward division is now being thrust aside by the new global trend toward unification. And the onrush of this trend may not come to rest until it has asserted itself throughout our planet ... The global order still seems to be going through its birth pangs ... With the last tempest barely over, a new one is gathering.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The famous Anatomy of Peace by Reves, written and published in 1945, supposed that without the industrial power of the United States, Hitler already might have established world empire. Proposing world federalism, the book warned: Every dynamic force, every economic and technological reality, every \"law of history\" and logic \"indicates that we are on the verge of a period of empire building,\" which is \"the last phase of the struggle for the conquest of the world.\" As an elimination contest, one of the three remaining powers or a combination \"will achieve by force that unified control made mandatory by the times we live in… Anyone of three, by defeating the other two, would conquer and rule the world.\" If we fail to institute a unified control over the world in democratic way, the \"iron law of history\" would compel us to wage wars until world empire is finally attained through conquest. Since the former way is improbable due human blindness, we should precipitate the unification by conquest as quickly as possible and start the restoration of human liberties within the world empire.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Reves added \"Postscript\" to the Anatomy, opening: \"A few weeks after the publication of this book, the first atomic bomb exploded over the city of Hiroshima…\" This new physical fact however has changed nothing in the political situation. The world empire remains inevitable and nothing else in the book would have been said differently had it been written after August 6, 1945. Not much chance we have to establish world government before the next horrible war between the two superpowers and whoever is victorious would establish the world empire. The book sold an exceptional 800,000 copies in thirty languages, was endorsed by Albert Einstein and numerous other prominent figures, and in 1950 Reves was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "The year after the War and in the first year of the nuclear age, Einstein and British Philosopher Bertrand Russell, known as prominent pacifists, outlined for the near future a perspective of world empire (world government established by force). Einstein believed that, unless world government is established by agreement, an imperial world government would come by war or wars. Russell expected a third World War to result in a world government under the empire of the United States. Three years later, another prominent pacifist, Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, generalized on the ancient Empires of Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Greece to imply for the modern world: \"The analogy in present global terms would be the final unification of the world through the preponderant power of either America or Russia, whichever proved herself victorious in the final struggle.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "Russian colleague of Russell and Neighbour, Georgy Fedotov, wrote in 1945: All empires are but stages on the way to the sole Empire which must swallow all others. The only question is who will build it and on which foundations. Universal unity is the only alternative to annihilation. Unity by conference is utopian but unity by conquest by the strongest Power is not and probably the uncompleted in this War will be completed in the next. \"Pax Atlantica\" is the best of possible outcomes.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "Originally drafted as a secret study for the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor of the CIA) in 1944 and published as a book three years later, The Struggle for the World... by James Burnham concludes: If either of the two Superpowers wins, the result would be a universal empire which in our case would also be a world empire. The historical stage for a world empire had already been set prior to and independently of the discovery of atomic weapons but these weapons make a world empire inevitable and imminent. \"The atomic weapons ... will not permit the world to wait.\" Only a world empire can establish monopoly on atomic weapons and thus guarantee the survival of civilization. A world empire \"is in fact the objective of the Third World War which, in its preliminary stages, has already began\". The issue of a world empire \"will be decided, and in our day. In the course of the decision, both of the present antagonists may, it is true, be destroyed, but one of them must be.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "The next year, world historian Crane Brinton similarly supposed that the bomb may in the hands of a very skillful and lucky nation prove to be the weapon that permits that nation to unify the world by imperial conquest, to do what Napoleon and Hitler failed to do. Combined with other \"wonders of science,\" it would permit a quick and easy conquest of the world. In 1951, Hans Morgenthau concluded that the \"best\" outcome of World War III would be world empire:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "Today war has become an instrument of universal destruction, an instrument that destroys the victor and the vanquished ... At worst, victor and loser would be undistinguishable under the leveling impact of such a catastrophe ... At best, the destruction on one side would not be quite as great as on the other; the victor would be somewhat better off than the loser and would establish, with the aid of modern technology, his domination over the world.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "Expert on earlier civilizations, Toynbee, further developed the subject of World War III leading to world empire:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "The outcome of the Third World War ... seemed likely to be the imposition of an ecumenical peace of the Roman kind by the victor whose victory would leave him with a monopoly on the control of atomic energy in his grasp ... This denouement was foreshadowed, not only by present facts, but by historical precedents, since, in the histories of other civilizations, the time of troubles had been apt to culminate in the delivery of a knock-out blow resulting in the establishment of a universal state ...",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The year this volume of A Study of History was published, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced \"a knock-out blow\" as an official doctrine, a detailed Plan was elaborated and Fortune magazine mapped the design. Section VIII, \"Atomic Armaments\", of the famous National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68), approved by President Harry Truman in 1951, uses the term \"blow\" 17 times, mostly preceded by such adjectives as \"powerful\", \"overwhelming\", or \"crippling\". Another term applied by the strategists was \"Sunday punch\".",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "A pupil of Toynbee, William McNeill, associated with the case of ancient China, which \"put a quietus upon the disorders of the warring states by erecting an imperial bureaucratic structure ... The warring states of the Twentieth century seem headed for a similar resolution of their conflicts.\" The ancient \"resolution\" McNeill evoked was one of the most sweeping universal conquests in world history, performed by Qin in 230–221 BC. Chinese classic Sima Qian (d. 86 BC) described the event (6:234): \"Qin raised troops on a grand scale\" and \"the whole world celebrated a great bacchanal\". Herman Kahn of the RAND Corporation criticized an assembled group of SAC officers for their war plan (SIOP-62). He did not use the term bacchanal but he coined on the occasion an associating word: \"Gentlemen, you do not have a war plan. You have a war orgasm!\" History did not completely repeat itself but it passed close.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "According to the circumscription theory of Robert Carneiro, \"the more sharply circumscribed area, the more rapidly it will become politically unified.\" The Empires of Egypt, China and Japan are named the most durable political structures in human history. Correspondingly, these are the three most circumscribed civilizations in human history. The Empires of Egypt (established by Narmer c. 3000 BC) and China (established by Cheng in 221 BC) endured for over two millennia. German Sociologist Friedrich Tenbruck, criticizing the Western idea of progress, emphasized that China and Egypt remained at one particular stage of development for millennia. This stage was universal empire. The development of Egypt and China came to a halt once their empires \"reached the limits of their natural habitat\". Sinology does not recognize the Eurocentric view of the \"inevitable\" imperial fall; Egyptology and Japanology pose equal challenges.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Carneiro explored the Bronze Age civilizations. Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little and William Wohlforth researched the next three millennia, comparing eight civilizations. They conclude: The \"rigidity of the borders\" contributed importantly to hegemony in every concerned case. Hence, \"when the system's borders are rigid, the probability of hegemony is high\".",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "The circumscription theory was stressed in the comparative studies of the Roman and Chinese Empires. The circumscribed Chinese Empire recovered from all falls, while the fall of Rome, by contrast, was fatal. \"What counteracted this [imperial] tendency in Europe ... was a countervailing tendency for the geographical boundaries of the system to expand.\" If \"Europe had been a closed system, some great power would eventually have succeeded in establishing absolute supremacy over the other states in the region\".",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The ancient Chinese system was relatively enclosed, whereas the European system began to expand its reach to the rest of the world from the onset of system formation... In addition, overseas provided outlet for territorial competition, thereby allowing international competition on the European continent to ... trump the ongoing pressure toward convergence.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "In the 1945 book, The Precarious Balance, on four centuries of the European power struggle, Ludwig Dehio explained the durability of the European states system by its overseas expansion: \"Overseas expansion and the system of states were born at the same time; the vitality that burst the bounds of the Western world also destroyed its unity.\" In a more famous 1945 book, Reves similarly argued that the era of outward expansion is forever closed and the historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers. Edward Carr causally linked the end of the overseas outlet for imperial expansion and World Wars. In the nineteenth century, he wrote during the Second World War, imperialist wars were waged against \"primitive\" peoples. \"It was silly for European countries to fight against one another when they could still ... maintain social cohesion by continuous expansion in Asia and Africa. Since 1900, however, this has no longer been possible: \"the situation has radically changed\". Now wars are between \"imperial powers.\" Hans Morgenthau wrote that the very imperial expansion into relatively empty geographical spaces in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, in Africa, Eurasia, and western North America, deflected great power politics into the periphery of the earth, thereby reducing conflict. For example, the more attention Russia, France and the United States paid to expanding into far-flung territories in imperial fashion, the less attention they paid to one another, and the more peaceful, in a sense, the world was. But by the late nineteenth century, the consolidation of the great nation-states and empires of the West was consummated, and territorial gains could only be made at the expense of one another. John H. Herz outlined one \"chief function\" of the overseas expansion and the impact of its end:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "[A] European balance of power could be maintained or adjusted because it was relatively easy to divert European conflicts into overseas directions and adjust them there. Thus the openness of the world contributed to the consolidation of the territorial system. The end of the 'world frontier' and the resulting closedness of an interdependent world inevitably affected the system's effectiveness.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Some later commentators drew similar conclusions:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "For some commentators, the passing of the Nineteenth century seemed destined to mark the end of this long era of European empire building. The unexplored and unclaimed \"blank\" spaces on the world map were rapidly diminishing ... and the sense of \"global closure\" prompted an anxious fin-de-siècle debate about the future of the great empires ... The \"closure\" of the global imperial system implied ... the beginning of a new era of intensifying inter-imperial struggle along borders that now straddled the globe.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The opportunity for any system to expand in size seems almost a necessary condition for it to remain balanced, at least over the long haul. Far from being impossible or exceedingly improbable, systemic hegemony is likely under two conditions: \"when the boundaries of the international system remain stable and no new major powers emerge from outside the system.\" With the system becoming global, further expansion is precluded. The geopolitical condition of \"global closure\" will remain to the end of history. Since \"the contemporary international system is global, we can rule out the possibility that geographic expansion of the system will contribute to the emergence of a new balance of power, as it did so many times in the past.\" As Quincy Wright had put it, \"this process can no longer continue without interplanetary wars.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "One of leading experts on world-system theory, Christopher Chase-Dunn, noted that the circumscription theory is applicable for the global system, since the global system is circumscribed. In fact, within less than a century of its circumscribed existence the global system overcame the centuries-old balance of power and reached the unipolarity. Given \"constant spatial parameters\" of the global system, its unipolar structure is neither historically unusual nor theoretically surprising.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Randall Schweller theorized that a \"closed international system\", such as the global became a century ago, would reach \"entropy\" in a kind of thermodynamic law. Once the state of entropy is reached, there is no going back. The initial conditions are lost forever. Stressing the curiosity of the fact, Schweller writes that since the moment the modern world became a closed system, the process has worked in only one direction: from many poles to two poles to one pole. Thus unipolarity might represent the entropy—stable and permanent loss of variation—in the global system.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "Chalmers Johnson argues that the US global network of hundreds of military bases already represents a global empire in its initial form:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "For a major power, prosecution of any war that is not a defense of the homeland usually requires overseas military bases for strategic reasons. After the war is over, it is tempting for the victor to retain such bases and easy to find reasons to do so. Commonly, preparedness for a possible resumption of hostilities will be invoked. Over time, if a nation's aims become imperial, the bases form the skeleton of an empire.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Simon Dalby associates the network of bases with the Roman imperial system:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Looking at these impressive facilities which reproduce substantial parts of American suburbia complete with movie theatres and restaurant chains, the parallels with Roman garrison towns built on the Rhine, or on Hadrian's wall in England, where the remains are strikingly visible on the landscape, are obvious ... Less visible is the sheer scale of the logistics to keep garrison troops in residence in the far-flung reaches of empire ... That [military] presence literally builds the cultural logic of the garrison troops into the landscape, a permanent reminder of imperial control.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "Kenneth Pomeranz and Harvard Historian Niall Ferguson share the above-cited views: \"With American military bases in over 120 countries, we have hardly seen the end of empire.\" This \"vast archipelago of US military bases … far exceeds 19th-century British ambitions. Britain's imperium consisted of specific, albeit numerous, colonies and clients; the American imperial vision is much more global…\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "Conventional maps of US military deployments understate the extent of America's military reach. A Defense Department map of the world, which shows the areas of responsibility of the five major regional commands, suggests that America's sphere of military influence is now literally global ... The regional combatant commanders—the 'pro-consuls' of this imperium—have responsibility for swaths of territory beyond the wildest imaginings of their Roman predecessors.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Another Harvard Historian Charles S. Maier opens his Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors with these words: \"What a substratum for empire! Compared with which, the foundation of the Macedonian, the Roman and the British, sink into insignificance.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "One of the most accepted distinctions between earlier empires and the American Empire is the latter's \"global\" or \"planetary\" scope. French former Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine wondered: \"The situation is unprecedented: What previous empire subjugated the entire world...?\" The quests for universal empire are old but the present quest outdoes the previous in \"the notable respect of being the first to actually be global in its reach.\" Another historian Paul Kennedy, who wrote prediction talks of the imminent US \"imperial overstretch,\" in 2002 acknowledged about the present world system:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power. The Pax Britannica was run on the cheap. Napoleon's France and Philip II's Spain had powerful foes and were part of a multipolar system. Charlemagne's empire was merely western European in stretch. The Roman Empire stretched further afield, but there was another great empire in Persia and a larger one in China. There is ... no comparison.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "Walter Russell Mead observes that the United States attempts to repeate \"globally\" what the ancient empires of Egypt, China and Rome had each accomplished on a regional basis. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, Zygmunt Bauman, concludes that due to its planetary dimension, the new empire cannot be drawn on a map:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "The new 'empire' is not an entity that could be drawn on a map... Drawing a map of the empire would also be a pointless exercise because the most conspicuously 'imperial' trait of the new empire's mode of being consists in viewing and treating the whole of the planet ... as a potential grazing ground...",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "Times Atlas of Empires numbers 70 empires in the world history. Niall Ferguson lists numerous parallels between them and the United States. He concludes: \"To those who would still insist on American exceptionalism, the historian of empires can only retort: as exceptional as all the other 69 empires.\" Fareed Zakaria stressed one element not exceptional for the American Empire—the concept of exceptionalism. All dominant empires thought they were special.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "In 1945, Historian Ludwig Dehio predicted global unification due to the circumscription of the global system, although he did not use this term. Being global, the system can neither expand nor be subject to external intrusion as the European states system had been for centuries:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "In all previous struggles for supremacy, attempts to unite the European peninsula in a single state have been condemned to failure primarily through the intrusion of new forces from outside the old Occident. The Occident was an open area. But the globe was not, and, for that very reason, ultimately destined to be unified... And this very process [of unification] was clearly reflected in both World Wars.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "Fifteen years later, Dehio confirmed his hypothesis: The European system owed its durability to its overseas outlet. \"But how can a multiple grouping of world states conceivably be supported from outside in the framework of a finite globe?\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "During the same time, Quincy Wright developed a similar concept. Balance-of-power politics has aimed less at preserving peace than at preserving the independence of states and preventing the development of world empire. In the course of history, the balance of power repeatedly reemerged, but on ever-wider scale. Eventually, the scale became global. Unless we proceed to \"interplanetary wars,\" this pattern can no longer continue. In spite of significant reversals, the \"trend towards world unity\" can \"scarcely be denied.\" World unity appears to be \"the limit toward which the process of world history seems to tend.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "The same \"interplanetary\" motif is present also in the Anatomy of Peace: The era of outward expansion is forever closed. \"Until and unless we are able to communicate with another planet, the theater of human history will be limited to geographically determined, constant and known dimensions.\" The historic trend of expansion will result in direct collision between the remaining powers. Multiplied by modern technology, the centripetal forces will accomplish what the greatest empires of the past failed. \"For the first time in human history, one power can conquer and rule the world.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "The \"Father of American Anthropology,\" Franz Boas, known for his historical particularism and cultural relativism, outlined the \"inexorable laws of history\" by which political units grow larger in size and smaller in number. The process began in the earliest times and has continued almost always in the same direction. In the long run, the tendency to unification has been more powerful than of disintegration. \"Thus the history of mankind shows us the grand spectacle of the grouping of man in units of ever increasing size.\" The progress in the direction of unification has been so regular and so marked that we must needs conclude that the same tendencies will govern our history in the future. Today the unity of the world is not less conceivable than the modern nations were in the early history. The practical difficulties that stand in the way of the formation of still larger units count for nothing before the \"inexorable laws of history.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "Five later scholars—Hornell Hart, Raoul Naroll, Louis Morano, Rein Taagepera and the author of the circumscription theory Robert Carneiro—researched expanding imperial cycles. All argued that these cycles represent an historical trend leading to world empire. Naroll and Carneiro also found this outcome \"close at hand,\" c. 2200 and 2300 respectively.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "The founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, writing yet in 1943, drew a more specific and immediate future imperial project: After the War America is bound \"to take over the command of the skies.\" The danger of \"the utter annihilation of all enemy towns and lands\" can \"only be prevented by the air superiority of a single power ... America's air role is the only alternative to intercontinental wars.\" Despite his outstanding anti-imperialism, Coudenhove-Kalergi detailed:",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "No imperialism, but technical and strategic problems of security urge America to rule the skies of the globe, just as Britain during the last century ruled the seas of the world... Pacifists and anti-imperialists will be shocked by this logic. They will try to find an escape. But they will try in vain... At the end of the war the crushing superiority of American plane production will be an established fact... The solution of the problem ... is by no means ideal, nor even satisfactory. But it is the minor evil...",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Coudenhove-Kalergi envisaged a kind of Pax Americana modeled on \"Pax Romana\":",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "During the third century BC the Mediterranean world was divided on five great powers—Roma and Carthage, Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. The balance of power led to a series of wars until Rome emerged the queen of the Mediterranean and established an incomparable era of two centuries of peace and progress, the 'Pax Romana'... It may be that America's air power could again assure our world, now much smaller than the Mediterranean at that period, two hundred years of peace...",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "This period would be necessary transitory stage before World State is eventually established, though he did not specify how the last transformation is expected to occur. Coudenhove-Kalergi's follower in the teleological theory of World State, Toynbee, supposed the traditional way of universal conquest and emphasized that the world is ripe for conquest: \"...Hitler's eventual failure to impose peace on the world by the force of arms was due, not to any flaw in his thesis that the world was ripe for conquest, but to an accidental combination of incidental errors in his measures...\" But \"in falling by so narrow a margin to win the prize of world-dominion for himself, Hitler had left the prize dangling within the reach of any successor capable of pursuing the same aims of world-conquest with a little more patience, prudence, and tact.\" With his \"revolution of destruction,\" Hitler has performed the \"yeoman service\" for \"some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica... For a post-Hitlerian empire-builder, Hitler's derelict legacy was a gift of the Gods.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The next \"architect of a Pax Ecumenica,\" known more commonly as Pax Americana, demonstrated \"more patience, prudence, and tact.\" Consequently, as President Dwight Eisenhower put it, the NATO allies became \"almost psychopathic\" whenever anyone talked about a US withdrawal, and the reception of his successor John F. Kennedy in Berlin was \"almost hysterical,\" as Chancellor Conrad Adenauer characterized it. John Ikenberry finds that the Europeans wanted a stronger, more formal and more imperial system than the United States was initially willing to provide. In the end the United States settled for this \"form of empire—a Pax Americana with formal commitments to Europe.\" According to a much debated thesis, the United States became \"empire by invitation.\" The period discussed in the thesis (1945–1952) ended precisely the year Toynbee theorized on \"some future architect of a Pax Ecumenica.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Dissociating America from Rome, Eisenhower gave a pessimistic forecast. In 1951, before he became President, he had written on West Europe: \"We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not, politically, our frontiers. What we must do is to assist these [West European] peoples.\" Two years later, he wrote: When it was decided to deploy US divisions to Europe, no one had \"for an instant\" thought that they would remain there for \"several decades\"—that the United States could \"build a sort of Roman Wall with its own troops and so protect the world.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Eisenhower assured Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev on Berlin in 1959: \"Clearly we did not contemplate 50 years in occupation there.\" It lasted, remarks Marc Trachtenberg, from July 1945 to September 1994, 10 months short of 50 years. Notably, when the US troops eventually left, they left eastward. Confirming the theory of the \"empire by invitation,\" with their first opportunity East European states extended the \"invitation.\"",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Chalmers Johnson regards the global military reach of the United States as empire in its \"initial\" form. Dimitri Simes finds that most of the world sees the United States as a \"nascent\" imperial power. Some scholars concerned how this empire would look in its ultimate form. The ultimate form of empire was described by Michael Doyle in his Empires. It is empire in which its two main components—the ruling core and the ruled periphery—merged to form one integrated whole. At this stage the empire as defined ceases to exist and becomes world state. Doyle examplifies the transformation on the case of the Roman Emperor Caracalla whose legislation in AD 212 extended the Roman citizenship to all inhabitants of the Mediterranean world.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Doyle's case of the Roman Empire had also been evoked by Susan Strange in her 1988 article, \"The Future of the American Empire.\" Strange emphasized that the most persistent empires were those which best managed to integrate the ruling core and the peripheral allies. The article is partly a reply on the published a year earlier bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers which predicted imminent US \"imperial overstretch.\" Strange found this outcome unlikely, stressing the fact that the peripheral allies have been successfully recruited into the American Empire.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "Envisaging a world empire of either the United States or the Soviet Union (whoever is victorious in World War III), Bertrand Russell projected the Roman scenario too: \"Like the Romans, they will, in the course of time, extend citizenship to the vanquished. There will then be a true world state, and it will be possible to forget that it will have owed its origin to conquest.\" International Relations scholar Alexander Wendt supposes world empire by universal conquest and subsequent consolidation, provided the conquering power recognizes all conquered members. For his example he also invokes the Roman Empire.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "To the case of Caracalla, Toynbee added the Abbasid cosmopolitan reformation of 750 AD. Both \"were good auguries for the prospect that, in a post-Modern chapter of Western history, a supranational commonwealth originally based on the hegemony of a paramount power over its satellites might eventually be put on the sounder basis of a constitutional partnership in which all the people of all the partner states would have their fare share in the conduct of common affairs.\" To the cases of Caracalla and the Abbasid revolution, Max Ostrovsky added the Han overthrow of Qin in 206 BC and more gradual cosmopolitan reformations he finds characteristic to all persistent empires and expected in the future global empire.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "Crane Brinton expected that the world empire would not be built instantly but not as slowly as Rome, for much in the modern world has been speeded up. Charles Galton Darwin, a grandson of the father of Evolution Theory, suggested that China, as an isolated and enduring civilization, seems to provide the most relevant model for the global future. As the Chinese Empire, the regions of the world, periodically albeit more rarely, will be united by force into an uneasy world-empire, which will endure for a period until it falls. Along China, Ostrovsky mentions Egypt as a model for the future but, by contrast, estimates that the intermediate periods of the global empire will be shorter and rarer.",
"title": "Theoretical research"
}
]
| An empire is a political unit made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, different populations have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor or empress; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or are ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians. There have been "ancient and modern, centralized and decentralized, ultra-brutal and relatively benign" empires. An important distinction has been between land empires made up solely of contiguous territories, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Russian Empire; and those created by sea-power, which include territories that are remote from the 'home' country of the empire, such as the Median Empire (Iran) and British Empire. Aside from the more formal usage, the word empire can also refer colloquially to a large-scale business enterprise, a political organization controlled by a single individual, or a group. The concept of empire is associated with other such concepts as imperialism, colonialism, and globalization, with imperialism referring to the creation and maintenance of unequal relationships between nations and not necessarily the policy of a state headed by an emperor or empress. Empire is often used as a term to describe displeasure to overpowering situations. | 2001-11-29T21:55:12Z | 2023-12-31T18:49:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire |
10,160 | Final Solution | The Final Solution (German: die Endlösung, pronounced [diː ˈʔɛntˌløːzʊŋ] ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (German: Endlösung der Judenfrage, pronounced [ˈɛntˌløːzʊŋ deːɐ̯ ˈjuːdn̩ˌfʁaːɡə] ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The Final Solution did not, however, include the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed by Romanian forces. By far the greatest extermination of Jews by non-German forces, this genocide was "operationally separate from the Nazi Final Solution".
The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp". Christopher Browning, a historian specializing in the Holocaust, wrote that most historians agree that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time. "It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental." In 1940, following the Fall of France, Adolf Eichmann devised the Madagascar Plan to move Europe's Jewish population to the French colony, but the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons, mainly a naval blockade. There were also preliminary plans to deport Jews to Palestine and Siberia. In 1941, Raul Hilberg wrote that in the first phase of the mass-murder of Jews, the mobile killing units began to pursue their victims across occupied eastern territories; in the second phase, stretching across all of German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on death trains to centralized extermination camps built for the purpose of systematic murder of Jews.
The term "Final Solution" was a euphemism used by the Nazis to refer to their plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people. Some historians argue that the usual tendency of the German leadership was to be extremely guarded when discussing the Final Solution. For example, Mark Roseman wrote that euphemisms were "their normal mode of communicating about murder". However, Jeffrey Herf has argued that the role of euphemisms in Nazi propaganda has been exaggerated, and in fact Nazi leaders often made direct threats against Jews. For example, during his speech of 30 January 1939, Hitler threatened "the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".
From gaining power in January 1933 until the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany was focused on intimidation, expropriating their money and property, and encouraging them to emigrate. According to the Nazi Party policy statement, Jews and the Romani people were the only "alien people in Europe". In 1936, the Bureau of Romani Affairs in Munich was taken over by Interpol and renamed the Center for Combating the Gypsy Menace. Introduced at the end of 1937, the "final solution of the Gypsy Question" entailed round-ups, expulsions, and incarceration of Romani in concentration camps built at, until this point, Dachau, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Taucha and Westerbork. After the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, Central Offices for Jewish Emigration were established in Vienna and Berlin to increase Jewish emigration, without covert plans for their forthcoming annihilation.
The outbreak of war and the invasion of Poland brought a population of 3.5 million Polish Jews under the control of the Nazi and Soviet security forces, and marked the start of the Holocaust in Poland. In the German-occupied zone of Poland, Jews were forced into hundreds of makeshift ghettos, pending other arrangements. Two years later, with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German top echelon began to pursue Hitler's new anti-Semitic plan to eradicate, rather than expel, Jews. Hitler's earlier ideas about forcible removal of Jews from the German-controlled territories to achieve Lebensraum were abandoned after the failure of the air campaign against Britain, initiating a naval blockade of Germany. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler became the chief architect of a new plan, which came to be called The Final Solution to the Jewish question. On 31 July 1941, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring wrote to Reinhard Heydrich (Himmler's deputy and chief of the RSHA), authorising him to make the "necessary preparations" for a "total solution of the Jewish question" and coordinate with all affected organizations. Göring also instructed Heydrich to submit concrete proposals for the implementation of the new projected goal.
Broadly speaking, the extermination of Jews was carried out in two major operations. With the onset of Operation Barbarossa, mobile killing units of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, and Order Police battalions were dispatched to the occupied Soviet Union for the express purpose of murdering all Jews. During the early stages of the invasion, Himmler himself visited Białystok at the beginning of July 1941, and requested that, "as a matter of principle, any Jew" behind the German-Soviet frontier was to be "regarded as a partisan". His new orders gave the SS and police leaders full authority for the mass-murder behind the front lines. By August 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children were shot. In the second phase of annihilation, the Jewish inhabitants of central, western, and south-eastern Europe were transported by Holocaust trains to camps with newly built gassing facilities. Raul Hilberg wrote: "In essence, the killers of the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside this arena, the victims were brought to the killers. The two operations constitute an evolution not only chronologically, but also in complexity." Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before plans for the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to annihilate the entire Jewish population that extermination camps such as Auschwitz II Birkenau and Treblinka were fitted with permanent gas chambers to murder large numbers of Jews in a relatively short period of time.
The plans to exterminate all the Jews of Europe were formalized at the Wannsee Conference, held at an SS guesthouse near Berlin, on 20 January 1942. The conference was chaired by Heydrich and attended by 15 senior officials of the Nazi Party and the German government. Most of those attending were representatives of the Interior Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and the Justice Ministry, including Ministers for the Eastern Territories. At the conference, Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the "Final Solution". This figure included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom and of neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey). Eichmann's biographer David Cesarani wrote that Heydrich's main purpose in convening the conference was to assert his authority over the various agencies dealing with Jewish issues. "The simplest, most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations" to death camps, according to Cesarani, "was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east" under the single authority of the RSHA. A copy of the minutes of this meeting was found by the Allies in March 1947; it was too late to serve as evidence during the first Nuremberg Trial, but was used by prosecutor General Telford Taylor in the subsequent Nuremberg Trials.
After the end of World War II, surviving archival documents provided a clear record of the Final Solution policies and actions of Nazi Germany. They included the Wannsee Conference Protocol, which documented the co-operation of various German state agencies in the SS-led Holocaust, as well as some 3,000 tons of original German records captured by Allied armies, including the Einsatzgruppen reports, which documented the progress of the mobile killing units assigned, among other tasks, to murder Jewish civilians during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The evidential proof which documented the mechanism of the Holocaust was submitted at Nuremberg.
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union codenamed Operation Barbarossa, which commenced on 22 June 1941, set in motion a "war of annihilation" which quickly opened the door to the systematic mass murder of European Jews. For Hitler, Bolshevism was merely "the most recent and most nefarious manifestation of the eternal Jewish threat". On 3 March 1941, Wehrmacht Joint Operations Staff Chief Alfred Jodl repeated Hitler's declaration that the "Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia would have to be eliminated" and that the forthcoming war would be a confrontation between two completely opposing cultures. In May 1941, Gestapo leader Heinrich Müller wrote a preamble to the new law limiting the jurisdiction of military courts in prosecuting troops for criminal actions because: "This time, the troops will encounter an especially dangerous element from the civilian population, and therefore, have the right and obligation to secure themselves."
Himmler and Heydrich assembled a force of about 3,000 men from Security Police, Gestapo, Kripo, SD, and the Waffen-SS, as the so-called "special commandos of the security forces" known as the Einsatzgruppen, to eliminate both communists and Jews in occupied territories. These forces were supported by 21 battalions of Orpo Reserve Police under Kurt Daluege, adding up to 11,000 men. The explicit orders given to the Order Police varied between locations, but for Police Battalion 309 participating in the first mass murder of 5,500 Polish Jews in the Soviet-controlled Białystok (a Polish provincial capital), Major Weiss explained to his officers that Barbarossa is a war of annihilation against Bolshevism, and that his battalions would proceed ruthlessly against all Jews, regardless of age or sex.
After crossing the Soviet demarcation line in 1941, what had been regarded as exceptional in the Greater Germanic Reich became a normal way of operating in the east. The crucial taboo against the murder of women and children was breached not only in Białystok but also in Gargždai in late June. By July, significant numbers of women and children were being murdered behind all front-lines not only by the Germans but also by the local Ukrainian and Lithuanian auxiliary forces. On 29 July 1941, at a meeting of SS officers in Vileyka (Polish Wilejka, now Belarus), the Einsatzgruppen had been given a dressing-down for their low execution figures. Heydrich himself issued an order to include the Jewish women and children in all subsequent shooting operations. Accordingly, by the end of July the entire Jewish population of Vileyka, men, women and children, were murdered. Around 12 August, no less than two-thirds of the Jews shot in Surazh were women and children of all ages. In late August 1941 the Einsatzgruppen murdered 23,600 Jews in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre. A month later, the largest mass shooting of Soviet Jews took place on 29–30 September in the ravine of Babi Yar, near Kyiv, where more than 33,000 Jewish people of all ages were systematically machine-gunned. In mid-October 1941, HSSPF South, under the command of Friedrich Jeckeln, had reported the indiscriminate murder of more than 100,000 people.
By the end of December 1941, before the Wannsee Conference, over 439,800 Jewish people had been murdered, and the Final Solution policy in the east became common knowledge within the SS. Entire regions were reported "free of Jews" by the Einsatzgruppen. Addressing his district governors in the General Government on 16 December 1941, Governor-General Hans Frank said: "But what will happen to the Jews? Do you believe they will be lodged in settlements in Ostland? In Berlin, we were told: why all this trouble; we cannot use them in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves!" Two days later, Himmler recorded the outcome of his discussion with Hitler. The result was: "als Partisanen auszurotten" ("exterminate them as partisans"). Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust. Within two years, the total number of shooting victims in the east had risen to between 618,000 and 800,000 Jews.
Several scholars have suggested that the Final Solution began in the newly formed district of Bezirk Bialystok. The German army took over Białystok within days. On Friday, 27 June 1941, the Reserve Police Battalion 309 arrived in the city and set the Great Synagogue on fire with hundreds of Jewish men locked inside. The burning of the synagogue was followed by a frenzy of murders both inside the homes around the Jewish neighbourhood of Chanajki, and in the city park, lasting until night time. The next day, some 30 wagons of dead bodies were taken to mass graves. As noted by Browning, the murders were led by a commander "who correctly intuited and anticipated the wishes of his Führer" without direct orders. For reasons unknown, the number of victims in the official report by Major Weis was cut in half. The next mass-shooting of Polish Jews within the newly formed Reichskommissariat Ostland took place in two days of 5–7 August in occupied Pińsk, where over 12,000 Jews were murdered by the Waffen SS, not the Einsatzgruppen. An additional 17,000 Jews perished there in a ghetto uprising crushed a year later with the aid of Belorusian Auxiliary Police.
An Israeli historian Dina Porat claimed that the Final Solution, i.e.: "the systematic overall physical extermination of Jewish communities one after the other—began in Lithuania" during the massive German chase after the Red Army across the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The subject of the Holocaust in Lithuania has been analysed by Konrad Kweit from USHMM who wrote: "Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust [beyond the eastern borders of occupied Poland]. The Germans carried out the mass executions [...] signaling the beginning of the 'Final Solution'." About 80,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania by October (including in formerly Polish Wilno) and about 175,000 by the end of 1941 according to official reports.
Within one week from the start of Operation Barbarossa, Heydrich issued an order to his Einsatzgruppen for the on-the-spot execution of all Bolsheviks, interpreted by the SS to mean all Jews. One of the first indiscriminate massacres of men, women, and children in Reichskommissariat Ukraine took the lives of over 4,000 Polish Jews in occupied Łuck on 2–4 July 1941, murdered by Einsatzkommando 4a assisted by the Ukrainian People's Militia. Formed officially on 20 August 1941, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine—stretching from prewar east-central Poland to Crimea—had become operational theatre of the Einsatzgruppe C. Within the Soviet Union proper, between 9 July 1941 and 19 September 1941 the city of Zhytomyr was made Judenfrei in three murder operations conducted by German and Ukrainian police in which 10,000 Jews perished. In the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre of 26–28 August 1941 some 23,600 Jews were shot in front of open pits (including 14,000–18,000 people expelled from Hungary). After an incident in Bila Tserkva in which 90 small children left behind had to be shot separately, Blobel requested that Jewish mothers hold them in their arms during mass shootings. Long before the conference at Wannsee, 28,000 Jews were shot by SS and Ukrainian military in Vinnytsia on 22 September 1941, followed by 29 September massacre of 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar. In Dnipropetrovsk, on 13 October 1941 some 10,000–15,000 Jews were shot. In Chernihiv, 10,000 Jews were murdered and only 260 Jews were spared. In mid-October, during the Krivoy-Rog massacre of 4,000–5,000 Soviet Jews the entire Ukrainian auxiliary police force actively participated. In the first days of January 1942 in Kharkiv, 12,000 Jews were murdered, but smaller massacres continued in this period on daily basis in countless other locations. In August 1942 in the presence of only a few German SS men over 5,000 Jews were massacred in Polish Zofjówka by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police leading to the town's complete sweep from existence.
Historians find it difficult to determine precisely when the first concerted effort at annihilation of all Jews began in the last weeks of June 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. Dr. Samuel Drix (Witness to Annihilation), Jochaim Schoenfeld (Holocaust Memoirs), and several survivors of the Janowska concentration camp, who were interviewed in the film Janovska Camp at Lvov, among other witnesses, have argued that the Final Solution began in Lwów (Lemberg) in Distrikt Galizien of the General Government during the German advance across Soviet-occupied Poland. Statements and memoirs of survivors emphasize that, when Ukrainian nationalists and ad hoc Ukrainian People's Militia (soon reorganized as the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) began to murder women and children, rather than only male Jews, the "Final Solution" had begun. Witnesses have said that such murders happened both prior to and during the pogroms reportedly triggered by the NKVD prisoner massacre. The question of whether there was some coordination between the Lithuanian and Ukrainian militias remains open (i.e. collaborating for a joint assault in Kovno, Wilno, and Lwów).
The murders continued uninterrupted. On 12 October 1941, in Stanisławów, some 10,000–12,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot at the Jewish cemetery by the German uniformed SS-men and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during the so-called "Bloody Sunday [de; uk]" (de). The shooters began firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire. It was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews in Generalgouvernement prior to mass gassings of Aktion Reinhard, which commenced at Bełżec in March 1942. Notably, the extermination operations in Chełmno had begun on 8 December 1941, one-and-a-half months before Wannsee, but Chełmno—located in Reichsgau Wartheland—was not a part of Reinhard, and neither was Auschwitz-Birkenau functioning as an extermination center until November 1944 in Polish lands annexed by Hitler and added to Germany proper.
The conference at Wannsee gave impetus to the so-called second sweep of the Holocaust by the bullet in the east. Between April and July 1942 in Volhynia, 30,000 Jews were murdered in death pits with the help of dozens of newly formed Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft. Owing to good relations with the Ukrainian Hilfsverwaltung, these auxiliary battalions were deployed by the SS also in Russia Center, Russia South, and in Byelorussia; each with about 500 soldiers divided into three companies. They participated in the extermination of 150,000 Volhynian Jews alone, or 98 percent of the Jewish inhabitants of the entire region. In July 1942 the Completion of the Final Solution in the General Government territory which included Distrikt Galizien, was ordered personally by Himmler. He set the initial deadline for 31 December 1942.
When the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the area of the General Government was enlarged by the inclusion of regions that had been annexed by the Soviet Union since the 1939 invasion. The murders of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto in the Warthegau district began in early December 1941 with the use of gas vans (approved by Heydrich) at the Kulmhof extermination camp. Victims were misled under the deceptive guise of "Resettlement in the East", organised by SS Commissioners, which was also tried and tested at Chełmno. By the time the European-wide Final Solution was formulated two months later, Heydrich's RSHA had already confirmed the effectiveness of industrial murder by exhaust fumes, and the strength of deception.
Construction work on the first killing centre at Bełżec in occupied Poland began in October 1941, three months before the Wannsee Conference. The new facility was operational by March the following year. By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands: Sobibór operational by May 1942, and Treblinka operational in July. From July 1942, the mass murder of Polish and foreign Jews took place at Treblinka as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz. By the time the mass killings of Operation Reinhard ended in 1943, roughly two million Jews in German-occupied Poland had been murdered. The total number of people murdered in 1942 in Lublin/Majdanek, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka was 1,274,166 by Germany's own estimation, not counting Auschwitz II Birkenau nor Kulmhof. Their bodies were buried in mass graves initially. Both Treblinka and Bełżec were equipped with powerful crawler excavators from Polish construction sites in the vicinity, capable of most digging tasks without disrupting surfaces. Although other methods of extermination, such as the cyanic poison Zyklon B, were already being used at other Nazi killing centres such as Auschwitz, the Aktion Reinhard camps used lethal exhaust gases from captured tank engines.
The Holocaust by bullets (as opposed to the Holocaust by gas) went on in the territory of occupied Poland in conjunction with the ghetto uprisings, irrespective of death camps' quota. In two weeks of July 1942, the Słonim Ghetto revolt, crushed with the help of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft, cost the lives of 8,000–13,000 Jews. The second largest mass shooting (to that particular date) took place in late October 1942 when the insurgency was suppressed in the Pińsk Ghetto; over 26,000 men, women and children were shot with the aid of Belarusian Auxiliary Police before the ghetto's closure. During the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II), 13,000 Jews were killed in action before May 1943. Numerous other uprisings were quelled without impacting the pre-planned Nazi deportations actions.
About two-thirds of the overall number of victims of the Final Solution were murdered before February 1943, which included the main phase of the extermination programme in the West launched by Eichmann on 11 June 1942 from Berlin. The Holocaust trains run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and several other national railway systems delivered condemned Jewish captives from as far as Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moravia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and even Scandinavia. The cremation of exhumed corpses to destroy any evidence left behind began in early spring and continued throughout summer. The nearly completed clandestine programme of murdering all deportees was explicitly addressed by Heinrich Himmler in his Posen speeches made to the leadership of the Nazi Party on 4 October and during a conference in Posen (Poznan) of 6 October 1943 in occupied Poland. Himmler explained why the Nazi leadership found it necessary to murder Jewish women and children along with the Jewish men. The assembled functionaries were told that the Nazi state policy was "the extermination of the Jewish people" as such.
We were faced with the question: what about the women and children?–I have decided on a solution to this problem. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men only—in other words, to kill them or have them killed while allowing the avengers, in the form of their children, to grow up in the midst of our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth.
On 19 October 1943, five days after the prisoner revolt in Sobibór, Operation Reinhard was terminated by Odilo Globocnik on behalf of Himmler. The camps responsible for the murder of nearly 2,700,000 Jews were soon closed. Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were dismantled and ploughed over before spring. The operation was followed by the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war carried out on 3 November 1943; with approximately 43,000 prisoners shot one-by-one simultaneously in three nearby locations by the Reserve Police Battalion 101 hand-in-hand with the Trawniki men from Ukraine. Auschwitz alone had enough capacity to fulfill the Nazis' remaining extermination needs.
Unlike Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Lublin-Majdanek, which were built in the occupied General Government territory inhabited by the largest concentrations of Jews, the killing centre at Auschwitz subcamp of Birkenau operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany directly. The new gas chambers at Bunker I were finished around March 1942 when the Final Solution was officially launched at Belzec. Until mid-20 June 000 Silesian Jews were murdered there using Zyklon B. In July 1942, Bunker II became operational. In August, another 10,000–13,000 Polish Jews from Silesia were murdered, along with 16,000 French Jews declared 'stateless', and 7,700 Jews from Slovakia.
The infamous 'Gate of Death' at Auschwitz II for the incoming freight trains was built of brick and cement mortar in 1943, and the three-track rail spur was added. Until mid-August, 45,000 Thessaloniki Jews were murdered in a mere six months, including over 30,000 Jews from Sosnowiec (Sosnowitz) and Bendzin Ghettos. The spring of 1944 marked the beginning of the last phase of the Final Solution at Birkenau. The new big ramps and sidings were constructed, and two freight elevators were installed inside Crematoria II and III for moving the bodies faster. The size of the Sonderkommando was nearly quadrupled in preparation for the Special Operation Hungary (Sonderaktion Ungarn). In May 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau became the site of one of the two largest mass murder operations in modern history, after the Großaktion Warschau deportations of the Warsaw Ghetto inmates to Treblinka in 1942. It is estimated that until July 1944 approximately 320,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed at Birkenau in less than eight weeks. The entire operation was photographed by the SS. In total, between April and November 1944, Auschwitz II received over 585,000 Jews from over a dozen regions as far as Greece, Italy, and France, including 426,000 Jews from Hungary, 67,000 from Łódź, 25,000 from Theresienstadt, and the last 23,000 Jews from the General Government. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, when the gassing had already stopped.
Historians disagree as to when and how the Nazi leadership decided that the European Jews should be exterminated. The controversy is commonly described as the functionalism versus intentionalism debate which began in the 1960s, and subsided thirty years later. In the 1990s, the attention of mainstream historians moved away from the question of top executive orders triggering the Holocaust and focused on factors that were overlooked earlier, such as personal initiative and ingenuity of countless functionaries in charge of the killing fields. No written evidence of Hitler ordering the Final Solution has ever been found to serve as a "smoking gun", and therefore, this one particular question remains unanswered.
Hitler made numerous predictions regarding the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe prior to the beginning of World War II. During a speech given on 30 January 1939, on the sixth anniversary of his accession to power, Hitler said:
Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!
Raul Hilberg, in his book The Destruction of the European Jews, was the first historian to systematically document and analyse the Nazi project to murder every Jew in Europe. The book was initially published in 1961, and issued in an enlarged version in 1985.
Hilberg's analysis of the steps that led to the destruction of European Jews revealed that it was "an administrative process carried out by bureaucrats in a network of offices spanning a continent". Hilberg divides this bureaucracy into four components or hierarchies: the Nazi Party, the civil service, industry, and the Wehrmacht armed forces—but their cooperation is viewed as "so complete that we may truly speak of their fusion into a machinery of destruction". For Hilberg, the key stages in the destruction process were: definition and registration of the Jews; expropriation of property; concentration into ghettoes and camps; and, finally, annihilation. Hilberg gives an estimate of 5.1 million as the total number of Jews murdered. He breaks this figure down into three categories: Ghettoization and general privation: over 800,000; open-air shootings: over 1,300,000; extermination camps: up to 3,000,000.
With respect to the "functionalism versus intentionalism" debate about a master plan for the Final Solution, or the lack thereof, Hilberg posits what has been described as "a kind of structural determinism". Hilberg argues that "a destruction process has an inherent pattern" and the "sequence of steps in a destruction process is thus determined". If a bureaucracy is motivated "to inflict maximum damage upon a group of people", it is "inevitable that a bureaucracy—no matter how decentralized its apparatus or how unplanned its activities—should push its victims through these stages", culminating in their annihilation.
In his monograph, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942, Christopher Browning argues that Nazi policy toward the Jews was radicalized twice: in September 1939, when the invasion of Poland implied policies of mass expulsion and massive loss of Jewish lives; and in spring 1941, when preparation for Operation Barbarossa involved the planning of mass execution, mass expulsion, and starvation—to dwarf what had happened in Jewish Poland.
Browning believes that the "Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp" took shape during a five-week period, from 18 September to 25 October 1941. During this time, the sites of the first extermination camps were selected, different methods of murder were tested, Jewish emigration was forbidden, and 11 transports departed for Łódź as a temporary holding station. Of this period, Browning writes, "The vision of the Final Solution had crystallised in the minds of the Nazi leadership, and was being turned into reality." This was the peak of Nazi victories against the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front, and, according to Browning, the stunning series of German victories led to both an expectation that the war would soon be won, and the planning of the final destruction of the "Jewish-Bolshevik enemy".
Browning describes the creation of the extermination camps, which were responsible for the largest number of murders in the Final Solution, as bringing together three separate developments within Nazi Germany: the concentration camps which had been established in Germany since 1933; an expansion of the gassing technology of the Nazi euthanasia programme to provide a murder technique of greater efficiency and psychological detachment; and the creation of "factories of death" to be fed endless streams of victims by mass uprooting and deportation that utilized the experience and personnel from earlier population resettlement programmes—especially the HSSPF and Adolf Eichmann's RSHA for "Jewish affairs and evacuations".
Peter Longerich argues that the search for a finite date on which the Nazis embarked upon the extermination of the Jews is futile, in his book Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (2011). Longerich writes: "We should abandon the notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision" that led to the Holocaust.
Timothy Snyder writes that Longerich "grants the significance of Greiser's murder of Jews by gas at Chełmno in December 1941", but also detects a significant moment of escalation in spring 1942, which includes "the construction of the large death factory at Treblinka for the destruction of the Warsaw Jews, and the addition of a gas chamber to the concentration camp at Auschwitz for the murder of the Jews of Silesia". Longerich suggests that it "was only in the summer of 1942, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to the lands of a conquered USSR". For Longerich, to see mass-murder as the Final Solution was an acknowledgement by the Nazi leadership that there would not be a German military victory over the USSR in the near future.
David Cesarani emphasises the improvised, haphazard nature of Nazi policies in response to changing war time conditions in his overview, Final Solution: The Fate of the European Jews 1933–49 (2016). "Cesarani provides telling examples", wrote Mark Roseman, "of a lack of coherence and planning for the future in Jewish policy, even when we would most expect it. The classic instance is the invasion of Poland in 1939, when not even the most elementary consideration had been given to what should happen to Poland's Jews either in the shorter or longer term. Given that Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in the world, and that, in a couple of years, it would house the extermination camps, this is remarkable."
Whereas Browning places the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in the context of the Wehrmacht victories on the Eastern front, Cesarani argues that the German subsequent realisation that there would be no swift victory over the Soviet Union "scuppered the last territorial 'solution' still on the table: expulsion to Siberia". Germany's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941, "meant that holding European Jews hostage to deter the US from entering the conflict was now pointless". Cesarani concludes, the Holocaust "was rooted in anti-Semitism, but it was shaped by war". The fact that the Nazis were, ultimately, so successful in murdering between five and six million Jews was not due to the efficiency of Nazi Germany or the clarity of their policies. "Rather, the catastrophic rate of killing was due to German persistence ... and the duration of the murderous campaigns. This last factor was largely a consequence of allied military failure."
The entry of the U.S. into the War is also crucial to the time-frame proposed by Christian Gerlach, who argued in his 1997 thesis that the Final Solution decision was announced on 12 December 1941, when Hitler addressed a meeting of the Nazi Party (the Reichsleiter) and of regional party leaders (the Gauleiter). The day after Hitler's speech, on 13 December 1941, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary:
With respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would see their annihilation in it. That wasn't just a catch-word. The world war is here and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence.
Cesarani notes that by 1943, as the military position of the German forces deteriorated, the Nazi leadership became more openly explicit about the Final Solution. In March, Goebbels confided to his diary: "On the Jewish question especially, we are in it so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that is a good thing. Experience teaches that a movement and a people who have burned their bridges fight with much greater determination and fewer constraints than those that have a chance of retreat."
When Himmler addressed senior SS personnel and leading members of the regime in the Posen speeches on 4 October 1943, he used "the fate of the Jews as a sort of blood bond to tie the civil and military leadership to the Nazi cause".
Today, I am going to refer quite frankly to a very grave chapter. We can mention it now among ourselves quite openly and yet we shall never talk about it in public. I'm referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you will know what it's like to see 100 corpses side by side or 500 corpses or 1,000 of them. To have coped with this and—except for cases of human weakness—to have remained decent, that has made us tough. This is an unwritten—never to be written—and yet glorious page in our history. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Final Solution (German: die Endlösung, pronounced [diː ˈʔɛntˌløːzʊŋ] ) or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (German: Endlösung der Judenfrage, pronounced [ˈɛntˌløːzʊŋ deːɐ̯ ˈjuːdn̩ˌfʁaːɡə] ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The \"Final Solution to the Jewish question\" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The Final Solution did not, however, include the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed by Romanian forces. By far the greatest extermination of Jews by non-German forces, this genocide was \"operationally separate from the Nazi Final Solution\".",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at \"murdering every last Jew in the German grasp\". Christopher Browning, a historian specializing in the Holocaust, wrote that most historians agree that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time. \"It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental.\" In 1940, following the Fall of France, Adolf Eichmann devised the Madagascar Plan to move Europe's Jewish population to the French colony, but the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons, mainly a naval blockade. There were also preliminary plans to deport Jews to Palestine and Siberia. In 1941, Raul Hilberg wrote that in the first phase of the mass-murder of Jews, the mobile killing units began to pursue their victims across occupied eastern territories; in the second phase, stretching across all of German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on death trains to centralized extermination camps built for the purpose of systematic murder of Jews.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The term \"Final Solution\" was a euphemism used by the Nazis to refer to their plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people. Some historians argue that the usual tendency of the German leadership was to be extremely guarded when discussing the Final Solution. For example, Mark Roseman wrote that euphemisms were \"their normal mode of communicating about murder\". However, Jeffrey Herf has argued that the role of euphemisms in Nazi propaganda has been exaggerated, and in fact Nazi leaders often made direct threats against Jews. For example, during his speech of 30 January 1939, Hitler threatened \"the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe\".",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "From gaining power in January 1933 until the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany was focused on intimidation, expropriating their money and property, and encouraging them to emigrate. According to the Nazi Party policy statement, Jews and the Romani people were the only \"alien people in Europe\". In 1936, the Bureau of Romani Affairs in Munich was taken over by Interpol and renamed the Center for Combating the Gypsy Menace. Introduced at the end of 1937, the \"final solution of the Gypsy Question\" entailed round-ups, expulsions, and incarceration of Romani in concentration camps built at, until this point, Dachau, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Natzweiler, Ravensbruck, Taucha and Westerbork. After the Anschluss with Austria in 1938, Central Offices for Jewish Emigration were established in Vienna and Berlin to increase Jewish emigration, without covert plans for their forthcoming annihilation.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The outbreak of war and the invasion of Poland brought a population of 3.5 million Polish Jews under the control of the Nazi and Soviet security forces, and marked the start of the Holocaust in Poland. In the German-occupied zone of Poland, Jews were forced into hundreds of makeshift ghettos, pending other arrangements. Two years later, with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the German top echelon began to pursue Hitler's new anti-Semitic plan to eradicate, rather than expel, Jews. Hitler's earlier ideas about forcible removal of Jews from the German-controlled territories to achieve Lebensraum were abandoned after the failure of the air campaign against Britain, initiating a naval blockade of Germany. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler became the chief architect of a new plan, which came to be called The Final Solution to the Jewish question. On 31 July 1941, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring wrote to Reinhard Heydrich (Himmler's deputy and chief of the RSHA), authorising him to make the \"necessary preparations\" for a \"total solution of the Jewish question\" and coordinate with all affected organizations. Göring also instructed Heydrich to submit concrete proposals for the implementation of the new projected goal.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Broadly speaking, the extermination of Jews was carried out in two major operations. With the onset of Operation Barbarossa, mobile killing units of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, and Order Police battalions were dispatched to the occupied Soviet Union for the express purpose of murdering all Jews. During the early stages of the invasion, Himmler himself visited Białystok at the beginning of July 1941, and requested that, \"as a matter of principle, any Jew\" behind the German-Soviet frontier was to be \"regarded as a partisan\". His new orders gave the SS and police leaders full authority for the mass-murder behind the front lines. By August 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children were shot. In the second phase of annihilation, the Jewish inhabitants of central, western, and south-eastern Europe were transported by Holocaust trains to camps with newly built gassing facilities. Raul Hilberg wrote: \"In essence, the killers of the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside this arena, the victims were brought to the killers. The two operations constitute an evolution not only chronologically, but also in complexity.\" Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before plans for the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to annihilate the entire Jewish population that extermination camps such as Auschwitz II Birkenau and Treblinka were fitted with permanent gas chambers to murder large numbers of Jews in a relatively short period of time.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The plans to exterminate all the Jews of Europe were formalized at the Wannsee Conference, held at an SS guesthouse near Berlin, on 20 January 1942. The conference was chaired by Heydrich and attended by 15 senior officials of the Nazi Party and the German government. Most of those attending were representatives of the Interior Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and the Justice Ministry, including Ministers for the Eastern Territories. At the conference, Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the \"Final Solution\". This figure included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom and of neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey). Eichmann's biographer David Cesarani wrote that Heydrich's main purpose in convening the conference was to assert his authority over the various agencies dealing with Jewish issues. \"The simplest, most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations\" to death camps, according to Cesarani, \"was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east\" under the single authority of the RSHA. A copy of the minutes of this meeting was found by the Allies in March 1947; it was too late to serve as evidence during the first Nuremberg Trial, but was used by prosecutor General Telford Taylor in the subsequent Nuremberg Trials.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "After the end of World War II, surviving archival documents provided a clear record of the Final Solution policies and actions of Nazi Germany. They included the Wannsee Conference Protocol, which documented the co-operation of various German state agencies in the SS-led Holocaust, as well as some 3,000 tons of original German records captured by Allied armies, including the Einsatzgruppen reports, which documented the progress of the mobile killing units assigned, among other tasks, to murder Jewish civilians during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The evidential proof which documented the mechanism of the Holocaust was submitted at Nuremberg.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union codenamed Operation Barbarossa, which commenced on 22 June 1941, set in motion a \"war of annihilation\" which quickly opened the door to the systematic mass murder of European Jews. For Hitler, Bolshevism was merely \"the most recent and most nefarious manifestation of the eternal Jewish threat\". On 3 March 1941, Wehrmacht Joint Operations Staff Chief Alfred Jodl repeated Hitler's declaration that the \"Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia would have to be eliminated\" and that the forthcoming war would be a confrontation between two completely opposing cultures. In May 1941, Gestapo leader Heinrich Müller wrote a preamble to the new law limiting the jurisdiction of military courts in prosecuting troops for criminal actions because: \"This time, the troops will encounter an especially dangerous element from the civilian population, and therefore, have the right and obligation to secure themselves.\"",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Himmler and Heydrich assembled a force of about 3,000 men from Security Police, Gestapo, Kripo, SD, and the Waffen-SS, as the so-called \"special commandos of the security forces\" known as the Einsatzgruppen, to eliminate both communists and Jews in occupied territories. These forces were supported by 21 battalions of Orpo Reserve Police under Kurt Daluege, adding up to 11,000 men. The explicit orders given to the Order Police varied between locations, but for Police Battalion 309 participating in the first mass murder of 5,500 Polish Jews in the Soviet-controlled Białystok (a Polish provincial capital), Major Weiss explained to his officers that Barbarossa is a war of annihilation against Bolshevism, and that his battalions would proceed ruthlessly against all Jews, regardless of age or sex.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "After crossing the Soviet demarcation line in 1941, what had been regarded as exceptional in the Greater Germanic Reich became a normal way of operating in the east. The crucial taboo against the murder of women and children was breached not only in Białystok but also in Gargždai in late June. By July, significant numbers of women and children were being murdered behind all front-lines not only by the Germans but also by the local Ukrainian and Lithuanian auxiliary forces. On 29 July 1941, at a meeting of SS officers in Vileyka (Polish Wilejka, now Belarus), the Einsatzgruppen had been given a dressing-down for their low execution figures. Heydrich himself issued an order to include the Jewish women and children in all subsequent shooting operations. Accordingly, by the end of July the entire Jewish population of Vileyka, men, women and children, were murdered. Around 12 August, no less than two-thirds of the Jews shot in Surazh were women and children of all ages. In late August 1941 the Einsatzgruppen murdered 23,600 Jews in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre. A month later, the largest mass shooting of Soviet Jews took place on 29–30 September in the ravine of Babi Yar, near Kyiv, where more than 33,000 Jewish people of all ages were systematically machine-gunned. In mid-October 1941, HSSPF South, under the command of Friedrich Jeckeln, had reported the indiscriminate murder of more than 100,000 people.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "By the end of December 1941, before the Wannsee Conference, over 439,800 Jewish people had been murdered, and the Final Solution policy in the east became common knowledge within the SS. Entire regions were reported \"free of Jews\" by the Einsatzgruppen. Addressing his district governors in the General Government on 16 December 1941, Governor-General Hans Frank said: \"But what will happen to the Jews? Do you believe they will be lodged in settlements in Ostland? In Berlin, we were told: why all this trouble; we cannot use them in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves!\" Two days later, Himmler recorded the outcome of his discussion with Hitler. The result was: \"als Partisanen auszurotten\" (\"exterminate them as partisans\"). Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust. Within two years, the total number of shooting victims in the east had risen to between 618,000 and 800,000 Jews.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Several scholars have suggested that the Final Solution began in the newly formed district of Bezirk Bialystok. The German army took over Białystok within days. On Friday, 27 June 1941, the Reserve Police Battalion 309 arrived in the city and set the Great Synagogue on fire with hundreds of Jewish men locked inside. The burning of the synagogue was followed by a frenzy of murders both inside the homes around the Jewish neighbourhood of Chanajki, and in the city park, lasting until night time. The next day, some 30 wagons of dead bodies were taken to mass graves. As noted by Browning, the murders were led by a commander \"who correctly intuited and anticipated the wishes of his Führer\" without direct orders. For reasons unknown, the number of victims in the official report by Major Weis was cut in half. The next mass-shooting of Polish Jews within the newly formed Reichskommissariat Ostland took place in two days of 5–7 August in occupied Pińsk, where over 12,000 Jews were murdered by the Waffen SS, not the Einsatzgruppen. An additional 17,000 Jews perished there in a ghetto uprising crushed a year later with the aid of Belorusian Auxiliary Police.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "An Israeli historian Dina Porat claimed that the Final Solution, i.e.: \"the systematic overall physical extermination of Jewish communities one after the other—began in Lithuania\" during the massive German chase after the Red Army across the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The subject of the Holocaust in Lithuania has been analysed by Konrad Kweit from USHMM who wrote: \"Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust [beyond the eastern borders of occupied Poland]. The Germans carried out the mass executions [...] signaling the beginning of the 'Final Solution'.\" About 80,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania by October (including in formerly Polish Wilno) and about 175,000 by the end of 1941 according to official reports.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Within one week from the start of Operation Barbarossa, Heydrich issued an order to his Einsatzgruppen for the on-the-spot execution of all Bolsheviks, interpreted by the SS to mean all Jews. One of the first indiscriminate massacres of men, women, and children in Reichskommissariat Ukraine took the lives of over 4,000 Polish Jews in occupied Łuck on 2–4 July 1941, murdered by Einsatzkommando 4a assisted by the Ukrainian People's Militia. Formed officially on 20 August 1941, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine—stretching from prewar east-central Poland to Crimea—had become operational theatre of the Einsatzgruppe C. Within the Soviet Union proper, between 9 July 1941 and 19 September 1941 the city of Zhytomyr was made Judenfrei in three murder operations conducted by German and Ukrainian police in which 10,000 Jews perished. In the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre of 26–28 August 1941 some 23,600 Jews were shot in front of open pits (including 14,000–18,000 people expelled from Hungary). After an incident in Bila Tserkva in which 90 small children left behind had to be shot separately, Blobel requested that Jewish mothers hold them in their arms during mass shootings. Long before the conference at Wannsee, 28,000 Jews were shot by SS and Ukrainian military in Vinnytsia on 22 September 1941, followed by 29 September massacre of 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar. In Dnipropetrovsk, on 13 October 1941 some 10,000–15,000 Jews were shot. In Chernihiv, 10,000 Jews were murdered and only 260 Jews were spared. In mid-October, during the Krivoy-Rog massacre of 4,000–5,000 Soviet Jews the entire Ukrainian auxiliary police force actively participated. In the first days of January 1942 in Kharkiv, 12,000 Jews were murdered, but smaller massacres continued in this period on daily basis in countless other locations. In August 1942 in the presence of only a few German SS men over 5,000 Jews were massacred in Polish Zofjówka by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police leading to the town's complete sweep from existence.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Historians find it difficult to determine precisely when the first concerted effort at annihilation of all Jews began in the last weeks of June 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. Dr. Samuel Drix (Witness to Annihilation), Jochaim Schoenfeld (Holocaust Memoirs), and several survivors of the Janowska concentration camp, who were interviewed in the film Janovska Camp at Lvov, among other witnesses, have argued that the Final Solution began in Lwów (Lemberg) in Distrikt Galizien of the General Government during the German advance across Soviet-occupied Poland. Statements and memoirs of survivors emphasize that, when Ukrainian nationalists and ad hoc Ukrainian People's Militia (soon reorganized as the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police) began to murder women and children, rather than only male Jews, the \"Final Solution\" had begun. Witnesses have said that such murders happened both prior to and during the pogroms reportedly triggered by the NKVD prisoner massacre. The question of whether there was some coordination between the Lithuanian and Ukrainian militias remains open (i.e. collaborating for a joint assault in Kovno, Wilno, and Lwów).",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The murders continued uninterrupted. On 12 October 1941, in Stanisławów, some 10,000–12,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot at the Jewish cemetery by the German uniformed SS-men and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during the so-called \"Bloody Sunday [de; uk]\" (de). The shooters began firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire. It was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews in Generalgouvernement prior to mass gassings of Aktion Reinhard, which commenced at Bełżec in March 1942. Notably, the extermination operations in Chełmno had begun on 8 December 1941, one-and-a-half months before Wannsee, but Chełmno—located in Reichsgau Wartheland—was not a part of Reinhard, and neither was Auschwitz-Birkenau functioning as an extermination center until November 1944 in Polish lands annexed by Hitler and added to Germany proper.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The conference at Wannsee gave impetus to the so-called second sweep of the Holocaust by the bullet in the east. Between April and July 1942 in Volhynia, 30,000 Jews were murdered in death pits with the help of dozens of newly formed Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft. Owing to good relations with the Ukrainian Hilfsverwaltung, these auxiliary battalions were deployed by the SS also in Russia Center, Russia South, and in Byelorussia; each with about 500 soldiers divided into three companies. They participated in the extermination of 150,000 Volhynian Jews alone, or 98 percent of the Jewish inhabitants of the entire region. In July 1942 the Completion of the Final Solution in the General Government territory which included Distrikt Galizien, was ordered personally by Himmler. He set the initial deadline for 31 December 1942.",
"title": "Phase one: death squads of Operation Barbarossa"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "When the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the area of the General Government was enlarged by the inclusion of regions that had been annexed by the Soviet Union since the 1939 invasion. The murders of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto in the Warthegau district began in early December 1941 with the use of gas vans (approved by Heydrich) at the Kulmhof extermination camp. Victims were misled under the deceptive guise of \"Resettlement in the East\", organised by SS Commissioners, which was also tried and tested at Chełmno. By the time the European-wide Final Solution was formulated two months later, Heydrich's RSHA had already confirmed the effectiveness of industrial murder by exhaust fumes, and the strength of deception.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Construction work on the first killing centre at Bełżec in occupied Poland began in October 1941, three months before the Wannsee Conference. The new facility was operational by March the following year. By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands: Sobibór operational by May 1942, and Treblinka operational in July. From July 1942, the mass murder of Polish and foreign Jews took place at Treblinka as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz. By the time the mass killings of Operation Reinhard ended in 1943, roughly two million Jews in German-occupied Poland had been murdered. The total number of people murdered in 1942 in Lublin/Majdanek, Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka was 1,274,166 by Germany's own estimation, not counting Auschwitz II Birkenau nor Kulmhof. Their bodies were buried in mass graves initially. Both Treblinka and Bełżec were equipped with powerful crawler excavators from Polish construction sites in the vicinity, capable of most digging tasks without disrupting surfaces. Although other methods of extermination, such as the cyanic poison Zyklon B, were already being used at other Nazi killing centres such as Auschwitz, the Aktion Reinhard camps used lethal exhaust gases from captured tank engines.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The Holocaust by bullets (as opposed to the Holocaust by gas) went on in the territory of occupied Poland in conjunction with the ghetto uprisings, irrespective of death camps' quota. In two weeks of July 1942, the Słonim Ghetto revolt, crushed with the help of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft, cost the lives of 8,000–13,000 Jews. The second largest mass shooting (to that particular date) took place in late October 1942 when the insurgency was suppressed in the Pińsk Ghetto; over 26,000 men, women and children were shot with the aid of Belarusian Auxiliary Police before the ghetto's closure. During the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II), 13,000 Jews were killed in action before May 1943. Numerous other uprisings were quelled without impacting the pre-planned Nazi deportations actions.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "About two-thirds of the overall number of victims of the Final Solution were murdered before February 1943, which included the main phase of the extermination programme in the West launched by Eichmann on 11 June 1942 from Berlin. The Holocaust trains run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and several other national railway systems delivered condemned Jewish captives from as far as Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moravia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and even Scandinavia. The cremation of exhumed corpses to destroy any evidence left behind began in early spring and continued throughout summer. The nearly completed clandestine programme of murdering all deportees was explicitly addressed by Heinrich Himmler in his Posen speeches made to the leadership of the Nazi Party on 4 October and during a conference in Posen (Poznan) of 6 October 1943 in occupied Poland. Himmler explained why the Nazi leadership found it necessary to murder Jewish women and children along with the Jewish men. The assembled functionaries were told that the Nazi state policy was \"the extermination of the Jewish people\" as such.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "We were faced with the question: what about the women and children?–I have decided on a solution to this problem. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men only—in other words, to kill them or have them killed while allowing the avengers, in the form of their children, to grow up in the midst of our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "On 19 October 1943, five days after the prisoner revolt in Sobibór, Operation Reinhard was terminated by Odilo Globocnik on behalf of Himmler. The camps responsible for the murder of nearly 2,700,000 Jews were soon closed. Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were dismantled and ploughed over before spring. The operation was followed by the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war carried out on 3 November 1943; with approximately 43,000 prisoners shot one-by-one simultaneously in three nearby locations by the Reserve Police Battalion 101 hand-in-hand with the Trawniki men from Ukraine. Auschwitz alone had enough capacity to fulfill the Nazis' remaining extermination needs.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Unlike Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Lublin-Majdanek, which were built in the occupied General Government territory inhabited by the largest concentrations of Jews, the killing centre at Auschwitz subcamp of Birkenau operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany directly. The new gas chambers at Bunker I were finished around March 1942 when the Final Solution was officially launched at Belzec. Until mid-20 June 000 Silesian Jews were murdered there using Zyklon B. In July 1942, Bunker II became operational. In August, another 10,000–13,000 Polish Jews from Silesia were murdered, along with 16,000 French Jews declared 'stateless', and 7,700 Jews from Slovakia.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The infamous 'Gate of Death' at Auschwitz II for the incoming freight trains was built of brick and cement mortar in 1943, and the three-track rail spur was added. Until mid-August, 45,000 Thessaloniki Jews were murdered in a mere six months, including over 30,000 Jews from Sosnowiec (Sosnowitz) and Bendzin Ghettos. The spring of 1944 marked the beginning of the last phase of the Final Solution at Birkenau. The new big ramps and sidings were constructed, and two freight elevators were installed inside Crematoria II and III for moving the bodies faster. The size of the Sonderkommando was nearly quadrupled in preparation for the Special Operation Hungary (Sonderaktion Ungarn). In May 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau became the site of one of the two largest mass murder operations in modern history, after the Großaktion Warschau deportations of the Warsaw Ghetto inmates to Treblinka in 1942. It is estimated that until July 1944 approximately 320,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed at Birkenau in less than eight weeks. The entire operation was photographed by the SS. In total, between April and November 1944, Auschwitz II received over 585,000 Jews from over a dozen regions as far as Greece, Italy, and France, including 426,000 Jews from Hungary, 67,000 from Łódź, 25,000 from Theresienstadt, and the last 23,000 Jews from the General Government. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, when the gassing had already stopped.",
"title": "Phase two: deportations to extermination camps"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Historians disagree as to when and how the Nazi leadership decided that the European Jews should be exterminated. The controversy is commonly described as the functionalism versus intentionalism debate which began in the 1960s, and subsided thirty years later. In the 1990s, the attention of mainstream historians moved away from the question of top executive orders triggering the Holocaust and focused on factors that were overlooked earlier, such as personal initiative and ingenuity of countless functionaries in charge of the killing fields. No written evidence of Hitler ordering the Final Solution has ever been found to serve as a \"smoking gun\", and therefore, this one particular question remains unanswered.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Hitler made numerous predictions regarding the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe prior to the beginning of World War II. During a speech given on 30 January 1939, on the sixth anniversary of his accession to power, Hitler said:",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Raul Hilberg, in his book The Destruction of the European Jews, was the first historian to systematically document and analyse the Nazi project to murder every Jew in Europe. The book was initially published in 1961, and issued in an enlarged version in 1985.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Hilberg's analysis of the steps that led to the destruction of European Jews revealed that it was \"an administrative process carried out by bureaucrats in a network of offices spanning a continent\". Hilberg divides this bureaucracy into four components or hierarchies: the Nazi Party, the civil service, industry, and the Wehrmacht armed forces—but their cooperation is viewed as \"so complete that we may truly speak of their fusion into a machinery of destruction\". For Hilberg, the key stages in the destruction process were: definition and registration of the Jews; expropriation of property; concentration into ghettoes and camps; and, finally, annihilation. Hilberg gives an estimate of 5.1 million as the total number of Jews murdered. He breaks this figure down into three categories: Ghettoization and general privation: over 800,000; open-air shootings: over 1,300,000; extermination camps: up to 3,000,000.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "With respect to the \"functionalism versus intentionalism\" debate about a master plan for the Final Solution, or the lack thereof, Hilberg posits what has been described as \"a kind of structural determinism\". Hilberg argues that \"a destruction process has an inherent pattern\" and the \"sequence of steps in a destruction process is thus determined\". If a bureaucracy is motivated \"to inflict maximum damage upon a group of people\", it is \"inevitable that a bureaucracy—no matter how decentralized its apparatus or how unplanned its activities—should push its victims through these stages\", culminating in their annihilation.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In his monograph, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942, Christopher Browning argues that Nazi policy toward the Jews was radicalized twice: in September 1939, when the invasion of Poland implied policies of mass expulsion and massive loss of Jewish lives; and in spring 1941, when preparation for Operation Barbarossa involved the planning of mass execution, mass expulsion, and starvation—to dwarf what had happened in Jewish Poland.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Browning believes that the \"Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp\" took shape during a five-week period, from 18 September to 25 October 1941. During this time, the sites of the first extermination camps were selected, different methods of murder were tested, Jewish emigration was forbidden, and 11 transports departed for Łódź as a temporary holding station. Of this period, Browning writes, \"The vision of the Final Solution had crystallised in the minds of the Nazi leadership, and was being turned into reality.\" This was the peak of Nazi victories against the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front, and, according to Browning, the stunning series of German victories led to both an expectation that the war would soon be won, and the planning of the final destruction of the \"Jewish-Bolshevik enemy\".",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Browning describes the creation of the extermination camps, which were responsible for the largest number of murders in the Final Solution, as bringing together three separate developments within Nazi Germany: the concentration camps which had been established in Germany since 1933; an expansion of the gassing technology of the Nazi euthanasia programme to provide a murder technique of greater efficiency and psychological detachment; and the creation of \"factories of death\" to be fed endless streams of victims by mass uprooting and deportation that utilized the experience and personnel from earlier population resettlement programmes—especially the HSSPF and Adolf Eichmann's RSHA for \"Jewish affairs and evacuations\".",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Peter Longerich argues that the search for a finite date on which the Nazis embarked upon the extermination of the Jews is futile, in his book Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (2011). Longerich writes: \"We should abandon the notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision\" that led to the Holocaust.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Timothy Snyder writes that Longerich \"grants the significance of Greiser's murder of Jews by gas at Chełmno in December 1941\", but also detects a significant moment of escalation in spring 1942, which includes \"the construction of the large death factory at Treblinka for the destruction of the Warsaw Jews, and the addition of a gas chamber to the concentration camp at Auschwitz for the murder of the Jews of Silesia\". Longerich suggests that it \"was only in the summer of 1942, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to the lands of a conquered USSR\". For Longerich, to see mass-murder as the Final Solution was an acknowledgement by the Nazi leadership that there would not be a German military victory over the USSR in the near future.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "David Cesarani emphasises the improvised, haphazard nature of Nazi policies in response to changing war time conditions in his overview, Final Solution: The Fate of the European Jews 1933–49 (2016). \"Cesarani provides telling examples\", wrote Mark Roseman, \"of a lack of coherence and planning for the future in Jewish policy, even when we would most expect it. The classic instance is the invasion of Poland in 1939, when not even the most elementary consideration had been given to what should happen to Poland's Jews either in the shorter or longer term. Given that Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in the world, and that, in a couple of years, it would house the extermination camps, this is remarkable.\"",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Whereas Browning places the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in the context of the Wehrmacht victories on the Eastern front, Cesarani argues that the German subsequent realisation that there would be no swift victory over the Soviet Union \"scuppered the last territorial 'solution' still on the table: expulsion to Siberia\". Germany's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941, \"meant that holding European Jews hostage to deter the US from entering the conflict was now pointless\". Cesarani concludes, the Holocaust \"was rooted in anti-Semitism, but it was shaped by war\". The fact that the Nazis were, ultimately, so successful in murdering between five and six million Jews was not due to the efficiency of Nazi Germany or the clarity of their policies. \"Rather, the catastrophic rate of killing was due to German persistence ... and the duration of the murderous campaigns. This last factor was largely a consequence of allied military failure.\"",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The entry of the U.S. into the War is also crucial to the time-frame proposed by Christian Gerlach, who argued in his 1997 thesis that the Final Solution decision was announced on 12 December 1941, when Hitler addressed a meeting of the Nazi Party (the Reichsleiter) and of regional party leaders (the Gauleiter). The day after Hitler's speech, on 13 December 1941, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary:",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "With respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would see their annihilation in it. That wasn't just a catch-word. The world war is here and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Cesarani notes that by 1943, as the military position of the German forces deteriorated, the Nazi leadership became more openly explicit about the Final Solution. In March, Goebbels confided to his diary: \"On the Jewish question especially, we are in it so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that is a good thing. Experience teaches that a movement and a people who have burned their bridges fight with much greater determination and fewer constraints than those that have a chance of retreat.\"",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "When Himmler addressed senior SS personnel and leading members of the regime in the Posen speeches on 4 October 1943, he used \"the fate of the Jews as a sort of blood bond to tie the civil and military leadership to the Nazi cause\".",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Today, I am going to refer quite frankly to a very grave chapter. We can mention it now among ourselves quite openly and yet we shall never talk about it in public. I'm referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you will know what it's like to see 100 corpses side by side or 500 corpses or 1,000 of them. To have coped with this and—except for cases of human weakness—to have remained decent, that has made us tough. This is an unwritten—never to be written—and yet glorious page in our history.",
"title": "Historiographic debate about the decision"
}
]
| The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The Final Solution did not, however, include the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed by Romanian forces. By far the greatest extermination of Jews by non-German forces, this genocide was "operationally separate from the Nazi Final Solution". The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during the first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp". Christopher Browning, a historian specializing in the Holocaust, wrote that most historians agree that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time. "It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental." In 1940, following the Fall of France, Adolf Eichmann devised the Madagascar Plan to move Europe's Jewish population to the French colony, but the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons, mainly a naval blockade. There were also preliminary plans to deport Jews to Palestine and Siberia. In 1941, Raul Hilberg wrote that in the first phase of the mass-murder of Jews, the mobile killing units began to pursue their victims across occupied eastern territories; in the second phase, stretching across all of German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on death trains to centralized extermination camps built for the purpose of systematic murder of Jews. | 2001-11-29T23:16:51Z | 2023-12-04T15:27:42Z | [
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10,163 | Eusebius (disambiguation) | Eusebius (/juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek Εὐσέβιος "pious" from eu (εὖ) "well" and sebein (σέβειν) "to respect") may refer to:
Eusebius is also the name of: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eusebius (/juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek Εὐσέβιος \"pious\" from eu (εὖ) \"well\" and sebein (σέβειν) \"to respect\") may refer to:",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Eusebius is also the name of:",
"title": ""
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| Eusebius may refer to: Eusebius of Laodicea, bishop of Laodicea
Pope Eusebius, Pope in 309 or 310
Eusebius: Christian exegete, historian and polemicist.
Eusebius of Nicomedia, bishop of Berytus, Nicomedia and Constantinople, leader of Arianism
Eusebius, Roman consul in 347
Saint Eusebius of Rome, priest and martyr
Eusebius, Roman consul in 359
Eusebius of Emesa (300–360), bishop of Emesa
Eusebius, under Constantius II
Eusebius of Gaza, early Christian martyr
Saint Eusebius of Vercelli (283–371), bishop of Vercelli, opponent of Arianism
Saint Eusebius of Samosata, bishop of Samosata
Saint Eusebius the Hermit, solitary monk of Syria
Eusebius of Myndus, Neoplatonist philosopher
Eusebius (sophist), Roman sophist
Saint Eusebius of Cremona, monk, pre-congregational saint, and disciple of Jerome
Saint Eusebius, archbishop of Milan
Eusebius, Roman consul in 489 and 493
Eusebius of Dorylaeum, bishop of Dorylaeum, opponent of Nestorianism and Monophysitism Eusebius, bishop of Paris until his death in 555
Eusebius of Alexandria, Christian author
Eusebius of Thessalonika, bishop of Thessalonika during the time of Pope Gregory the Great
Hwaetberht, Abbot of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Priory, who wrote under the pen-name of Eusebius Eusebius of Angers, bishop of Angers
Eusebius of Esztergom, c. 1200-1270) Hungarian priest, hermit, founder of the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit
Karl Eusebius of Liechtenstein (1611–1684), the second prince of Liechtenstein
Eusebius, pen name of Edmund Rack (1735–1787)
Eusebius, one of the personae of Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Eusebius Barnard (1802–1865), American minister and abolitionist Eusebius is also the name of: Jerome (347–420), Christian scholar and church father, whose full name was Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus | 2001-11-30T01:12:49Z | 2023-11-06T21:07:56Z | [
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10,164 | Eurystheus | In Greek mythology, Eurystheus (/jʊəˈrɪsθiəs/; Greek: Εὐρυσθεύς, lit. "broad strength", IPA: [eu̯rystʰěu̯s]) was king of Tiryns, one of three Mycenaean strongholds in the Argolid, although other authors including Homer and Euripides cast him as ruler of Argos.
Eurystheus was the son of King Sthenelus and Nicippe (also called Antibia or Archippe), and he was a grandson of the hero Perseus. His sisters were Alcyone and Medusa (Astymedusa).
Eurystheus married Antimache, daughter of Amphidamas of Arcadia. Their children were Admete, Alexander, Iphimedon, Eurybius, Mentor, Perimedes and Eurypylus.
In the contest of wills between Hera and Zeus over whose candidate would be hero, fated to defeat the remaining creatures representing an old order and bring about the reign of the Twelve Olympians, Eurystheus was Hera's candidate and Heracles—though his name implies that at one archaic stage of myth-making he had carried "Hera's fame"—was the candidate of Zeus. The arena for the actions that would bring about this deep change are the Twelve Labors imposed on Heracles by Eurystheus. The immediate necessity for the Labours of Heracles is as penance for Heracles' murder of his own family, in a fit of madness, which had been sent by Hera; however, further human rather than mythic motivation is supplied by mythographers who note that their respective families had been rivals for the throne of Mycenae. Details of the individual episodes may be found in the article on the Labours of Heracles, but Hera was connected with all of the opponents Heracles had to overcome.
Heracles' human stepfather Amphitryon was also a grandson of Perseus, and since Amphitryon's father (Alcaeus) was older than Eurystheus' father (Sthenelus), he might have received the kingdom, but Sthenelus had banished Amphitryon for accidentally killing (a familiar mytheme) the eldest son in the family (Electryon). When, shortly before his son Heracles was born, Zeus proclaimed the next-born descendant of Perseus should get the kingdom, Hera thwarted his ambitions by delaying Alcmene's labour and having her candidate Eurystheus born prematurely at seven months.
Heracles' first task was to slay the Nemean Lion and bring back its skin, which Heracles decided to wear. Eurystheus was so scared by Heracles' fearsome guise that he hid in a subterranean bronze winejar, and from that moment forth all labors were communicated to Heracles through a herald, Copreus.
For his second labour, to slay the Lernaean Hydra, Heracles took with him his nephew, Iolaus, as a charioteer. When Eurystheus found out that Heracles' nephew had helped him he declared that the labour had not been completed alone and as a result did not count towards the ten labours set for him.
Eurystheus' third task did not involve killing a beast, but capturing one alive—the Ceryneian Hind, a golden-horned hind or doe sacred to Artemis. Heracles knew that he had to return the hind, as he had promised, to Artemis, so he agreed to hand it over on the condition that Eurystheus himself come out and take it from him. Eurystheus did come out, but the moment Heracles let the hind go, she sprinted back to her mistress, and Heracles departed, saying that Eurystheus had not been quick enough.
When Heracles returned with the Erymanthian Boar, Eurystheus was again frightened and hid in his jar, begging Heracles to get rid of the beast; Heracles obliged.
The fifth labour proposed by Eurystheus was to clear out the numerous stables of Augeias. Striking a deal with Augeias, Heracles proposed a payment of a tenth of Augeias' cattle if the labour was completed successfully. Not believing the task feasible, Augeias agreed, asking his son Phyleus to witness. Heracles rerouted two nearby rivers (Alpheis and Peneios) through the stable, clearing out the dung rapidly. When Augeias learned of Heracles' bargain for the task, he refused payment. Heracles brought the case to court, and Phyleus testified against his father. Enraged, Augeias banished both Phyleus and Heracles from the land before the court had cast their vote. However, Eurystheus refused to credit the labour to Heracles, as he had performed it for payment. So Heracles went and drove Augeias out of the kingdom and installed Phyleus as king. Heracles then took his tenth of the cattle and left them to graze in a field by his home.
For his sixth labour, Heracles had to drive the Stymphalian Birds off the marshes they plagued. He did so, shooting down several birds with his Hydra-poisoned arrows and bringing them back to Eurystheus as proof.
For his seventh labour, Heracles captured the Cretan Bull. He used a lasso and rode it back to his cousin. Eurystheus offered to sacrifice the bull to Hera his patron, who hated Heracles. She refused the sacrifice because it reflected glory on Heracles. The bull was released and wandered to Marathon, becoming known as the Marathonian Bull.
When Heracles brought back the man-eating Mares of Diomedes successfully, Eurystheus dedicated the horses to Hera and allowed them to roam freely in the Argolid. Bucephalus, Alexander the Great's horse, was said to be descended from these mares.
To acquire the belt of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, was Heracles' ninth task. This task was at the request of Eurystheus' daughter, Admete. For the tenth labour, he stole the cattle of the giant Geryon, which Eurystheus then sacrificed to Hera.
To extend what may have once been ten Labours to the canonical dozen, it was said that Eurystheus didn't count the Hydra, as he was assisted, nor the Augean stables, as Heracles received payment for his work. For the eleventh labour, Heracles had to obtain the Apples of the Hesperides; he convinced their father, the Titan Atlas, to help him, but did his share of work by temporarily holding up the sky in the Titan's stead. For his final labour, he was to capture Cerberus, the three-headed hound that guarded the entrance to Hades. When he managed to bring the struggling animal back, the terrified Eurystheus hid in his jar one more time, begging Heracles to leave for good and take the dog with him.
After Heracles died, Eurystheus remained bitter over the indignity the hero had caused him. He attempted to destroy Heracles' many children (the Heracleidae, led by Hyllus), who fled to Athens. He attacked the city but was soundly defeated, and Eurystheus and his sons were killed. Though it is widely told that Hyllus killed Eurystheus, the stories about the killer of Eurystheus and the fate of his corpse vary, but the Athenians believed the burial site of Eurystheus remained on their soil and served to protect the country against the descendants of Heracles, who traditionally included the Spartans and Argives.
After Eurystheus' death, the brothers Atreus and Thyestes, whom he had left in charge during his absence, took over the city, the former exiling the latter and assuming the kingship, while Tiryns returned to the kingship of Argos.
Eurystheus was a character in Heracleidae, a play by Euripides. Macaria, one of the daughters of Heracles, and her brothers and sisters hid from Eurystheus in Athens, which was ruled by King Demophon. As Eurystheus prepared to attack, an oracle told Demophon that he would win if and only if a noble woman was sacrificed to Persephone. Macaria volunteered for the sacrifice and a spring was named the Macarian spring in her honor. Eurystheus speaks prophetically of his burial within Attica, claiming that he will be an anti-hero of sorts, though one who will eventually protect the Athenians. | [
{
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"text": "In Greek mythology, Eurystheus (/jʊəˈrɪsθiəs/; Greek: Εὐρυσθεύς, lit. \"broad strength\", IPA: [eu̯rystʰěu̯s]) was king of Tiryns, one of three Mycenaean strongholds in the Argolid, although other authors including Homer and Euripides cast him as ruler of Argos.",
"title": ""
},
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"text": "Eurystheus was the son of King Sthenelus and Nicippe (also called Antibia or Archippe), and he was a grandson of the hero Perseus. His sisters were Alcyone and Medusa (Astymedusa).",
"title": "Family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Eurystheus married Antimache, daughter of Amphidamas of Arcadia. Their children were Admete, Alexander, Iphimedon, Eurybius, Mentor, Perimedes and Eurypylus.",
"title": "Family"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the contest of wills between Hera and Zeus over whose candidate would be hero, fated to defeat the remaining creatures representing an old order and bring about the reign of the Twelve Olympians, Eurystheus was Hera's candidate and Heracles—though his name implies that at one archaic stage of myth-making he had carried \"Hera's fame\"—was the candidate of Zeus. The arena for the actions that would bring about this deep change are the Twelve Labors imposed on Heracles by Eurystheus. The immediate necessity for the Labours of Heracles is as penance for Heracles' murder of his own family, in a fit of madness, which had been sent by Hera; however, further human rather than mythic motivation is supplied by mythographers who note that their respective families had been rivals for the throne of Mycenae. Details of the individual episodes may be found in the article on the Labours of Heracles, but Hera was connected with all of the opponents Heracles had to overcome.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Heracles' human stepfather Amphitryon was also a grandson of Perseus, and since Amphitryon's father (Alcaeus) was older than Eurystheus' father (Sthenelus), he might have received the kingdom, but Sthenelus had banished Amphitryon for accidentally killing (a familiar mytheme) the eldest son in the family (Electryon). When, shortly before his son Heracles was born, Zeus proclaimed the next-born descendant of Perseus should get the kingdom, Hera thwarted his ambitions by delaying Alcmene's labour and having her candidate Eurystheus born prematurely at seven months.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Heracles' first task was to slay the Nemean Lion and bring back its skin, which Heracles decided to wear. Eurystheus was so scared by Heracles' fearsome guise that he hid in a subterranean bronze winejar, and from that moment forth all labors were communicated to Heracles through a herald, Copreus.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "For his second labour, to slay the Lernaean Hydra, Heracles took with him his nephew, Iolaus, as a charioteer. When Eurystheus found out that Heracles' nephew had helped him he declared that the labour had not been completed alone and as a result did not count towards the ten labours set for him.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Eurystheus' third task did not involve killing a beast, but capturing one alive—the Ceryneian Hind, a golden-horned hind or doe sacred to Artemis. Heracles knew that he had to return the hind, as he had promised, to Artemis, so he agreed to hand it over on the condition that Eurystheus himself come out and take it from him. Eurystheus did come out, but the moment Heracles let the hind go, she sprinted back to her mistress, and Heracles departed, saying that Eurystheus had not been quick enough.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "When Heracles returned with the Erymanthian Boar, Eurystheus was again frightened and hid in his jar, begging Heracles to get rid of the beast; Heracles obliged.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The fifth labour proposed by Eurystheus was to clear out the numerous stables of Augeias. Striking a deal with Augeias, Heracles proposed a payment of a tenth of Augeias' cattle if the labour was completed successfully. Not believing the task feasible, Augeias agreed, asking his son Phyleus to witness. Heracles rerouted two nearby rivers (Alpheis and Peneios) through the stable, clearing out the dung rapidly. When Augeias learned of Heracles' bargain for the task, he refused payment. Heracles brought the case to court, and Phyleus testified against his father. Enraged, Augeias banished both Phyleus and Heracles from the land before the court had cast their vote. However, Eurystheus refused to credit the labour to Heracles, as he had performed it for payment. So Heracles went and drove Augeias out of the kingdom and installed Phyleus as king. Heracles then took his tenth of the cattle and left them to graze in a field by his home.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "For his sixth labour, Heracles had to drive the Stymphalian Birds off the marshes they plagued. He did so, shooting down several birds with his Hydra-poisoned arrows and bringing them back to Eurystheus as proof.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "For his seventh labour, Heracles captured the Cretan Bull. He used a lasso and rode it back to his cousin. Eurystheus offered to sacrifice the bull to Hera his patron, who hated Heracles. She refused the sacrifice because it reflected glory on Heracles. The bull was released and wandered to Marathon, becoming known as the Marathonian Bull.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "When Heracles brought back the man-eating Mares of Diomedes successfully, Eurystheus dedicated the horses to Hera and allowed them to roam freely in the Argolid. Bucephalus, Alexander the Great's horse, was said to be descended from these mares.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "To acquire the belt of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, was Heracles' ninth task. This task was at the request of Eurystheus' daughter, Admete. For the tenth labour, he stole the cattle of the giant Geryon, which Eurystheus then sacrificed to Hera.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "To extend what may have once been ten Labours to the canonical dozen, it was said that Eurystheus didn't count the Hydra, as he was assisted, nor the Augean stables, as Heracles received payment for his work. For the eleventh labour, Heracles had to obtain the Apples of the Hesperides; he convinced their father, the Titan Atlas, to help him, but did his share of work by temporarily holding up the sky in the Titan's stead. For his final labour, he was to capture Cerberus, the three-headed hound that guarded the entrance to Hades. When he managed to bring the struggling animal back, the terrified Eurystheus hid in his jar one more time, begging Heracles to leave for good and take the dog with him.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "After Heracles died, Eurystheus remained bitter over the indignity the hero had caused him. He attempted to destroy Heracles' many children (the Heracleidae, led by Hyllus), who fled to Athens. He attacked the city but was soundly defeated, and Eurystheus and his sons were killed. Though it is widely told that Hyllus killed Eurystheus, the stories about the killer of Eurystheus and the fate of his corpse vary, but the Athenians believed the burial site of Eurystheus remained on their soil and served to protect the country against the descendants of Heracles, who traditionally included the Spartans and Argives.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "After Eurystheus' death, the brothers Atreus and Thyestes, whom he had left in charge during his absence, took over the city, the former exiling the latter and assuming the kingship, while Tiryns returned to the kingship of Argos.",
"title": "Mythology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Eurystheus was a character in Heracleidae, a play by Euripides. Macaria, one of the daughters of Heracles, and her brothers and sisters hid from Eurystheus in Athens, which was ruled by King Demophon. As Eurystheus prepared to attack, an oracle told Demophon that he would win if and only if a noble woman was sacrificed to Persephone. Macaria volunteered for the sacrifice and a spring was named the Macarian spring in her honor. Eurystheus speaks prophetically of his burial within Attica, claiming that he will be an anti-hero of sorts, though one who will eventually protect the Athenians.",
"title": "Eurystheus in Euripides"
}
]
| In Greek mythology, Eurystheus was king of Tiryns, one of three Mycenaean strongholds in the Argolid, although other authors including Homer and Euripides cast him as ruler of Argos. | 2001-11-30T02:55:03Z | 2023-12-18T22:05:45Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurystheus |
10,165 | Effects unit | An effects unit or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing.
Common sound effects include distortion/overdrive, often used with electric guitar in electric blues and rock music; dynamic effects such as volume pedals and compressors, which affect loudness; filters such as wah-wah pedals and graphic equalizers, which modify frequency ranges; modulation effects, such as chorus, flangers and phasers; pitch effects such as pitch shifters; and time effects, such as reverb and delay, which create echoing sounds and emulate the sound of different spaces.
Most modern effects use solid-state electronics or digital signal processors. Some effects, particularly older ones such as Leslie speakers and spring reverbs, use mechanical components or vacuum tubes. Effects are often used as stompboxes, typically placed on the floor and controlled with footswitches. They may also be built into guitar amplifiers, instruments (such as the Hammond B-3 organ), tabletop units designed for DJs and record producers, and rackmounts, and are widely used as audio plug-ins in such common formats as VST, AAX, and AU.
Musicians, audio engineers and record producers use effects units during live performances or in the studio, typically with electric guitar, bass guitar, electronic keyboard or electric piano. While effects are most frequently used with electric or electronic instruments, they can be used with any audio source, such as acoustic instruments, drums, and vocals.
An effects unit is also called an effect box, effects device, effects processor or simply an effect. The abbreviation F/X or FX is sometimes used. A pedal-style unit may be called a stomp box, stompbox, effects pedal or pedal. Unprocessed audio coming into an effects unit is referred to as dry, while the processed audio output is referred to as wet.
A musician bringing many pedals to a live show or recording session often mounts the pedals on a guitar pedalboard, to reduce set-up and tear-down time and, for pedalboards with lids, protect the pedals during transportation. When a musician has multiple effects in a rack mounted road case, this case may be called an effects rack or rig. When rackmounted effects are mounted in a roadcase, this also speeds up a musician's set-up and tear-down time, because all of the effects can be connected together inside the rack case.
Effects units are available in a variety of form factors. Stompboxes are used in both live performance and studio recording. Rackmount devices saw a heavy usage during the later 20th century, due to their superior processing power and desirable tones as compared to pedal-style units. However, by the 21st century, with the advent of digital plugins and more powerful stompboxes for live usage, the use of rack-mounted effect units has declined. An effects unit can consist of analog or digital electronics or a combination of the two. During a live performance, the effect is plugged into the electrical signal path of the instrument. In the studio, an instrument or another sound source — possibly an auxiliary output of a mixer or a DAW — is patched into the effect. Whatever the form factor, effects units are part of a studio or musician's outboard gear.
Stompboxes are small plastic or metal chassis that usually lie on the floor or in a pedalboard to be operated by the user's feet. Pedals are often rectangle-shaped, but there are a range of other shapes (e.g., the circular Fuzz Face). Typical simple stompboxes have a single footswitch, one to three potentiometers for controlling the effect, and a single LED that indicates if the effect is on. A typical distortion or overdrive pedal's three potentiometers, for example, control the level or intensity of the distortion effect, the tone of the effected signal and the output level of the effected signal. Depending on the type of pedal, the potentiometers may control different parameters of the effect. For a chorus effect, for example, the knobs may control the depth and speed of the effect. Complex stompboxes may have multiple footswitches, many knobs, additional switches or buttons that are operated with the fingers, and an alphanumeric LED display that indicates the status of the effect with short acronyms (e.g., DIST for "distortion").
An effects chain is formed by connecting two or more stompboxes forming a signal chain. Effect chains are typically created between the guitar and the amp or between the preamplifier and the power amp. When a pedal is off or inactive, the electric audio signal coming into the pedal diverts onto a bypass, an unaltered dry signal that continues on to other effects down the chain. In this way, a musician can combine effects within a chain in a variety of ways without having to reconnect boxes during a performance. A controller or effects management system lets the musician create multiple effect chains, so they can select one or several chains by tapping a single switch. The switches are usually organized in a row or a simple grid.
It is common to put compression, wah and overdrive pedals at the start of the chain; modulation (chorus, flanger, phase shifter) in the middle; and time-based units (delay/echo, reverb at the end. When using many effects, unwanted noise and hum can be introduced into the sound. Some performers use a noise gate pedal at the end of a chain to reduce unwanted noise and hum introduced by overdrive units or vintage gear.
Rackmount effects units are typically built in a thin metal chassis with rack ears designed to be screw-mounted into the rack rails of a 19-inch rack that is standard to the music technology industry. Rackmount effects have a standardized 19-inch width, and height of 1 or more rack unit(s). Devices that are less than 19 inches wide can sometimes be made rackmount-compatible via special rackmount adapters.
A rackmount effects unit may contain electronic circuitry identical to a stompbox's, although its circuits are typically more complex. Unlike stompboxes, rackmounts usually have several different types of effects. Rackmount effects units are controlled by knobs, switches or buttons on their front panel, and often remote-controllable by a MIDI digital control interface or pedal-style foot controller.
Rackmount effects units are most commonly used in recording studios and front of house live sound mixing situations. Musicians may use them in place of stompboxes, as use of a rack can offer space for conveniently mounting additional rackmount equipment or accessories. Rackmounted effects units are typically mounted in a rack, which may be housed within a road case, a durable case with removable access panels that protect the equipment within during transportation. Because of this, rackmount effect units are not always designed with durable protective features such as corner protectors which are used on stompboxes and amps that are designed to be transported as standalone units.
A multi-effects (MFX) device is a single electronics effects pedal or rackmount device that contains many different electronic effects. multi-effects devices allow users to preset combinations of different effects, allowing musicians quick on-stage access to different effects combinations. Multi-effects units typically have a range of distortion, chorus, flanger, phaser, delay, looper and reverb effects. Pedal-style multi-effects range from fairly inexpensive stompboxes that contain two pedals and a few knobs to control the effects to large, expensive floor units with many pedals and knobs. Rack-mounted multi-effects units may be mounted in the same rack as preamplifiers and power amplifiers.
A tabletop unit is a type of multi-effects device that sits on a desk and is controlled manually. One such example is the Pod guitar amplifier modeler. Digital effects designed for DJs are often sold in tabletop models, so that the units can be placed alongside a DJ mixer, turntables and scratching gear.
Effects are often incorporated into instrument amplifiers and even some types of instruments. Electric guitar amplifiers typically have built-in reverb, chorus and distortion, while acoustic guitar and keyboard amplifiers tend to only have built-in reverb. Some acoustic instrument amplifiers have reverb, chorus, compression and equalization (bass and treble) effects. Vintage guitar amps typically have tremolo and vibrato effects, and sometimes reverb. The Fender Bandmaster Reverb amp, for example, had built-in reverb and vibrato. Built-in effects may offer the user less control than standalone pedals or rackmounted units. For example, on some lower- to mid-priced bass amplifiers, the only control on the audio compression effect is a button or switch to turn it on or off, or a single knob. In contrast, a pedal or rackmounted unit would typically provide ratio, threshold and attack controls or other options to allow the user additional control over the compression.
Some guitar amplifiers have built-in multi-effects units or digital amplifier modeling effects. Bass amplifiers are less likely to have built-in effects, although some may have a compressor/limiter or fuzz bass effect.
Instruments with built-in effects include Hammond organs, electronic organs, electronic pianos and digital synthesizers. Built-in effects for keyboards typically include reverb, chorus and, for Hammond organ, vibrato. Many clonewheel organs include an overdrive effect. Occasionally, acoustic-electric and electric guitars will have built-in effects, such as a preamp or equalizer.
The earliest sound effects were strictly used in studio productions. Microphones placed in echo chambers with specially designed acoustic properties simulated the sound of live performances in different environments. In the mid to late 1940s, recording engineers and experimental musicians such as Les Paul began manipulating reel-to-reel recording tape to create echo effects and unusual, futuristic sounds. In 1948, DeArmond released the Trem-Trol, the first commercially available stand-alone effects unit. This device produced a tremolo by passing an instrument's electrical signal through a water-based electrolytic fluid. Most stand-alone effects of the 1950s and early 1960s such as the Gibson GA-VI vibrato unit and the Fender reverb box, were expensive and impractical, requiring bulky transformers and high voltages. The original stand-alone units were not especially in-demand as many effects came built into amplifiers. The first popular stand-alone was the 1958 Watkins Copicat, a relatively portable tape echo effect made famous by the British band, The Shadows.
Effects built into tube-powered guitar amplifiers were the first effects that musicians used regularly outside the studio. From the late 1940s onward, the Gibson began including vibrato circuits in combo amplifiers that incorporated one or more speakers with the amp. The 1950 Ray Butts EchoSonic amp was the first to feature a tape echo, which quickly became popular with guitarists such as Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore, Luther Perkins, and Roy Orbison. Both Premier and Gibson built amplifiers with spring reverb. Fender began manufacturing the tremolo amps Tremolux in 1955 and Vibrolux in 1956.
Distortion was not an effect originally intended by amplifier manufacturers, but could often easily be achieved by overdriving the power supply in early tube amplifiers. In the 1950s, guitarists began deliberately increasing gain beyond its intended levels to achieve warm distorted sounds. Among the first musicians to experiment with distortion were Willie Johnson of Howlin' Wolf, Goree Carter, Joe Hill Louis, Ike Turner, Guitar Slim, and Chuck Berry.
In 1954, Pat Hare produced heavily distorted power chords for several recordings (including James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues"), creating "a grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound," accomplished by turning the volume knob on his amplifier "all the way to the right until the speaker was screaming." Link Wray's 1958 recording "Rumble" inspired young musicians such as Pete Townshend of The Who, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, Dave Davies of The Kinks, and Neil Young to explore distortion by various means. In 1966, the British company Marshall Amplification began producing the Marshall 1963, a guitar amplifier capable of producing the distorted crunch that rock musicians were starting to seek.
The electronic transistor finally made it possible to fit effects circuitry into highly portable stompbox units. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes, allowing for much more compact formats and greater stability. The first transistorized guitar effect was the 1962 Maestro Fuzz Tone pedal, which became a sensation after its use in the 1965 Rolling Stones hit "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".
Warwick Electronics manufactured the first wah-wah pedal, The Clyde McCoy, in 1967 and that same year Roger Mayer developed the first octave effect, which Jimi Hendrix named "Octavio". Upon first hearing the Octavia, Hendrix reportedly rushed back to the studio and immediately used it to record the guitar solos on "Purple Haze" and "Fire". In 1968, Univox began marketing Shin-ei's Uni-Vibe pedal, an effect designed by noted audio engineer Fumio Mieda that mimicked the odd phase shift and chorus effects of the Leslie rotating speakers used in Hammond organs. The pedals soon became favorite effects of guitarists Jimi Hendrix and Robin Trower. In 1976, Roland subsidiary Boss Corporation released the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, the first chorus pedal, created by taking a chorus circuit from an amplifier and putting it into a stompbox. By the mid-1970s a variety of solid-state effects pedals including flangers, chorus pedals, ring modulators and phase shifters were available.
In the 1980s, digital rackmount units began replacing stompboxes as the effects format of choice. Often musicians would record dry, unaltered tracks in the studio and effects would be added in post-production. The success of Nirvana's 1991 album Nevermind helped to re-ignite interest in stompboxes. Some grunge guitarists would chain several fuzz pedals together and plug them into a tube amplifier. Throughout the 1990s, musicians committed to a lo-fi aesthetic such as J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices continued to use analog effects pedals.
Effects and effects units—stompboxes in particular—have been celebrated by pop and rock musicians in album titles, songs and band names. The Big Muff, a fuzzbox manufactured by Electro-Harmonix, is commemorated by the Depeche Mode song "Big Muff" and the Mudhoney EP Superfuzz Bigmuff. Nine Inch Nails, Pink Floyd, George Harrison, They Might Be Giants and Joy Division are among the many musicians who have referenced effects units in their music.
Distortion, overdrive, and fuzz effects units add a warm, gritty, or fuzzy character to an audio signal by re-shaping or clipping it, which distorts the shape of its waveform by flattening its peaks, creating warm sounds by adding harmonics or gritty sounds by adding inharmonic overtones. Distortion effects are sometimes called gain effects, as distorted guitar sounds were first achieved by increasing the gain of tube amplifiers.
While distortion effects units produce perfectly flattened peaks or hard clipping, overdrive effects units produce soft tube-like distortion by compressing the waveform without completely flattening it. Much like guitar tube amplifiers, overdrive effects units are capable of producing clean sounds at lower volumes and distorted warm sounds at higher volumes.
Notable examples of distortion and overdrive effects units include the Boss DS-1 Distortion, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Marshall ShredMaster, MXR Distortion +, and Pro Co RAT.
A fuzz pedal, or fuzzbox, is a type of overdrive effects unit that clips a signal until it is nearly a squarewave, resulting in a heavily distorted or fuzzy sound. Fuzzboxes may contain frequency multiplier circuitry to achieve a harsh timbre by adding complex harmonics. The Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", with a fuzz effect featured prominently on the main electric guitar riff played by Keith Richards, greatly popularized the use of fuzz effects. Fuzz bass (also called bass overdrive) is a style of playing the electric bass that produces a buzzy, overdriven sound via a tube or transistor amp or by using a fuzz or overdrive pedal.
Notable examples of fuzz effect units include the: Arbiter Fuzz Face, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Shin-ei Companion FY-2, Univox Super-Fuzz, Vox Tone Bender, Z.Vex Fuzz Factory.
While distortion effect units are most associated with electric and bass guitar, they are also commonly used on keyboard instruments (i.e. synthesizers, combo and tonewheel organs, electric piano), as well as drums and vocals.
Also called volume and amplitude effects, dynamics effects modify the volume of an instrument. Dynamics effects were among the first effects introduced to guitarists.
Boost/volume pedal: When activated, a boost or clean boost pedal amplifies the volume of an instrument by increasing the amplitude of its audio signal. These units are generally used for boosting volume during solos and preventing signal loss in long effects chains. A guitarist switching from rhythm guitar to lead guitar for a guitar solo may use a boost to increase the volume of their solo.
Volume effects: Electro-Harmonix LPB-1, Fender Volume Pedal, MXR Micro Amp, Ernie Ball Volume Pedal. Treadle-based volume pedals are used by electric instrument players (guitar, bass, keyboards) to adjust the volume of their instrument with one foot while their hands are being used to play their instrument. Treadle-style volume pedals are often also used to create swelling effects by removing the attack of a note or chord, as popularised by pedal steel guitar players. This enables electric guitar and pedal steel players to imitate the soft swelling sound that an orchestra string section can produce, in which a note or chord starts very softly and then grows in volume. Treadle-based volume pedals do not usually have batteries or require external power.
Compressor: Compressors make loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder by decreasing or compressing the dynamic range of an audio signal. A compressor is often used to stabilize volume and alter the sound of a note's attack. With extreme settings of its controls, a compressor can function as a limiter.
Compressor effects: Keeley Compressor, MXR Dyna Comp, Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer.
Noise gate: Noise gates attenuate hum, hiss, and static in the signal by greatly diminishing the volume when the signal falls below a set threshold. Noise gates are often used by electric guitarist who play with vintage amps, which can have unwanted hum in the tone, and by guitarists from heavy metal who use high distortion levels, which add noise to the signal even when no notes are being played. Noise gates mute the signal when it falls below a certain threshold. This means that during bars of rest for the guitarist in a song, the hum or noise from the amp or distortion pedal will not be heard by the audience. Noise gates are expanders—meaning that, unlike compressors, they increase the dynamic range of an audio signal to make quiet sounds even quieter. If used with extreme settings and combined with reverb, they can create unusual sounds, such as the gated drum effect used in 1980s pop songs, a style popularized by the Phil Collins song In the Air Tonight.
Noise gate effects: Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor.
Filter effects alter the frequency content of an audio signal that passes through them by either boosting or weakening specific frequencies or frequency regions.
Equalizer: An equalizer is a set of linear filters that strengthen ("boost") or weaken ("cut") specific frequency regions. While basic home stereos often have equalizers for two bands, to adjust bass and treble, professional graphic equalizers offer much more targeted control over the audio frequency spectrum. Audio engineers use highly sophisticated equalizers to eliminate unwanted sounds, make an instrument or voice more prominent, and enhance particular aspects of an instrument's tone.
Equalizer effects: Boss GE-7 Equalizer, MXR 10-band EQ Pedal.
Talk box: A talk box directs the sound from an electric guitar or synthesizer into the mouth of a performer using a tube, allowing the sound to be shaped into vowels and consonants with movements of the mouth. The modified sound is then picked up by a microphone. In this way the guitarist is able create the effect that the guitar "licks" are "talking". Some famous uses of the talkbox include Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer", Stevie Wonder's "Black Man", Mötley Crüe's "Kickstart My Heart", Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way", Alice in Chains's "Man in the box" and Peter Frampton's "Show Me the Way".
Talk boxes: Dunlop HT1 Heil Talk Box, Rocktron Banshee.
Wah-wah: A wah-wah pedal creates vowel-like sounds by altering the frequency spectrum produced by an instrument—i.e., how loud it is at each separate frequency—in what is known as a "spectral glide" or "sweep". The device is operated by a foot treadle that opens and closes a potentiometer. Wah-wah pedals are often used by funk and rock guitarists.
Wah effects: Dunlop Cry Baby, Morley Power Wah, Vox V846 Wah.
Auto-wah: A filter effect that is controlled by the volume of the input signal. The most common filter type used for this effect pedal is the low-pass filter, although many pedal designs include a toggle for band-pass or high-pass filters as well. Additionally, most envelope filters pedal boxes can switch between a down filter mode and an up filter. This effect is commonly used in funk, reggae and jam band music.
Envelope filter effects: Musitronics Mu-Tron III, Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron Plus, DOD Envelope Filter 440
Modulation, in general electronics, means the altering of signal strength. In audio devices, modulation is a control feature that varies the strength of some effect over time to alter tonal properties. Some modulation effects mix ("modulate") an instrument's audio signal with a signal generated by the effect called a carrier wave. Other modulation effects split an instrument's audio signal in two, altering one portion of the signal and mixing it with the unaltered portion.
Chorus: Chorus pedals mimic the effect choirs and string orchestras produce naturally, by having slight variations in timbre and pitch, by mixing sounds with slight differences in timbre and pitch. A chorus effect splits the instrument-to-amplifier audio signal, and adds a slight delay and frequency variations or vibrato to part of the signal while leaving the rest unaltered. A well-known usage of chorus is the lead guitar in "Come As You Are" by Nirvana.
Chorus effects: Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, Electro-Harmonix Small Clone, TC Electronic Stereo Chorus.
Flanger: A flanger creates a "whooshing" "jet plane" or "spaceship" sound, simulating a studio effect that was first produced by recording a track on two synchronized tapes and periodically slowing one tape by pressing the edge of its reel (the "flange"). When the two tapes' audio signals are later mixed, a comb filter effect can be heard. Flanger units add a variably delayed version of the audio signal to the original or signal, creating a comb filter or Doppler effect. Some famous uses of flanger effects include "Walking on the Moon" by The Police, the intro to "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" by Van Halen, and "Barracuda" by Heart.
Flanger effects: Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress, MXR Flanger, Boss BF-3 Flanger.
Phaser: A phaser or "phase shifter" creates a slight rippling effect—amplifying some aspects of the tone while diminishing others—by splitting an audio signal in two and altering the phase of one portion. Three well-known examples of phaser are the two handed tapping part on the Van Halen instrumental "Eruption" and the keyboard parts on Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" and Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin' Away".
Phase shift effects: Uni-Vibe, Electro-Harmonix Small Stone, MXR Phase 90.
Ring modulator: A ring modulator produces a resonant, metallic sound by mixing an instrument's audio signal with a carrier wave generated by the device's internal oscillator. The original sound wave is suppressed and replaced by a "ring" of inharmonic higher and lower pitches or "sidebands". A notable use of ring modulation is the guitar in the Black Sabbath song "Paranoid".
Ring modulator effects: Moogerfooger MF-102 Ring Modulator.
Tremolo: A tremolo effect produces a slight, rapid variation in the volume of a note or chord. The "tremolo effect" should not be confused with the misleadingly-named tremolo bar, a device on a guitar bridge that creates a vibrato or pitch-bending effect. In transistorized effects, a tremolo is produced by modulating an instrument's audio signal with a sub-audible carrier wave in such a way that generates amplitude variations in the sound wave. Tremolo effects are built-in effects in some vintage guitar amplifiers. The guitar intro in the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" features a tremolo effect.
Tremolo effects: Demeter TRM-1 Tremulator, Fender Tremolux.
Slicer: Combines a modulation sequence with a noise gate or envelope filter to create a percussive and rhythmic effect like a helicopter.
Vibrato: Vibrato effects produce slight, rapid variations in pitch, mimicking the fractional semitone variations produced naturally by opera singers and violinists when they are prolonging a single note. Vibrato effects often allow the performer to control the rate of the variation as well as the difference in pitch (e.g. "depth"). A vibrato with an extreme "depth" setting (e.g., half a semitone or more) will produce a dramatic, ululating sound. In transistorized effects, vibrato is produced by mixing an instrument's audio signal with a carrier wave in such a way that generates frequency variations in the sound wave. Guitarists often use the terms vibrato and "tremolo" misleadingly. A so-called "vibrato unit" in a guitar amplifier actually produces tremolo, while a "tremolo arm" or "whammy bar" on a guitar produces vibrato.
Vibrato effects: Boss VB-2 Vibrato.
Pitch/frequency effects modify pitch by altering the frequency of a sound wave or sound signal or adding new harmonies.
Pitch shifter and harmonizer" A pitch shifter (also called an "octaver" for effects that shift pitch by an octave) raises or lowers (e.g. "transposes") each note a performer plays by a pre-set interval. For example, a pitch shifter set to increase the pitch by a fourth will raise each note four diatonic intervals above the notes actually played. Simple, less expensive pitch shifters raise or lower the pitch by one or two octaves, while more sophisticated and expensive devices offer a range of interval alterations. A pitch shifter can be used by an electric guitarist to play notes that would normally only be available on an electric bass. As well, a bass player with a four string electric bass can use an octave pedal to obtain low notes that would normally only be obtainable with a five-string bass with a low "B" string.
A harmonizer is a type of sophisticated pitch shifter that combines the altered pitch with the original pitch to create a two note harmony based on the original pitch, or even with some pedals, three note harmony. Some hamonizers are able to create chorus-like effects by adding very tiny shifts in pitch.
Pitch shift effects: DigiTech Whammy, Electro-Harmonix POG.
Time-based effects delay the sound signal, add reverb or echos, or, if a long delay is possible, enable musicians to record "loops".
Delay/echo: Delay/echo units produce an echo effect by adding a duplicate instrument-to-amplifier electrical signal to the original signal at a slight time-delay. The effect can either be a single echo called a "slap" or "slapback", or multiple echos. A well-known use of delay is the lead guitar in the U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Name", and also the opening riff of "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses.
Delay effects: Boss DD-3 Digital Delay, MXR Carbon Copy, Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, Line 6 DL4, Roland RE-201.
Looper pedal: A looper pedal or "phrase looper" allows a performer to record and later replay a phrase, riff or passage from a song. Loops can be created on the spot during a performance (live looping) or they can be pre-recorded. By using a looper pedal, a singer-guitarist in a one person band can play the backing chords (or riffs) to a song, loop them with the pedal, and then sing and do a guitar solo over the chords. Some units allow a performer to layer multiple loops, enabling the performer to create the effect of a full band. The first loop effects were created with reel-to-reel tape using a tape loop. High-end boutique tape loop effects are still used by some studio producers who want a vintage sound. Digital loop effects recreate this effect using an electronic memory.
Reverb: Reverb units simulate the spacious sounds produced naturally in a huge stone cathedral (or other acoustic space such as a hall or room). This is done by creating a large number of echoes that gradually fade away in volume or "decay". One early technique for creating a reverb effect was to send an amplified signal of the music via a speaker to another room with reflective surfaces, such as a tile bathroom, and then record the natural reverberations that were produced. A plate reverb system uses an electromechanical transducer to create vibrations in a plate of metal. Spring reverb systems, which are often used in guitar amplifiers, use a transducer to create vibrations in a spring. Digital reverb effects use various signal processing algorithms to create the reverb effect, often by using multiple feedback delay circuits. Rockabilly and surf guitar are two genres that make heavy use of reverb.
Reverb effects: Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail, Fender Reverb Unit.
Audio feedback: Audio feedback is an effect produced when amplified sound is picked up by a microphone or guitar pickup and played back through a guitar amplifier, initiating a "feedback loop", which usually consists of high-pitched sound. Feedback that occurs from a vocal mic into a PA system is almost always avoided. However, in some styles of rock music, electric guitar players intentionally create feedback by playing their instrument directly in front of a heavily amplified, distorted guitar amplifier's speaker enclosure. The creative use of feedback effects was pioneered by guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s. This technique creates sustained, high-pitched overtones and unusual sounds not possible through regular playing techniques. Guitar feedback effects can be difficult to perform, because it is difficult to determine the sound volume and guitar position relative to a guitar amp's loudspeaker necessary for achieving the desired feedback sound. Guitar feedback effects are used in a number of rock genres, including psychedelic rock, heavy metal music and punk rock.
EBow is a brand name of Heet Sound Products, of Los Angeles, California, for a small, handheld, battery-powered resonator. The Ebow was invented by Greg Heet, as a way to make a note on an electric guitar string resonate continuously, creating an effect that sounds similar to a bowed violin note or a sustained pipe organ note. The resonator uses a pickup – inductive string driver – feedback circuit, including a sensor coil, driver coil, and amplifier, to induce forced string resonance. The Ebow brand resonator is monophonic, and drives only one string at a time.
Other handheld and mounted guitar and bass resonators have been on the market since the early 1990s, produced in Germany under the SRG brand, which ceased production in 2016, and were available in both monophonic (one string at a time) and polyphonic (multiple strings at a time) models, which included multiple onboard trigger switch effects, such as HPF (high pass filter) for enhancing harmonics and producing feedback effects, and LPF (low pass filter), producing a bass boost with a cello sound on heavy gauge strings. Later EBow models, such as the plus Ebow, contain a mode slide switch on the back, which allows the player to either produce just sustain or overtone feedback in addition to sustain. Pedals such as the Boss DF-2 and FB-2 use an internally generated signal matched to the pitch of the guitar that can be sustained indefinitely by depressing the pedal. Many compressor pedals are often also marketed as "sustainer pedals". As a note is sustained, it loses energy and volume due to diminishing vibration in the string. The compressor pedal boosts its electrical signal to the specified dynamic range, slightly prolonging the duration of the note. This, combined with heavy distortion and the close proximity of the guitar and the speaker cabinet, can lead to infinite sustain at higher volumes.
Envelope follower: An envelope follower activates an effect once a designated volume is reached. One effect that uses an envelope follower is the auto-wah, which produces a "wah" effect depending on how loud or soft the notes are being played.
Guitar amplifier modeling: Amplifier modeling is a digital effect that replicates the sound of various amplifiers, most often vintage tube amplifiers and famous brands of speaker cabinets (e.g., the Ampeg SVT 8x10" bass cabinet). Sophisticated modeling effects can simulate different types of speaker cabinets (e.g., the sound of an 8x10" cabinet) and miking techniques. A rotary speaker simulator mimics the doppler and chorus effect sound of a vintage Leslie speaker system by replicating its volume and pitch modulations, overdrive capacity and phase shifts.
Pitch correction/vocal effects: Pitch correction effects use signal-processing algorithms to re-tune faulty intonation in a vocalist's performance or create unusual vocoder-type vocal effects. One of the best known examples of this is Autotune, a software program and effect unit which can be used to both correct pitch (it moves a pitch to the nearest semitone), and add vocal effects. Some stompbox-style vocal pedals contain multiple effects, such as reverb and pitch correction.
Simulators: Simulators enable electric guitars to mimic the sound of other instruments such as acoustic guitar, electric bass and sitar. Pick up simulators used on guitars with single-coil pick ups replicate the sound of guitars with humbucker pick ups, or vice versa. A de-fretter is a bass guitar effect that simulates the sound of a fretless bass. The effect uses an envelope-controlled filter and voltage-controlled amplifier to "soften" a note's attack both in volume and timbre.
Bitcrusher filters: Bitcrushers rely on conversion of the audio signal into a digital format (ADC) and the reduction of sound fidelity by utilising bit (and sometimes sample) rates low enough to cause significant colouration and filtering within the audible frequency range.
Rotating speakers are specially constructed amplifier or loudspeakers used to create special audio effects using the Doppler effect by rotating the speakers or a sound-directing duct. The rotating speaker creates a chorus-type effect. Named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, it is particularly associated with the Hammond organ but is used with a variety of instruments as well as vocals. The Hammond/Leslie combination has become an element in many genres of music. The Leslie Speaker and the Hammond Organ brands are currently owned by Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation.
The Korg Kaoss Pad is a small touchpad MIDI controller, sampler, and effects processor for audio and musical instruments, made by Korg. The Kaoss Pad's touchpad can be used to control its internal effects engine, which can be applied to a line-in signal or to samples recorded from the line-in. Effects types include pitch shifting, distortion, filtering, wah-wah, tremolo, flanging, delay, reverberation, auto-panning, gating, phasing, and ring modulation. The Kaoss Pad can also be used as a MIDI controller.
Bass effects are electronic effects units that are designed for use with the low pitches created by an electric bass or for an upright bass used with a bass amp or PA system. Two examples of bass effects are fuzz bass and bass chorus. Some bass amplifiers have built-in effects, such as overdrive or chorus. Upright bassists in jazz, folk, blues and similar genres may use a bass preamplifier, a small electronic device that matches the impedance between the piezoelectric pickup and the amp or PA system. Bass preamps also allow for the gain of the signal to be boosted or cut. Some models also offer equalization controls, a compressor, and a DI box connection.
Boutique pedals are designed by smaller, independent companies and are typically produced in limited quantities. Some may even be hand-made, with hand-soldered connections. These pedals are mainly distributed online or through mail-order, or sold in a few music stores. They are often more expensive than mass-produced pedals and offer higher-quality components, innovative designs, in-house-made knobs, and hand-painted artwork or etching. Some boutique companies focus on re-creating classic or vintage effects.
Some boutique pedal manufacturers include: BJFE, Pete Cornish, Emlyn Crowther, Death By Audio, Robert Keeley, Roger Linn, Roger Mayer, Strymon, T-Rex Engineering, ToadWorks, and Z.Vex Effects.
There is also a niche market for modifying or "modding" effects. Typically, vendors provide either custom modification services or sell new effects pedals they have already modified. The Ibanez Tube Screamer, Boss DS-1, Pro Co RAT and DigiTech Whammy are some of the most often-modified effects. Common modifications include value changes in capacitors or resistors, adding true-bypass so that the effect's circuitry is no longer in the signal path, substituting higher-quality components, replacing the unit's original operational amplifiers (op-amps), or adding functions to the device, such as allowing additional control of some factor or adding another output jack.
Not all stompboxes and rackmounted electronic devices designed for musicians are effects. Strobe tuner and regular electronic tuner pedals indicate whether a guitar string is too sharp or flat. Stompbox-format tuner pedals route the electric signal for the instrument through the unit via a 1/4" patch cable. These pedal-style tuners usually have an output so that the signal can be plugged into a guitar amp to produce sound. Rackmount power conditioner devices deliver a voltage of the proper level and characteristics to enable equipment to function properly (e.g., by providing transient impulse protection). A rackmounted wireless receiver unit is used to enable a guitarist or bassist to move around on stage without being connected to a cable. A footswitch pedal such as the "A/B" pedal routes a guitar signal to an amplifier or enables a performer to switch between two guitars, or between two amplifiers.
Guitar amplifiers and electronic keyboards may have switch pedals for turning built-in reverb and distortion effects on and off; the pedals contain only a switch, with the circuitry for the effect being housed in the amplifier chassis. Some musicians who use rackmounted effects or laptops employ a MIDI controller pedalboard or armband remote controls to trigger sound samples, switch between different effects or control effect settings. A pedal keyboard uses pedals, but it is not an effect unit; it is a foot-operated keyboard in which the pedals are typically used to play basslines. | [
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"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An effects unit or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing.",
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"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Common sound effects include distortion/overdrive, often used with electric guitar in electric blues and rock music; dynamic effects such as volume pedals and compressors, which affect loudness; filters such as wah-wah pedals and graphic equalizers, which modify frequency ranges; modulation effects, such as chorus, flangers and phasers; pitch effects such as pitch shifters; and time effects, such as reverb and delay, which create echoing sounds and emulate the sound of different spaces.",
"title": ""
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"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Most modern effects use solid-state electronics or digital signal processors. Some effects, particularly older ones such as Leslie speakers and spring reverbs, use mechanical components or vacuum tubes. Effects are often used as stompboxes, typically placed on the floor and controlled with footswitches. They may also be built into guitar amplifiers, instruments (such as the Hammond B-3 organ), tabletop units designed for DJs and record producers, and rackmounts, and are widely used as audio plug-ins in such common formats as VST, AAX, and AU.",
"title": ""
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"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Musicians, audio engineers and record producers use effects units during live performances or in the studio, typically with electric guitar, bass guitar, electronic keyboard or electric piano. While effects are most frequently used with electric or electronic instruments, they can be used with any audio source, such as acoustic instruments, drums, and vocals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "An effects unit is also called an effect box, effects device, effects processor or simply an effect. The abbreviation F/X or FX is sometimes used. A pedal-style unit may be called a stomp box, stompbox, effects pedal or pedal. Unprocessed audio coming into an effects unit is referred to as dry, while the processed audio output is referred to as wet.",
"title": "Terminology"
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{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A musician bringing many pedals to a live show or recording session often mounts the pedals on a guitar pedalboard, to reduce set-up and tear-down time and, for pedalboards with lids, protect the pedals during transportation. When a musician has multiple effects in a rack mounted road case, this case may be called an effects rack or rig. When rackmounted effects are mounted in a roadcase, this also speeds up a musician's set-up and tear-down time, because all of the effects can be connected together inside the rack case.",
"title": "Terminology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Effects units are available in a variety of form factors. Stompboxes are used in both live performance and studio recording. Rackmount devices saw a heavy usage during the later 20th century, due to their superior processing power and desirable tones as compared to pedal-style units. However, by the 21st century, with the advent of digital plugins and more powerful stompboxes for live usage, the use of rack-mounted effect units has declined. An effects unit can consist of analog or digital electronics or a combination of the two. During a live performance, the effect is plugged into the electrical signal path of the instrument. In the studio, an instrument or another sound source — possibly an auxiliary output of a mixer or a DAW — is patched into the effect. Whatever the form factor, effects units are part of a studio or musician's outboard gear.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Stompboxes are small plastic or metal chassis that usually lie on the floor or in a pedalboard to be operated by the user's feet. Pedals are often rectangle-shaped, but there are a range of other shapes (e.g., the circular Fuzz Face). Typical simple stompboxes have a single footswitch, one to three potentiometers for controlling the effect, and a single LED that indicates if the effect is on. A typical distortion or overdrive pedal's three potentiometers, for example, control the level or intensity of the distortion effect, the tone of the effected signal and the output level of the effected signal. Depending on the type of pedal, the potentiometers may control different parameters of the effect. For a chorus effect, for example, the knobs may control the depth and speed of the effect. Complex stompboxes may have multiple footswitches, many knobs, additional switches or buttons that are operated with the fingers, and an alphanumeric LED display that indicates the status of the effect with short acronyms (e.g., DIST for \"distortion\").",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "An effects chain is formed by connecting two or more stompboxes forming a signal chain. Effect chains are typically created between the guitar and the amp or between the preamplifier and the power amp. When a pedal is off or inactive, the electric audio signal coming into the pedal diverts onto a bypass, an unaltered dry signal that continues on to other effects down the chain. In this way, a musician can combine effects within a chain in a variety of ways without having to reconnect boxes during a performance. A controller or effects management system lets the musician create multiple effect chains, so they can select one or several chains by tapping a single switch. The switches are usually organized in a row or a simple grid.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "It is common to put compression, wah and overdrive pedals at the start of the chain; modulation (chorus, flanger, phase shifter) in the middle; and time-based units (delay/echo, reverb at the end. When using many effects, unwanted noise and hum can be introduced into the sound. Some performers use a noise gate pedal at the end of a chain to reduce unwanted noise and hum introduced by overdrive units or vintage gear.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Rackmount effects units are typically built in a thin metal chassis with rack ears designed to be screw-mounted into the rack rails of a 19-inch rack that is standard to the music technology industry. Rackmount effects have a standardized 19-inch width, and height of 1 or more rack unit(s). Devices that are less than 19 inches wide can sometimes be made rackmount-compatible via special rackmount adapters.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "A rackmount effects unit may contain electronic circuitry identical to a stompbox's, although its circuits are typically more complex. Unlike stompboxes, rackmounts usually have several different types of effects. Rackmount effects units are controlled by knobs, switches or buttons on their front panel, and often remote-controllable by a MIDI digital control interface or pedal-style foot controller.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Rackmount effects units are most commonly used in recording studios and front of house live sound mixing situations. Musicians may use them in place of stompboxes, as use of a rack can offer space for conveniently mounting additional rackmount equipment or accessories. Rackmounted effects units are typically mounted in a rack, which may be housed within a road case, a durable case with removable access panels that protect the equipment within during transportation. Because of this, rackmount effect units are not always designed with durable protective features such as corner protectors which are used on stompboxes and amps that are designed to be transported as standalone units.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A multi-effects (MFX) device is a single electronics effects pedal or rackmount device that contains many different electronic effects. multi-effects devices allow users to preset combinations of different effects, allowing musicians quick on-stage access to different effects combinations. Multi-effects units typically have a range of distortion, chorus, flanger, phaser, delay, looper and reverb effects. Pedal-style multi-effects range from fairly inexpensive stompboxes that contain two pedals and a few knobs to control the effects to large, expensive floor units with many pedals and knobs. Rack-mounted multi-effects units may be mounted in the same rack as preamplifiers and power amplifiers.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "A tabletop unit is a type of multi-effects device that sits on a desk and is controlled manually. One such example is the Pod guitar amplifier modeler. Digital effects designed for DJs are often sold in tabletop models, so that the units can be placed alongside a DJ mixer, turntables and scratching gear.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Effects are often incorporated into instrument amplifiers and even some types of instruments. Electric guitar amplifiers typically have built-in reverb, chorus and distortion, while acoustic guitar and keyboard amplifiers tend to only have built-in reverb. Some acoustic instrument amplifiers have reverb, chorus, compression and equalization (bass and treble) effects. Vintage guitar amps typically have tremolo and vibrato effects, and sometimes reverb. The Fender Bandmaster Reverb amp, for example, had built-in reverb and vibrato. Built-in effects may offer the user less control than standalone pedals or rackmounted units. For example, on some lower- to mid-priced bass amplifiers, the only control on the audio compression effect is a button or switch to turn it on or off, or a single knob. In contrast, a pedal or rackmounted unit would typically provide ratio, threshold and attack controls or other options to allow the user additional control over the compression.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Some guitar amplifiers have built-in multi-effects units or digital amplifier modeling effects. Bass amplifiers are less likely to have built-in effects, although some may have a compressor/limiter or fuzz bass effect.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Instruments with built-in effects include Hammond organs, electronic organs, electronic pianos and digital synthesizers. Built-in effects for keyboards typically include reverb, chorus and, for Hammond organ, vibrato. Many clonewheel organs include an overdrive effect. Occasionally, acoustic-electric and electric guitars will have built-in effects, such as a preamp or equalizer.",
"title": "Form factors"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The earliest sound effects were strictly used in studio productions. Microphones placed in echo chambers with specially designed acoustic properties simulated the sound of live performances in different environments. In the mid to late 1940s, recording engineers and experimental musicians such as Les Paul began manipulating reel-to-reel recording tape to create echo effects and unusual, futuristic sounds. In 1948, DeArmond released the Trem-Trol, the first commercially available stand-alone effects unit. This device produced a tremolo by passing an instrument's electrical signal through a water-based electrolytic fluid. Most stand-alone effects of the 1950s and early 1960s such as the Gibson GA-VI vibrato unit and the Fender reverb box, were expensive and impractical, requiring bulky transformers and high voltages. The original stand-alone units were not especially in-demand as many effects came built into amplifiers. The first popular stand-alone was the 1958 Watkins Copicat, a relatively portable tape echo effect made famous by the British band, The Shadows.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Effects built into tube-powered guitar amplifiers were the first effects that musicians used regularly outside the studio. From the late 1940s onward, the Gibson began including vibrato circuits in combo amplifiers that incorporated one or more speakers with the amp. The 1950 Ray Butts EchoSonic amp was the first to feature a tape echo, which quickly became popular with guitarists such as Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore, Luther Perkins, and Roy Orbison. Both Premier and Gibson built amplifiers with spring reverb. Fender began manufacturing the tremolo amps Tremolux in 1955 and Vibrolux in 1956.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Distortion was not an effect originally intended by amplifier manufacturers, but could often easily be achieved by overdriving the power supply in early tube amplifiers. In the 1950s, guitarists began deliberately increasing gain beyond its intended levels to achieve warm distorted sounds. Among the first musicians to experiment with distortion were Willie Johnson of Howlin' Wolf, Goree Carter, Joe Hill Louis, Ike Turner, Guitar Slim, and Chuck Berry.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 1954, Pat Hare produced heavily distorted power chords for several recordings (including James Cotton's \"Cotton Crop Blues\"), creating \"a grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound,\" accomplished by turning the volume knob on his amplifier \"all the way to the right until the speaker was screaming.\" Link Wray's 1958 recording \"Rumble\" inspired young musicians such as Pete Townshend of The Who, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, Dave Davies of The Kinks, and Neil Young to explore distortion by various means. In 1966, the British company Marshall Amplification began producing the Marshall 1963, a guitar amplifier capable of producing the distorted crunch that rock musicians were starting to seek.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The electronic transistor finally made it possible to fit effects circuitry into highly portable stompbox units. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes, allowing for much more compact formats and greater stability. The first transistorized guitar effect was the 1962 Maestro Fuzz Tone pedal, which became a sensation after its use in the 1965 Rolling Stones hit \"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Warwick Electronics manufactured the first wah-wah pedal, The Clyde McCoy, in 1967 and that same year Roger Mayer developed the first octave effect, which Jimi Hendrix named \"Octavio\". Upon first hearing the Octavia, Hendrix reportedly rushed back to the studio and immediately used it to record the guitar solos on \"Purple Haze\" and \"Fire\". In 1968, Univox began marketing Shin-ei's Uni-Vibe pedal, an effect designed by noted audio engineer Fumio Mieda that mimicked the odd phase shift and chorus effects of the Leslie rotating speakers used in Hammond organs. The pedals soon became favorite effects of guitarists Jimi Hendrix and Robin Trower. In 1976, Roland subsidiary Boss Corporation released the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, the first chorus pedal, created by taking a chorus circuit from an amplifier and putting it into a stompbox. By the mid-1970s a variety of solid-state effects pedals including flangers, chorus pedals, ring modulators and phase shifters were available.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "In the 1980s, digital rackmount units began replacing stompboxes as the effects format of choice. Often musicians would record dry, unaltered tracks in the studio and effects would be added in post-production. The success of Nirvana's 1991 album Nevermind helped to re-ignite interest in stompboxes. Some grunge guitarists would chain several fuzz pedals together and plug them into a tube amplifier. Throughout the 1990s, musicians committed to a lo-fi aesthetic such as J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., Stephen Malkmus of Pavement and Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices continued to use analog effects pedals.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Effects and effects units—stompboxes in particular—have been celebrated by pop and rock musicians in album titles, songs and band names. The Big Muff, a fuzzbox manufactured by Electro-Harmonix, is commemorated by the Depeche Mode song \"Big Muff\" and the Mudhoney EP Superfuzz Bigmuff. Nine Inch Nails, Pink Floyd, George Harrison, They Might Be Giants and Joy Division are among the many musicians who have referenced effects units in their music.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Distortion, overdrive, and fuzz effects units add a warm, gritty, or fuzzy character to an audio signal by re-shaping or clipping it, which distorts the shape of its waveform by flattening its peaks, creating warm sounds by adding harmonics or gritty sounds by adding inharmonic overtones. Distortion effects are sometimes called gain effects, as distorted guitar sounds were first achieved by increasing the gain of tube amplifiers.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "While distortion effects units produce perfectly flattened peaks or hard clipping, overdrive effects units produce soft tube-like distortion by compressing the waveform without completely flattening it. Much like guitar tube amplifiers, overdrive effects units are capable of producing clean sounds at lower volumes and distorted warm sounds at higher volumes.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Notable examples of distortion and overdrive effects units include the Boss DS-1 Distortion, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Marshall ShredMaster, MXR Distortion +, and Pro Co RAT.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "A fuzz pedal, or fuzzbox, is a type of overdrive effects unit that clips a signal until it is nearly a squarewave, resulting in a heavily distorted or fuzzy sound. Fuzzboxes may contain frequency multiplier circuitry to achieve a harsh timbre by adding complex harmonics. The Rolling Stones' song \"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction\", with a fuzz effect featured prominently on the main electric guitar riff played by Keith Richards, greatly popularized the use of fuzz effects. Fuzz bass (also called bass overdrive) is a style of playing the electric bass that produces a buzzy, overdriven sound via a tube or transistor amp or by using a fuzz or overdrive pedal.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Notable examples of fuzz effect units include the: Arbiter Fuzz Face, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, Shin-ei Companion FY-2, Univox Super-Fuzz, Vox Tone Bender, Z.Vex Fuzz Factory.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "While distortion effect units are most associated with electric and bass guitar, they are also commonly used on keyboard instruments (i.e. synthesizers, combo and tonewheel organs, electric piano), as well as drums and vocals.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Also called volume and amplitude effects, dynamics effects modify the volume of an instrument. Dynamics effects were among the first effects introduced to guitarists.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Boost/volume pedal: When activated, a boost or clean boost pedal amplifies the volume of an instrument by increasing the amplitude of its audio signal. These units are generally used for boosting volume during solos and preventing signal loss in long effects chains. A guitarist switching from rhythm guitar to lead guitar for a guitar solo may use a boost to increase the volume of their solo.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Volume effects: Electro-Harmonix LPB-1, Fender Volume Pedal, MXR Micro Amp, Ernie Ball Volume Pedal. Treadle-based volume pedals are used by electric instrument players (guitar, bass, keyboards) to adjust the volume of their instrument with one foot while their hands are being used to play their instrument. Treadle-style volume pedals are often also used to create swelling effects by removing the attack of a note or chord, as popularised by pedal steel guitar players. This enables electric guitar and pedal steel players to imitate the soft swelling sound that an orchestra string section can produce, in which a note or chord starts very softly and then grows in volume. Treadle-based volume pedals do not usually have batteries or require external power.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Compressor: Compressors make loud sounds quieter and quiet sounds louder by decreasing or compressing the dynamic range of an audio signal. A compressor is often used to stabilize volume and alter the sound of a note's attack. With extreme settings of its controls, a compressor can function as a limiter.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Compressor effects: Keeley Compressor, MXR Dyna Comp, Boss CS-3 Compression Sustainer.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Noise gate: Noise gates attenuate hum, hiss, and static in the signal by greatly diminishing the volume when the signal falls below a set threshold. Noise gates are often used by electric guitarist who play with vintage amps, which can have unwanted hum in the tone, and by guitarists from heavy metal who use high distortion levels, which add noise to the signal even when no notes are being played. Noise gates mute the signal when it falls below a certain threshold. This means that during bars of rest for the guitarist in a song, the hum or noise from the amp or distortion pedal will not be heard by the audience. Noise gates are expanders—meaning that, unlike compressors, they increase the dynamic range of an audio signal to make quiet sounds even quieter. If used with extreme settings and combined with reverb, they can create unusual sounds, such as the gated drum effect used in 1980s pop songs, a style popularized by the Phil Collins song In the Air Tonight.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Noise gate effects: Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Filter effects alter the frequency content of an audio signal that passes through them by either boosting or weakening specific frequencies or frequency regions.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Equalizer: An equalizer is a set of linear filters that strengthen (\"boost\") or weaken (\"cut\") specific frequency regions. While basic home stereos often have equalizers for two bands, to adjust bass and treble, professional graphic equalizers offer much more targeted control over the audio frequency spectrum. Audio engineers use highly sophisticated equalizers to eliminate unwanted sounds, make an instrument or voice more prominent, and enhance particular aspects of an instrument's tone.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Equalizer effects: Boss GE-7 Equalizer, MXR 10-band EQ Pedal.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Talk box: A talk box directs the sound from an electric guitar or synthesizer into the mouth of a performer using a tube, allowing the sound to be shaped into vowels and consonants with movements of the mouth. The modified sound is then picked up by a microphone. In this way the guitarist is able create the effect that the guitar \"licks\" are \"talking\". Some famous uses of the talkbox include Bon Jovi's \"Livin' on a Prayer\", Stevie Wonder's \"Black Man\", Mötley Crüe's \"Kickstart My Heart\", Joe Walsh's \"Rocky Mountain Way\", Alice in Chains's \"Man in the box\" and Peter Frampton's \"Show Me the Way\".",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Talk boxes: Dunlop HT1 Heil Talk Box, Rocktron Banshee.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Wah-wah: A wah-wah pedal creates vowel-like sounds by altering the frequency spectrum produced by an instrument—i.e., how loud it is at each separate frequency—in what is known as a \"spectral glide\" or \"sweep\". The device is operated by a foot treadle that opens and closes a potentiometer. Wah-wah pedals are often used by funk and rock guitarists.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Wah effects: Dunlop Cry Baby, Morley Power Wah, Vox V846 Wah.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Auto-wah: A filter effect that is controlled by the volume of the input signal. The most common filter type used for this effect pedal is the low-pass filter, although many pedal designs include a toggle for band-pass or high-pass filters as well. Additionally, most envelope filters pedal boxes can switch between a down filter mode and an up filter. This effect is commonly used in funk, reggae and jam band music.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Envelope filter effects: Musitronics Mu-Tron III, Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron Plus, DOD Envelope Filter 440",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Modulation, in general electronics, means the altering of signal strength. In audio devices, modulation is a control feature that varies the strength of some effect over time to alter tonal properties. Some modulation effects mix (\"modulate\") an instrument's audio signal with a signal generated by the effect called a carrier wave. Other modulation effects split an instrument's audio signal in two, altering one portion of the signal and mixing it with the unaltered portion.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Chorus: Chorus pedals mimic the effect choirs and string orchestras produce naturally, by having slight variations in timbre and pitch, by mixing sounds with slight differences in timbre and pitch. A chorus effect splits the instrument-to-amplifier audio signal, and adds a slight delay and frequency variations or vibrato to part of the signal while leaving the rest unaltered. A well-known usage of chorus is the lead guitar in \"Come As You Are\" by Nirvana.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Chorus effects: Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, Electro-Harmonix Small Clone, TC Electronic Stereo Chorus.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Flanger: A flanger creates a \"whooshing\" \"jet plane\" or \"spaceship\" sound, simulating a studio effect that was first produced by recording a track on two synchronized tapes and periodically slowing one tape by pressing the edge of its reel (the \"flange\"). When the two tapes' audio signals are later mixed, a comb filter effect can be heard. Flanger units add a variably delayed version of the audio signal to the original or signal, creating a comb filter or Doppler effect. Some famous uses of flanger effects include \"Walking on the Moon\" by The Police, the intro to \"Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love\" by Van Halen, and \"Barracuda\" by Heart.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Flanger effects: Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress, MXR Flanger, Boss BF-3 Flanger.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Phaser: A phaser or \"phase shifter\" creates a slight rippling effect—amplifying some aspects of the tone while diminishing others—by splitting an audio signal in two and altering the phase of one portion. Three well-known examples of phaser are the two handed tapping part on the Van Halen instrumental \"Eruption\" and the keyboard parts on Billy Joel's \"Just the Way You Are\" and Paul Simon's \"Slip Slidin' Away\".",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Phase shift effects: Uni-Vibe, Electro-Harmonix Small Stone, MXR Phase 90.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Ring modulator: A ring modulator produces a resonant, metallic sound by mixing an instrument's audio signal with a carrier wave generated by the device's internal oscillator. The original sound wave is suppressed and replaced by a \"ring\" of inharmonic higher and lower pitches or \"sidebands\". A notable use of ring modulation is the guitar in the Black Sabbath song \"Paranoid\".",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Ring modulator effects: Moogerfooger MF-102 Ring Modulator.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Tremolo: A tremolo effect produces a slight, rapid variation in the volume of a note or chord. The \"tremolo effect\" should not be confused with the misleadingly-named tremolo bar, a device on a guitar bridge that creates a vibrato or pitch-bending effect. In transistorized effects, a tremolo is produced by modulating an instrument's audio signal with a sub-audible carrier wave in such a way that generates amplitude variations in the sound wave. Tremolo effects are built-in effects in some vintage guitar amplifiers. The guitar intro in the Rolling Stones' \"Gimme Shelter\" features a tremolo effect.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Tremolo effects: Demeter TRM-1 Tremulator, Fender Tremolux.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "Slicer: Combines a modulation sequence with a noise gate or envelope filter to create a percussive and rhythmic effect like a helicopter.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Vibrato: Vibrato effects produce slight, rapid variations in pitch, mimicking the fractional semitone variations produced naturally by opera singers and violinists when they are prolonging a single note. Vibrato effects often allow the performer to control the rate of the variation as well as the difference in pitch (e.g. \"depth\"). A vibrato with an extreme \"depth\" setting (e.g., half a semitone or more) will produce a dramatic, ululating sound. In transistorized effects, vibrato is produced by mixing an instrument's audio signal with a carrier wave in such a way that generates frequency variations in the sound wave. Guitarists often use the terms vibrato and \"tremolo\" misleadingly. A so-called \"vibrato unit\" in a guitar amplifier actually produces tremolo, while a \"tremolo arm\" or \"whammy bar\" on a guitar produces vibrato.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Vibrato effects: Boss VB-2 Vibrato.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Pitch/frequency effects modify pitch by altering the frequency of a sound wave or sound signal or adding new harmonies.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Pitch shifter and harmonizer\" A pitch shifter (also called an \"octaver\" for effects that shift pitch by an octave) raises or lowers (e.g. \"transposes\") each note a performer plays by a pre-set interval. For example, a pitch shifter set to increase the pitch by a fourth will raise each note four diatonic intervals above the notes actually played. Simple, less expensive pitch shifters raise or lower the pitch by one or two octaves, while more sophisticated and expensive devices offer a range of interval alterations. A pitch shifter can be used by an electric guitarist to play notes that would normally only be available on an electric bass. As well, a bass player with a four string electric bass can use an octave pedal to obtain low notes that would normally only be obtainable with a five-string bass with a low \"B\" string.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "A harmonizer is a type of sophisticated pitch shifter that combines the altered pitch with the original pitch to create a two note harmony based on the original pitch, or even with some pedals, three note harmony. Some hamonizers are able to create chorus-like effects by adding very tiny shifts in pitch.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Pitch shift effects: DigiTech Whammy, Electro-Harmonix POG.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "Time-based effects delay the sound signal, add reverb or echos, or, if a long delay is possible, enable musicians to record \"loops\".",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Delay/echo: Delay/echo units produce an echo effect by adding a duplicate instrument-to-amplifier electrical signal to the original signal at a slight time-delay. The effect can either be a single echo called a \"slap\" or \"slapback\", or multiple echos. A well-known use of delay is the lead guitar in the U2 song \"Where the Streets Have No Name\", and also the opening riff of \"Welcome to the Jungle\" by Guns N' Roses.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "Delay effects: Boss DD-3 Digital Delay, MXR Carbon Copy, Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, Line 6 DL4, Roland RE-201.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Looper pedal: A looper pedal or \"phrase looper\" allows a performer to record and later replay a phrase, riff or passage from a song. Loops can be created on the spot during a performance (live looping) or they can be pre-recorded. By using a looper pedal, a singer-guitarist in a one person band can play the backing chords (or riffs) to a song, loop them with the pedal, and then sing and do a guitar solo over the chords. Some units allow a performer to layer multiple loops, enabling the performer to create the effect of a full band. The first loop effects were created with reel-to-reel tape using a tape loop. High-end boutique tape loop effects are still used by some studio producers who want a vintage sound. Digital loop effects recreate this effect using an electronic memory.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "Reverb: Reverb units simulate the spacious sounds produced naturally in a huge stone cathedral (or other acoustic space such as a hall or room). This is done by creating a large number of echoes that gradually fade away in volume or \"decay\". One early technique for creating a reverb effect was to send an amplified signal of the music via a speaker to another room with reflective surfaces, such as a tile bathroom, and then record the natural reverberations that were produced. A plate reverb system uses an electromechanical transducer to create vibrations in a plate of metal. Spring reverb systems, which are often used in guitar amplifiers, use a transducer to create vibrations in a spring. Digital reverb effects use various signal processing algorithms to create the reverb effect, often by using multiple feedback delay circuits. Rockabilly and surf guitar are two genres that make heavy use of reverb.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Reverb effects: Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail, Fender Reverb Unit.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "Audio feedback: Audio feedback is an effect produced when amplified sound is picked up by a microphone or guitar pickup and played back through a guitar amplifier, initiating a \"feedback loop\", which usually consists of high-pitched sound. Feedback that occurs from a vocal mic into a PA system is almost always avoided. However, in some styles of rock music, electric guitar players intentionally create feedback by playing their instrument directly in front of a heavily amplified, distorted guitar amplifier's speaker enclosure. The creative use of feedback effects was pioneered by guitarists such as Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s. This technique creates sustained, high-pitched overtones and unusual sounds not possible through regular playing techniques. Guitar feedback effects can be difficult to perform, because it is difficult to determine the sound volume and guitar position relative to a guitar amp's loudspeaker necessary for achieving the desired feedback sound. Guitar feedback effects are used in a number of rock genres, including psychedelic rock, heavy metal music and punk rock.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "EBow is a brand name of Heet Sound Products, of Los Angeles, California, for a small, handheld, battery-powered resonator. The Ebow was invented by Greg Heet, as a way to make a note on an electric guitar string resonate continuously, creating an effect that sounds similar to a bowed violin note or a sustained pipe organ note. The resonator uses a pickup – inductive string driver – feedback circuit, including a sensor coil, driver coil, and amplifier, to induce forced string resonance. The Ebow brand resonator is monophonic, and drives only one string at a time.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Other handheld and mounted guitar and bass resonators have been on the market since the early 1990s, produced in Germany under the SRG brand, which ceased production in 2016, and were available in both monophonic (one string at a time) and polyphonic (multiple strings at a time) models, which included multiple onboard trigger switch effects, such as HPF (high pass filter) for enhancing harmonics and producing feedback effects, and LPF (low pass filter), producing a bass boost with a cello sound on heavy gauge strings. Later EBow models, such as the plus Ebow, contain a mode slide switch on the back, which allows the player to either produce just sustain or overtone feedback in addition to sustain. Pedals such as the Boss DF-2 and FB-2 use an internally generated signal matched to the pitch of the guitar that can be sustained indefinitely by depressing the pedal. Many compressor pedals are often also marketed as \"sustainer pedals\". As a note is sustained, it loses energy and volume due to diminishing vibration in the string. The compressor pedal boosts its electrical signal to the specified dynamic range, slightly prolonging the duration of the note. This, combined with heavy distortion and the close proximity of the guitar and the speaker cabinet, can lead to infinite sustain at higher volumes.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Envelope follower: An envelope follower activates an effect once a designated volume is reached. One effect that uses an envelope follower is the auto-wah, which produces a \"wah\" effect depending on how loud or soft the notes are being played.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "Guitar amplifier modeling: Amplifier modeling is a digital effect that replicates the sound of various amplifiers, most often vintage tube amplifiers and famous brands of speaker cabinets (e.g., the Ampeg SVT 8x10\" bass cabinet). Sophisticated modeling effects can simulate different types of speaker cabinets (e.g., the sound of an 8x10\" cabinet) and miking techniques. A rotary speaker simulator mimics the doppler and chorus effect sound of a vintage Leslie speaker system by replicating its volume and pitch modulations, overdrive capacity and phase shifts.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Pitch correction/vocal effects: Pitch correction effects use signal-processing algorithms to re-tune faulty intonation in a vocalist's performance or create unusual vocoder-type vocal effects. One of the best known examples of this is Autotune, a software program and effect unit which can be used to both correct pitch (it moves a pitch to the nearest semitone), and add vocal effects. Some stompbox-style vocal pedals contain multiple effects, such as reverb and pitch correction.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Simulators: Simulators enable electric guitars to mimic the sound of other instruments such as acoustic guitar, electric bass and sitar. Pick up simulators used on guitars with single-coil pick ups replicate the sound of guitars with humbucker pick ups, or vice versa. A de-fretter is a bass guitar effect that simulates the sound of a fretless bass. The effect uses an envelope-controlled filter and voltage-controlled amplifier to \"soften\" a note's attack both in volume and timbre.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Bitcrusher filters: Bitcrushers rely on conversion of the audio signal into a digital format (ADC) and the reduction of sound fidelity by utilising bit (and sometimes sample) rates low enough to cause significant colouration and filtering within the audible frequency range.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Rotating speakers are specially constructed amplifier or loudspeakers used to create special audio effects using the Doppler effect by rotating the speakers or a sound-directing duct. The rotating speaker creates a chorus-type effect. Named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, it is particularly associated with the Hammond organ but is used with a variety of instruments as well as vocals. The Hammond/Leslie combination has become an element in many genres of music. The Leslie Speaker and the Hammond Organ brands are currently owned by Suzuki Musical Instrument Corporation.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "The Korg Kaoss Pad is a small touchpad MIDI controller, sampler, and effects processor for audio and musical instruments, made by Korg. The Kaoss Pad's touchpad can be used to control its internal effects engine, which can be applied to a line-in signal or to samples recorded from the line-in. Effects types include pitch shifting, distortion, filtering, wah-wah, tremolo, flanging, delay, reverberation, auto-panning, gating, phasing, and ring modulation. The Kaoss Pad can also be used as a MIDI controller.",
"title": "Techniques"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Bass effects are electronic effects units that are designed for use with the low pitches created by an electric bass or for an upright bass used with a bass amp or PA system. Two examples of bass effects are fuzz bass and bass chorus. Some bass amplifiers have built-in effects, such as overdrive or chorus. Upright bassists in jazz, folk, blues and similar genres may use a bass preamplifier, a small electronic device that matches the impedance between the piezoelectric pickup and the amp or PA system. Bass preamps also allow for the gain of the signal to be boosted or cut. Some models also offer equalization controls, a compressor, and a DI box connection.",
"title": "Bass effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Boutique pedals are designed by smaller, independent companies and are typically produced in limited quantities. Some may even be hand-made, with hand-soldered connections. These pedals are mainly distributed online or through mail-order, or sold in a few music stores. They are often more expensive than mass-produced pedals and offer higher-quality components, innovative designs, in-house-made knobs, and hand-painted artwork or etching. Some boutique companies focus on re-creating classic or vintage effects.",
"title": "Boutique pedals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "Some boutique pedal manufacturers include: BJFE, Pete Cornish, Emlyn Crowther, Death By Audio, Robert Keeley, Roger Linn, Roger Mayer, Strymon, T-Rex Engineering, ToadWorks, and Z.Vex Effects.",
"title": "Boutique pedals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "There is also a niche market for modifying or \"modding\" effects. Typically, vendors provide either custom modification services or sell new effects pedals they have already modified. The Ibanez Tube Screamer, Boss DS-1, Pro Co RAT and DigiTech Whammy are some of the most often-modified effects. Common modifications include value changes in capacitors or resistors, adding true-bypass so that the effect's circuitry is no longer in the signal path, substituting higher-quality components, replacing the unit's original operational amplifiers (op-amps), or adding functions to the device, such as allowing additional control of some factor or adding another output jack.",
"title": "Boutique pedals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Not all stompboxes and rackmounted electronic devices designed for musicians are effects. Strobe tuner and regular electronic tuner pedals indicate whether a guitar string is too sharp or flat. Stompbox-format tuner pedals route the electric signal for the instrument through the unit via a 1/4\" patch cable. These pedal-style tuners usually have an output so that the signal can be plugged into a guitar amp to produce sound. Rackmount power conditioner devices deliver a voltage of the proper level and characteristics to enable equipment to function properly (e.g., by providing transient impulse protection). A rackmounted wireless receiver unit is used to enable a guitarist or bassist to move around on stage without being connected to a cable. A footswitch pedal such as the \"A/B\" pedal routes a guitar signal to an amplifier or enables a performer to switch between two guitars, or between two amplifiers.",
"title": "Other pedals and rackmount units"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Guitar amplifiers and electronic keyboards may have switch pedals for turning built-in reverb and distortion effects on and off; the pedals contain only a switch, with the circuitry for the effect being housed in the amplifier chassis. Some musicians who use rackmounted effects or laptops employ a MIDI controller pedalboard or armband remote controls to trigger sound samples, switch between different effects or control effect settings. A pedal keyboard uses pedals, but it is not an effect unit; it is a foot-operated keyboard in which the pedals are typically used to play basslines.",
"title": "Other pedals and rackmount units"
}
]
| An effects unit or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing. Common sound effects include distortion/overdrive, often used with electric guitar in electric blues and rock music; dynamic effects such as volume pedals and compressors, which affect loudness; filters such as wah-wah pedals and graphic equalizers, which modify frequency ranges; modulation effects, such as chorus, flangers and phasers; pitch effects such as pitch shifters; and time effects, such as reverb and delay, which create echoing sounds and emulate the sound of different spaces. Most modern effects use solid-state electronics or digital signal processors. Some effects, particularly older ones such as Leslie speakers and spring reverbs, use mechanical components or vacuum tubes. Effects are often used as stompboxes, typically placed on the floor and controlled with footswitches. They may also be built into guitar amplifiers, instruments, tabletop units designed for DJs and record producers, and rackmounts, and are widely used as audio plug-ins in such common formats as VST, AAX, and AU. Musicians, audio engineers and record producers use effects units during live performances or in the studio, typically with electric guitar, bass guitar, electronic keyboard or electric piano. While effects are most frequently used with electric or electronic instruments, they can be used with any audio source, such as acoustic instruments, drums, and vocals. | 2001-11-30T06:51:15Z | 2024-01-01T00:53:06Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_unit |
10,166 | Enron | Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,600 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.
At the end of 2001, it was revealed that Enron's reported financial condition was sustained by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has become synonymous with willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States and was a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also affected the greater business world by causing, together with even larger fraudulent bankruptcy WorldCom, the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, which had been Enron and WorldCom's main auditor for years.
Enron filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel. It ended its bankruptcy in November 2004, pursuant to a court-approved plan of reorganization. A new board of directors changed the name of Enron to Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., and emphasized reorganizing and liquidating certain operations and assets of the pre-bankruptcy Enron. On September 7, 2006, Enron sold its last remaining subsidiary, Prisma Energy International, to Ashmore Energy International Ltd. (now AEI). It is the largest bankruptcy, due specifically to fraud, of all time.
One of Enron's primary predecessors was InterNorth, which was formed in 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska, just a few months after Black Tuesday. The low cost of natural gas and the cheap supply of labor during the Great Depression helped to fuel the company's early beginnings, doubling in size by 1932. Over the next 50 years, Northern expanded even more as it acquired many energy companies. It was reorganized in 1979 as the main subsidiary of a holding company, InterNorth, a diversified energy and energy-related products firm. Although most of the acquisitions conducted were successful, some ended poorly. InterNorth competed with Cooper Industries unsuccessfully over a hostile takeover of Crouse-Hinds Company, an electrical products manufacturer. Cooper and InterNorth feuded in numerous suits during the course of the takeover that were eventually settled after the transaction was completed. The subsidiary Northern Natural Gas operated the largest pipeline company in North America. By the 1980s, InterNorth became a major force for natural gas production, transmission, and marketing as well as for natural gas liquids, and was an innovator in the plastics industry. In 1983, InterNorth merged with the Belco Petroleum Company, a Fortune 500 oil exploration and development company founded by Arthur Belfer.
The Houston Natural Gas (HNG) corporation was initially formed from the Houston Oil Co. in 1925 to provide gas to customers in the Houston market through the building of gas pipelines. Under the leadership of CEO Robert Herring from 1967 to 1981, the company took advantage of the unregulated Texas natural gas market and the commodity surge in the early 1970s to become a dominant force in the energy industry. Toward the end of the 1970s, HNG's luck began to run out with rising gas prices forcing clients to switch to oil. In addition, with the passing of the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978, the Texas market was less profitable and as a result, HNG's profits fell. After Herring's death in 1981, M.D. Matthews briefly took over as CEO in a 3-year stint with initial success, but ultimately, a big dip in earnings led to his exit. In 1984, Kenneth Lay succeeded Matthews and inherited the troubled conglomerate.
With its conservative success, InterNorth became a target of corporate takeovers, the most prominent originating with Irwin Jacobs. InterNorth CEO Sam Segnar sought a friendly merger with HNG. In May 1985, Internorth acquired HNG for $2.3 billion, 40% higher than the current market price. The combined assets of the two companies created the second largest gas pipeline system in the US at that time. Internorth's north-south pipelines that served Iowa and Minnesota complemented HNG's Florida and California east-west pipelines well.
The company was initially named HNG/InterNorth Inc., even though InterNorth was technically the parent. At the outset, Segnar was CEO but was soon fired by the board of directors to name Lay to the post. Lay moved its headquarters back to Houston and set out to find a new name, spending more than $100,000 in focus groups and consultants before Enteron was suggested. The name was eventually dismissed over its apparent likening to an intestine and shortened to Enron. (The distinctive logo was one of the final projects of legendary graphic designer Paul Rand before his death in 1996.) Enron still had some lingering problems left over from its merger, however the company had to pay Jacobs, who was still a threat, over $350 million and reorganize the company. Lay sold off any parts of the company that he believed didn't belong in the long-term future of Enron. Lay consolidated all the gas pipeline efforts under the Enron Gas Pipeline Operating Company. In addition, it ramped up its electric power and natural gas efforts. In 1988 and 1989, the company added power plants and cogeneration units to its portfolio. In 1989, Jeffrey Skilling, then a consultant at McKinsey & Company, came up with the idea to link natural gas to consumers in more ways, effectively turning natural gas into a commodity. Enron adopted the idea and called it the "Gas Bank". The division's success prompted Skilling to join Enron as the head of the Gas Bank in 1991. Another major development inside Enron was a pivot to overseas operations with a $56 million loan in 1989 from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for a power plant in Argentina.
Over the course of the 1990s, Enron made a few changes to its business plan that greatly improved the perceived profitability of the company. First, Enron invested heavily in overseas assets, specifically energy. Another major shift was the gradual transition of focus from a producer of energy to a company that acted more like an investment firm and sometimes a hedge fund, making profits off the margins of the products it traded. These products were traded through the Gas Bank concept, now called the Enron Finance Corp. and headed by Skilling.
With the success of the Gas Bank trading natural gas, Skilling looked to expand the horizons of his division, Enron Capital & Trade. Skilling hired Andrew Fastow in 1990 to help.
Starting in 1994 under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, Congress allowed states to deregulate their electricity utilities, allowing them to be opened for competition. California was one such state to do so. Enron, seeing an opportunity with rising prices, was eager to jump into the market. In 1997, Enron acquired Portland General Electric (PGE). Although an Oregon utility, it had the potential to begin serving the massive California market since PGE was a regulated utility. The new Enron division, Enron Energy, ramped up its efforts by offering discounts to potential customers in California starting in 1998. Enron Energy also began to sell natural gas to customers in Ohio and wind power in Iowa. However, the company ended its retail endeavor in 1999 as it was revealed it was costing upwards of $100 million a year.
As fiber optic technology progressed in the 1990s, multiple companies, including Enron, attempted to make money by "keeping the continuing network costs low", which was done by owning their own network. In 1997, FTV Communications LLC, a limited liability company formed by Enron subsidiary FirstPoint Communications, Inc., constructed a 1,380 mile fiber optic network between Portland and Las Vegas. In 1998, Enron constructed a building in a rundown area of Las Vegas near E Sahara, right over the "backbone" of fiber optic cables providing service to technology companies nationwide. The location had the ability to send "the entire Library of Congress anywhere in the world within minutes" and could stream "video to the whole state of California". The location was also more protected from natural disasters than areas such as Los Angeles or the East Coast. According to Wall Street Daily, "Enron had a secret", it "wanted to trade bandwidth like it traded oil, gas, electricity, etc. It launched a secret plan to build an enormous amount of fiber optic transmission capacity in Las Vegas ... it was all part of Enron's plan to essentially own the internet." Enron sought to have all US internet service providers rely on their Nevada facility to supply bandwidth, which Enron would sell in a fashion similar to other commodities.
In January 2000, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling announced to analysts that they were going to open trading for their own "high-speed fiber-optic networks that form the backbone for Internet traffic". Investors quickly bought Enron stock following the announcement "as they did with most things Internet-related at the time", with stock prices rising from $40 per share in January 2000 to $70 per share in March, peaking at $90 in the summer of 2000. Enron executives obtained windfall gains from the rising stock prices, with a total of $924 million of stocks sold by high-level Enron employees between 2000 and 2001. The head of Enron Broadband Services, Kenneth Rice, sold 1 million shares himself, earning about $70 million in returns. As prices of existing fiber optic cables plummeted due to the vast oversupply of the system, with only 5% of the 40 million miles being active wires, Enron purchased the inactive "dark fibers", expecting to buy them at low cost and then make a profit as the need for more usage by internet providers increased, with Enron expecting to lease its acquired dark fibers in 20-year contracts to providers. However, Enron's accounting would use estimates to determine how much their dark fiber would be worth when "lit" and apply those estimates to their current income, adding exaggerated revenue to their accounts since transactions were not yet made and it was not known if the cables would ever be active. Enron's trading with other energy companies within the broadband market was its attempt to lure large telecommunications companies, such as Verizon Communications, into its broadband scheme to create its own new market.
By the second quarter of 2001, Enron Broadband Services was reporting losses. On March 12, 2001, a proposed 20-year deal between Enron and Blockbuster Inc. to stream movies on demand over Enron's connections was canceled, with Enron shares dropping from $80 per share in mid-February 2001 to below $60 the week after the deal was killed. The branch of the company that Jeffrey Skilling "said would eventually add $40 billion to Enron's stock value" added only about $408 million in revenue for Enron in 2001, with the company's broadband arm closed shortly after its meager second-quarter earnings report in July 2001.
Following the bankruptcy of Enron, telecommunications holdings were sold for "pennies on the dollar". In 2002, Rob Roy of Switch Communications purchased Enron's Nevada facility in an auction attended only by Roy. Enron's "fiber plans were so secretive that few people even knew about the auction." The facility was sold for only $930,000. Following the sale, Switch expanded to control "the biggest data center in the world".
Enron, seeing stability after the merger, began to look overseas for new possible energy opportunities in 1991. Enron's first such opportunity was a natural gas power plant utilizing cogeneration that the company built near Middlesbrough, UK. The power plant was so large it could produce up to 3% of the United Kingdom's electricity demand with a capacity of over 1,875 megawatts. Seeing the success in England, the company developed and diversified its assets worldwide under the name of Enron International (EI), headed by former HNG executive Rebecca Mark. By 1994, EI's portfolio included assets in The Philippines, Australia, Guatemala, Germany, France, India, Argentina, the Caribbean, China, England, Colombia, Turkey, Bolivia, Brazil, Indonesia, Norway, Poland, and Japan. The division was producing a large share of earnings for Enron, contributing 205% of earnings in 1996. Mark and EI believed the water industry was the next market to be deregulated by authorities. Seeing the potential, they searched for ways to enter the market, similar to PGE.
In 1998, Enron International acquired Wessex Water for $2.88 billion. Wessex Water became the core asset of a new company, Azurix, which expanded to other water companies. After Azurix's promising IPO in June 1999, Enron "sucked out over $1 billion in cash while loading it up with debt", according to Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, authors of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Additionally, British water regulators required Wessex to cut its rates by 12% starting in April 2000, and an upgrade was required of the utility's aging infrastructure, estimated at costing over a billion dollars. By the end of 2000 Azurix had an operating profit of less than $100 million and was $2 billion in debt. In August 2000, after Azurix stock took a plunge following its earnings report, Mark resigned from Azurix and Enron. Azurix assets, including Wessex, were eventually sold by Enron.
In 1990, Enron's chief operating officer Jeffrey Skilling hired Andrew Fastow, who was well acquainted with the burgeoning deregulated energy market that Skilling wanted to exploit. In 1993, Fastow began establishing numerous limited liability special-purpose entities, a common business practice in the energy industry. However, it also allowed Enron to transfer some of its liabilities off its books, allowing it to maintain a robust and generally increasing stock price and thus keep its critical investment grade credit ratings.
Enron was originally involved in transmitting and distributing electricity and natural gas throughout the US. The company developed, built, and operated power plants and pipelines while dealing with rules of law and other infrastructures worldwide. Enron owned a large network of natural gas pipelines, which stretched coast to coast and border to border including Northern Natural Gas, Florida Gas Transmission, Transwestern Pipeline Company, and a partnership in Northern Border Pipeline from Canada. The states of California, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island had already passed power deregulation laws by July 1996, the time of Enron's proposal to acquire Portland General Electric corporation. During 1998, Enron began operations in the water sector, creating the Azurix Corporation, which it part-floated on the New York Stock Exchange during June 1999. Azurix failed to become successful in the water utility market, and one of its major concessions, in Buenos Aires, was a large-scale money-loser.
Enron grew wealthy due largely to marketing, promoting power, and having a high stock price. Enron was named "America's Most Innovative Company" by Fortune for six consecutive years, from 1996 to 2001. It was on the Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" list during 2000, and had offices that were stunning in their opulence. Enron was hailed by many, including labor and the workforce, as an overall great company, praised for its large long-term pensions, benefits for its workers, and extremely effective management until the exposure of its corporate fraud. The first analyst to question the company's success story was Daniel Scotto, an energy market expert at BNP Paribas, who issued a note in August 2001 entitled Enron: All stressed up and no place to go which encouraged investors to sell Enron stocks, although he only changed his recommendation on the stock from "buy" to "neutral".
As was later discovered, many of Enron's recorded assets and profits were inflated, wholly fraudulent, or nonexistent. One example was in 1999 when Enron promised to repay Merrill Lynch's investment with interest in order to show a profit on its books. Debts and losses were put into entities formed offshore that were not included in the company's financial statements; other sophisticated and arcane financial transactions between Enron and related companies were used to eliminate unprofitable entities from the company's books.
The company's most valuable asset and the largest source of honest income, the 1930s-era Northern Natural Gas company, was eventually purchased by a group of Omaha investors who relocated its headquarters to their city; it is now a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy. NNG was established as collateral for a $2.5 billion capital infusion by Dynegy Corporation when Dynegy was planning to buy Enron. When Dynegy examined Enron's financial records carefully, they repudiated the deal and dismissed their CEO, Chuck Watson. The new chairman and CEO, the late Daniel Dienstbier, had been president of NNG and an Enron executive at one time and was forced out by Ken Lay. Dienstbier was an acquaintance of Warren Buffett. NNG continues to be profitable now.
In 2001, after a series of revelations involving irregular accounting procedures perpetrated throughout the 1990s involving Enron and its auditor Arthur Andersen that bordered on fraud, Enron filed for the then largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in history (since surpassed by those of Worldcom during 2002 and Lehman Brothers during 2008), resulting in $11 billion in shareholder losses.
As the scandal progressed, Enron share prices decreased from US$90+9⁄16 during the summer of 2000, to just pennies. Enron's demise occurred after the revelation that much of its profit and revenue were the result of deals with special-purpose entities (limited partnerships which it controlled). This maneuver allowed many of Enron's debts and losses to disappear from its financial statements.
Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. In addition, the scandal caused the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which at the time was one of the Big Five of the world's accounting firms. The company was found guilty of obstruction of justice in 2002 for destroying documents related to the Enron audit. Since the SEC is not allowed to accept audits from convicted felons, Andersen was forced to stop auditing public companies. Although the conviction was dismissed in 2005 by the Supreme Court, the damage to the Andersen name has prevented it from recovering or reviving itself as a viable business even on a limited scale.
Enron also withdrew a naming-rights deal with the Houston Astros Major League Baseball club for its new stadium, which was known formerly as Enron Field (now Minute Maid Park).
Enron used a variety of deceptive and fraudulent tactics and accounting practices to cover its fraud in reporting Enron's financial information. Special-purpose entities were created to mask significant liabilities from Enron's financial statements. These entities made Enron seem more profitable than it actually was, and created a dangerous spiral in which, each quarter, corporate officers would have to perform more and more financial deception to create the illusion of billions of dollars in profit while the company was actually losing money. This practice increased their stock price to new levels, at which point the executives began to work on insider information and trade millions of dollars worth of Enron stock. The executives and insiders at Enron knew about the offshore accounts that were hiding losses for the company; the investors, however, did not. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow directed the team that created the off-books companies and manipulated the deals to provide himself, his family, and his friends with hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed revenue, at the expense of the corporation for which he worked and its stockholders.
In 1999, Enron initiated EnronOnline, an Internet-based trading operation, which was used by virtually every energy company in the United States. By promoting the company's aggressive investment strategy, Enron's president and chief operating officer Jeffrey Skilling helped make Enron the biggest wholesaler of gas and electricity, trading over $27 billion per quarter. The corporation's financial claims, however, had to be accepted at face value. Under Skilling, Enron adopted mark-to-market accounting, in which anticipated future profits from any deal were tabulated as if currently real. Thus, Enron could record gains from what over time might turn out to be losses, as the company's fiscal health became secondary to manipulating its stock price on Wall Street during the so-called Tech boom. But when a company's success is measured by undocumented financial statements, actual balance sheets are inconvenient. Indeed, Enron's unscrupulous actions were often gambles to keep the deception going and so increase the stock price. An advancing price meant a continued infusion of investor capital on which debt-ridden Enron in large part subsisted (much like a financial "pyramid" or "Ponzi scheme"). Attempting to maintain the illusion, Skilling verbally attacked Wall Street analyst Richard Grubman, who questioned Enron's unusual accounting practice during a recorded conference telephone call. When Grubman complained that Enron was the only company that could not release a balance sheet along with its earnings statements, Skilling replied, "Well, thank you very much, we appreciate that ... asshole." Though the comment was met with dismay and astonishment by press and public, it became an inside joke among many Enron employees, mocking Grubman for his perceived meddling rather than Skilling's offensiveness.
Enron initially planned to retain its three domestic pipeline companies as well as most of its overseas assets. However, before emerging from bankruptcy, Enron sold its domestic pipeline companies as CrossCountry Energy for $2.45 billion and later sold other assets to Vulcan Capital Management.
Enron sold its last business, Prisma Energy, during 2006, leaving Enron asset-less. During early 2007, its name was changed to Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation. Its goal is to repay the old Enron's remaining creditors and end Enron's affairs. In December 2008, it was announced that Enron's creditors would receive $7.2 billion from the company's liquidation, or approximately 17 percent of the debts owed by the company. After Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase were sued for their role in abetting Enron's practices with loans, the two companies agreed to give billions of dollars to Enron's creditors. By May 2011, $21.8 billion had been distributed to the creditors, totaling 53 percent of Enron's debts at the time of bankruptcy. Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation was ultimately dissolved on November 28, 2016.
Azurix, the former water utility part of the company, remains under Enron ownership, although it is currently asset-less. It is involved in several litigations against the government of Argentina claiming compensation relating to the negligence and corruption of the local governance during its management of the Buenos Aires water concession in 1999, which resulted in substantial amounts of debt (approx. $620 million) and the eventual collapse of the branch.
Soon after emerging from bankruptcy in November 2004, Enron's new board of directors sued 11 financial institutions for helping Lay, Fastow, Skilling and others hide Enron's true financial condition. The proceedings were dubbed the "megaclaims litigation". Among the defendants were Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup. As of 2008, Enron has settled with all of the institutions, ending with Citigroup. Enron was able to obtain nearly $7.2 billion to distribute to its creditors as a result of the megaclaims litigation. As of December 2009, some claim and process payments were still being distributed.
Enron has been featured since its bankruptcy in popular culture, including in The Simpsons episodes That '90s Show (Homer buys Enron stocks while Marge chooses to keep her own Microsoft stocks) and Special Edna, which features a scene of an Enron-themed amusement park ride. The 2007 film Bee Movie also featured a joke reference to a parody company of Enron called "Honron" (a play on the words honey and Enron). The 2003 documentary The Corporation made frequent references to Enron post-bankruptcy, calling the company a "bad apple".
During August 2000, Enron's stock price attained its greatest value of $90+9⁄16 ($90.56). At this time Enron executives, who possessed inside information on the hidden losses, began to sell their stock. At the same time, the general public and Enron's investors were told to buy the stock. Executives told the investors that the stock would continue to increase until it attained possibly the $130 to $140 range, while secretly unloading their shares.
As executives sold their shares, the price began to decrease. Investors were told to continue buying stock or hold steady if they already owned Enron because the stock price would rebound in the near future. Kenneth Lay's strategy for responding to Enron's continuing problems was his demeanor. As he did many times, Lay would issue a statement or make an appearance to calm investors and assure them that Enron was doing well. In March 2001 an article by Bethany McLean appeared in Fortune magazine noting that no one understood how the company made money and questioning whether Enron stock was overvalued.
By August 15, 2001, Enron's stock price had decreased to $42. Many of the investors still trusted Lay and believed that Enron would rule the market. They continued to buy or retain their stock as the equity value decreased. As October ended, the stock had decreased to $15. Many considered this a great opportunity to buy Enron stock because of what Lay had been telling them in the media.
Lay was accused of selling more than $70 million worth of stock at this time, which he used to repay cash advances on lines of credit. He sold another $29 million worth of stock in the open market. Also, Lay's wife, Linda, was accused of selling 500,000 shares of Enron stock totaling $1.2 million on November 28, 2001. The money earned from this sale did not go to the family but rather to charitable organizations, which had already received pledges of contributions from the foundation. Records show that Mrs. Lay made the sale order sometime between 10:00 and 10:20 am. News of Enron's problems, including the millions of dollars in losses they hid, became public about 10:30 that morning, and the stock price soon decreased to less than one dollar.
Former Enron executive Paula Rieker was charged with criminal insider trading and sentenced to two years probation. Rieker obtained 18,380 Enron shares for $15.51 a share. She sold that stock for $49.77 a share in July 2001, a week before the public was told what she already knew about the $102 million loss. In 2002, after the tumultuous fall of Enron's external auditor, and management consultant, Andersen LLP, former Andersen Director, John M. Cunningham coined the phrase, "We have all been Enroned."
The fallout resulted in both Lay and Skilling being convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and insider trading. Lay died before sentencing, Skilling got 24 years and 4 months and a $45 million penalty (later reduced). Fastow was sentenced to six years of jail time, and Lou Pai settled out of court for $31.5 million.
In October 2000, Daniel Scotto, the most renowned utility analyst on Wall Street, suspended his ratings on all energy companies conducting business in California because of the possibility that the companies would not receive full and adequate compensation for the deferred energy accounts used as the basis for the California Deregulation Plan enacted during the late 1990s. Five months later, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) was forced into bankruptcy. Republican Senator Phil Gramm, husband of Enron Board member Wendy Gramm and also the second-largest recipient of campaign contributions from Enron, succeeded in legislating California's energy commodity trading deregulation. Despite warnings from prominent consumer groups which stated that this law would give energy traders too much influence over energy commodity prices, the legislation was passed in December 2000.
As the periodical Public Citizen reported, "Because of Enron's new, unregulated power auction, the company's 'Wholesale Services' revenues quadrupled – from $12 billion in the first quarter of 2000 to $48.4 billion in the first quarter of 2001."
After the passage of the deregulation law, California had a total of 38 Stage 3 rolling blackouts declared, until federal regulators intervened in June 2001. These blackouts occurred as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers, as well as from poor state management and regulatory oversight. Subsequently, Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California's energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time. These acts contributed to the need for rolling blackouts, which adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail customers. This scattered supply increased the price, and Enron traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 × its normal peak value.
The callousness of the traders' attitude toward ratepayers was documented in an evidence tape of a conversation regarding the matter, and sarcastically referencing the confusion of retiree voters in Florida's Miami-Dade County in the November 2000, presidential election.
"They're fucking taking all the money back from you guys? All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?"
"Yeah, Grandma Millie man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to fucking vote on the butterfly ballot." (Laughing from both sides.)
"Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her ass for fucking $250 a megawatt-hour."
The traders had been discussing the efforts of the Snohomish PUD in Northwestern Washington state to recover the massive overcharges that Enron had engineered. Morgan Stanley, which had taken Enron's place in the lawsuit, fought the release of the documents that the PUD had sought to make its case, but were being withheld by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Enron traded in more than 30 different products, including oil and LNG transportation, broadband, principal investments, risk management for commodities, shipping / freight, streaming media, and water and wastewater. Products traded on EnronOnline in particular included petrochemicals, plastics, power, pulp and paper, steel, and weather risk management. Enron was also an extensive futures trader, including sugar, coffee, grains, hogs, and other meat futures. At the time of its bankruptcy filing in December 2001, Enron was structured into seven distinct business units.
Enron manufactured gas valves, circuit breakers, thermostats, and electrical equipment in Venezuela by means of INSELA SA, a 50–50 joint venture with General Electric. Enron owned three paper and pulp products companies: Garden State Paper, a newsprint mill; as well as Papiers Stadacona and St. Aurelie Timberlands. Enron had a controlling stake in the Louisiana-based petroleum exploration and production company Mariner Energy.
Enron opened EnronOnline, an electronic trading platform for energy commodities, on November 29, 1999. Conceptualized by the company's European Gas Trading team, it was the first web-based transaction system that allowed buyers and sellers to buy, sell, and trade commodity products globally. It allowed users to do business only with Enron. The site allowed Enron to transact with participants in the global energy markets. The main commodities offered on EnronOnline were natural gas and electricity, although there were 500 other products including credit derivatives, bankruptcy swaps, pulp, gas, plastics, paper, steel, metals, freight, and TV commercial time. At its maximum, more than $6 billion worth of commodities were transacted by means of EnronOnline every day, but specialists questioned how Enron reported trades and calculated its profits, saying that the same fraudulent accounting that was rampant at Enron's other operations may have been used in trading.
After Enron's bankruptcy in late 2001, EnronOnline was sold to the Swiss financial giant UBS. Within a year, UBS abandoned its efforts to relaunch the division and closed it in November 2002.
Enron International (EI) was Enron's wholesale asset development and asset management business. Its primary emphasis was developing and building natural gas power plants outside North America. Enron Engineering and Construction Company (EECC) was a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron International and built almost all of Enron International's power plants. Unlike other business units of Enron, Enron International had a strong cash flow at the bankruptcy filing. Enron International consisted of all of Enron's foreign power projects, including ones in Europe.
The company's Teesside plant was one of the largest gas-fired power stations in the world, built and operated by Enron from 1989, and produced 3 percent of the United Kingdom's energy needs. Enron owned half of the plant's equity, with the remaining 50 percent split between four regional electricity companies.
Rebecca Mark was the CEO of Enron International until she resigned to manage Enron's newly acquired water business, Azurix, in 1997. Mark had a major role in the development of the Dabhol project in India, Enron's largest international endeavor.
Enron International constructed power plants and pipelines across the globe. Some are presently still operating, including the massive Teesside plant in England. Others, like a barge-mounted plant off Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, cost Enron money through lawsuits and investment losses. Puerto Plata was a barge-mounted power plant next to the hotel Hotelero del Atlantico. When the plant was activated, winds blew soot from the plant onto the hotel guests' meals, blackening their food. The winds also blew garbage from nearby slums into the plant's water-intake system. For some time the only solution was to hire men who would row out and push the garbage away with their paddles. Through mid-2000 the company collected a paltry $3.5 million from a $95 million investment. Enron also had other investment projects in Europe, South America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Venezuela, and across the Caribbean.
Around 1992 Indian experts came to the United States to find energy investors to help with India's energy shortage problems. During December 1993, Enron finalized a 20-year power-purchase contract with the Maharashtra State Electricity Board. The contract allowed Enron to construct a massive 2,015 megawatt power plant on a remote volcanic bluff 100 miles (160 km) south of Mumbai through a two-phase project called Dabhol Power Station. Construction would be completed in two phases, and Enron would form the Dabhol Power Company to help manage the plant. The power project was the first step in a $20 billion scheme to help rebuild and stabilize India's power grid. Enron, GE (which was selling turbines to the project), and Bechtel (which was actually constructing the plant), each contributed 10% equity with the remaining 90% covered by the MSEB
In 1996, when India's Congress Party was no longer in power, the Indian government assessed the project as being excessively expensive and refused to pay for the plant and stopped construction. The MSEB was required by contract to continue to pay Enron plant maintenance charges, even if no power was purchased from the plant. The MSEB determined that it could not afford to purchase the power (at Rs. 8 per unit kWh) charged by Enron. The plant operator was unable to find alternate customers for Dabhol power due to the absence of a free market in the regulated structure of utilities in India.
By 2000, the Dabhol plant was almost complete and Phase 1 had begun producing power. Enron as a whole, however, was heavily overextended, and in the summer of that year Mark and all the key executives at Enron International were asked to resign from Enron in an effort to reshape the company and get rid of asset businesses. Shortly thereafter a payment dispute with MSEB ensued, and Enron issued a stop-work order on the plant in June 2001. From 1996 until Enron's bankruptcy in 2001 the company tried to revive the project and revive interest in India's need for the power plant without success. By December 2001 the Enron scandal and bankruptcy cut short any opportunity to revive the construction and complete the plant. In 2005, an Indian government-run company, Ratnagiri Gas and Power, was set up to finish construction on the Dabhol facility and operate the plant.
During the summer of 2001, Enron made an attempt to sell a number of Enron International's assets, many of which were not sold. The public and media believed it was unknown why Enron wanted to sell these assets, suspecting it was because Enron was in need of cash. Employees who worked with company assets were told in 2000 that Jeff Skilling believed that business assets were an outdated means of a company's worth, and instead he wanted to build a company based on "intellectual assets".
Enron Global Exploration & Production Inc. (EGEP) was an Enron subsidiary that was born from the split of domestic assets via EOG Resources (formerly Enron Oil and Gas EOG) and international assets via EGEP (formerly Enron Oil and Gas Int'l, Ltd EOGIL). Among the EGEP assets were the Panna-Mukta and the South Tapti fields, discovered by the Indian state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which operated the fields initially. December 1994, a joint venture began between ONGC (40%), Enron (30%) and Reliance (30%). Mid-year of 2002, British Gas (BG) completed the acquisition of EGEP's 30% share of the Panna-Mukta and Tapti fields for $350 million, a few months before Enron filed bankruptcy.
During the mid-1990s, Enron established an endowment for the Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service, awarded by Rice University's Baker Institute to "recognize outstanding individuals for their contributions to public service". Recipients were:
Greenspan, because of his position as the Fed chairman, was not at liberty to accept the $10,000 honorarium, the $15,000 sculpture, nor the crystal trophy, but only accepted the "honor" of being named an Enron Prize recipient. The situation was further complicated because a few days earlier, Enron had filed paperwork admitting it had falsified financial statements for five years. Greenspan did not mention Enron a single time during his speech. At the ceremony, Ken Lay stated, "I'm looking forward to our first woman recipient." The next morning, it was reported in the Houston Chronicle that no decision had been made on whether the name of the prize would be changed. 19 days after the prize was awarded to Greenspan, Enron declared bankruptcy.
In early 2002, Enron was awarded Harvard's (in)famous Ig Nobel Prize for "Most Creative Use of Imaginary Numbers". The various former members of the Enron management team all refused to accept the award in person, although no reason was given at the time.
Enron Corporation | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,600 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. Fortune named Enron \"America's Most Innovative Company\" for six consecutive years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "At the end of 2001, it was revealed that Enron's reported financial condition was sustained by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has become synonymous with willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States and was a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also affected the greater business world by causing, together with even larger fraudulent bankruptcy WorldCom, the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, which had been Enron and WorldCom's main auditor for years.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Enron filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel. It ended its bankruptcy in November 2004, pursuant to a court-approved plan of reorganization. A new board of directors changed the name of Enron to Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., and emphasized reorganizing and liquidating certain operations and assets of the pre-bankruptcy Enron. On September 7, 2006, Enron sold its last remaining subsidiary, Prisma Energy International, to Ashmore Energy International Ltd. (now AEI). It is the largest bankruptcy, due specifically to fraud, of all time.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "One of Enron's primary predecessors was InterNorth, which was formed in 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska, just a few months after Black Tuesday. The low cost of natural gas and the cheap supply of labor during the Great Depression helped to fuel the company's early beginnings, doubling in size by 1932. Over the next 50 years, Northern expanded even more as it acquired many energy companies. It was reorganized in 1979 as the main subsidiary of a holding company, InterNorth, a diversified energy and energy-related products firm. Although most of the acquisitions conducted were successful, some ended poorly. InterNorth competed with Cooper Industries unsuccessfully over a hostile takeover of Crouse-Hinds Company, an electrical products manufacturer. Cooper and InterNorth feuded in numerous suits during the course of the takeover that were eventually settled after the transaction was completed. The subsidiary Northern Natural Gas operated the largest pipeline company in North America. By the 1980s, InterNorth became a major force for natural gas production, transmission, and marketing as well as for natural gas liquids, and was an innovator in the plastics industry. In 1983, InterNorth merged with the Belco Petroleum Company, a Fortune 500 oil exploration and development company founded by Arthur Belfer.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Houston Natural Gas (HNG) corporation was initially formed from the Houston Oil Co. in 1925 to provide gas to customers in the Houston market through the building of gas pipelines. Under the leadership of CEO Robert Herring from 1967 to 1981, the company took advantage of the unregulated Texas natural gas market and the commodity surge in the early 1970s to become a dominant force in the energy industry. Toward the end of the 1970s, HNG's luck began to run out with rising gas prices forcing clients to switch to oil. In addition, with the passing of the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978, the Texas market was less profitable and as a result, HNG's profits fell. After Herring's death in 1981, M.D. Matthews briefly took over as CEO in a 3-year stint with initial success, but ultimately, a big dip in earnings led to his exit. In 1984, Kenneth Lay succeeded Matthews and inherited the troubled conglomerate.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "With its conservative success, InterNorth became a target of corporate takeovers, the most prominent originating with Irwin Jacobs. InterNorth CEO Sam Segnar sought a friendly merger with HNG. In May 1985, Internorth acquired HNG for $2.3 billion, 40% higher than the current market price. The combined assets of the two companies created the second largest gas pipeline system in the US at that time. Internorth's north-south pipelines that served Iowa and Minnesota complemented HNG's Florida and California east-west pipelines well.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The company was initially named HNG/InterNorth Inc., even though InterNorth was technically the parent. At the outset, Segnar was CEO but was soon fired by the board of directors to name Lay to the post. Lay moved its headquarters back to Houston and set out to find a new name, spending more than $100,000 in focus groups and consultants before Enteron was suggested. The name was eventually dismissed over its apparent likening to an intestine and shortened to Enron. (The distinctive logo was one of the final projects of legendary graphic designer Paul Rand before his death in 1996.) Enron still had some lingering problems left over from its merger, however the company had to pay Jacobs, who was still a threat, over $350 million and reorganize the company. Lay sold off any parts of the company that he believed didn't belong in the long-term future of Enron. Lay consolidated all the gas pipeline efforts under the Enron Gas Pipeline Operating Company. In addition, it ramped up its electric power and natural gas efforts. In 1988 and 1989, the company added power plants and cogeneration units to its portfolio. In 1989, Jeffrey Skilling, then a consultant at McKinsey & Company, came up with the idea to link natural gas to consumers in more ways, effectively turning natural gas into a commodity. Enron adopted the idea and called it the \"Gas Bank\". The division's success prompted Skilling to join Enron as the head of the Gas Bank in 1991. Another major development inside Enron was a pivot to overseas operations with a $56 million loan in 1989 from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) for a power plant in Argentina.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Over the course of the 1990s, Enron made a few changes to its business plan that greatly improved the perceived profitability of the company. First, Enron invested heavily in overseas assets, specifically energy. Another major shift was the gradual transition of focus from a producer of energy to a company that acted more like an investment firm and sometimes a hedge fund, making profits off the margins of the products it traded. These products were traded through the Gas Bank concept, now called the Enron Finance Corp. and headed by Skilling.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "With the success of the Gas Bank trading natural gas, Skilling looked to expand the horizons of his division, Enron Capital & Trade. Skilling hired Andrew Fastow in 1990 to help.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Starting in 1994 under the Energy Policy Act of 1992, Congress allowed states to deregulate their electricity utilities, allowing them to be opened for competition. California was one such state to do so. Enron, seeing an opportunity with rising prices, was eager to jump into the market. In 1997, Enron acquired Portland General Electric (PGE). Although an Oregon utility, it had the potential to begin serving the massive California market since PGE was a regulated utility. The new Enron division, Enron Energy, ramped up its efforts by offering discounts to potential customers in California starting in 1998. Enron Energy also began to sell natural gas to customers in Ohio and wind power in Iowa. However, the company ended its retail endeavor in 1999 as it was revealed it was costing upwards of $100 million a year.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As fiber optic technology progressed in the 1990s, multiple companies, including Enron, attempted to make money by \"keeping the continuing network costs low\", which was done by owning their own network. In 1997, FTV Communications LLC, a limited liability company formed by Enron subsidiary FirstPoint Communications, Inc., constructed a 1,380 mile fiber optic network between Portland and Las Vegas. In 1998, Enron constructed a building in a rundown area of Las Vegas near E Sahara, right over the \"backbone\" of fiber optic cables providing service to technology companies nationwide. The location had the ability to send \"the entire Library of Congress anywhere in the world within minutes\" and could stream \"video to the whole state of California\". The location was also more protected from natural disasters than areas such as Los Angeles or the East Coast. According to Wall Street Daily, \"Enron had a secret\", it \"wanted to trade bandwidth like it traded oil, gas, electricity, etc. It launched a secret plan to build an enormous amount of fiber optic transmission capacity in Las Vegas ... it was all part of Enron's plan to essentially own the internet.\" Enron sought to have all US internet service providers rely on their Nevada facility to supply bandwidth, which Enron would sell in a fashion similar to other commodities.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In January 2000, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling announced to analysts that they were going to open trading for their own \"high-speed fiber-optic networks that form the backbone for Internet traffic\". Investors quickly bought Enron stock following the announcement \"as they did with most things Internet-related at the time\", with stock prices rising from $40 per share in January 2000 to $70 per share in March, peaking at $90 in the summer of 2000. Enron executives obtained windfall gains from the rising stock prices, with a total of $924 million of stocks sold by high-level Enron employees between 2000 and 2001. The head of Enron Broadband Services, Kenneth Rice, sold 1 million shares himself, earning about $70 million in returns. As prices of existing fiber optic cables plummeted due to the vast oversupply of the system, with only 5% of the 40 million miles being active wires, Enron purchased the inactive \"dark fibers\", expecting to buy them at low cost and then make a profit as the need for more usage by internet providers increased, with Enron expecting to lease its acquired dark fibers in 20-year contracts to providers. However, Enron's accounting would use estimates to determine how much their dark fiber would be worth when \"lit\" and apply those estimates to their current income, adding exaggerated revenue to their accounts since transactions were not yet made and it was not known if the cables would ever be active. Enron's trading with other energy companies within the broadband market was its attempt to lure large telecommunications companies, such as Verizon Communications, into its broadband scheme to create its own new market.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "By the second quarter of 2001, Enron Broadband Services was reporting losses. On March 12, 2001, a proposed 20-year deal between Enron and Blockbuster Inc. to stream movies on demand over Enron's connections was canceled, with Enron shares dropping from $80 per share in mid-February 2001 to below $60 the week after the deal was killed. The branch of the company that Jeffrey Skilling \"said would eventually add $40 billion to Enron's stock value\" added only about $408 million in revenue for Enron in 2001, with the company's broadband arm closed shortly after its meager second-quarter earnings report in July 2001.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Following the bankruptcy of Enron, telecommunications holdings were sold for \"pennies on the dollar\". In 2002, Rob Roy of Switch Communications purchased Enron's Nevada facility in an auction attended only by Roy. Enron's \"fiber plans were so secretive that few people even knew about the auction.\" The facility was sold for only $930,000. Following the sale, Switch expanded to control \"the biggest data center in the world\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Enron, seeing stability after the merger, began to look overseas for new possible energy opportunities in 1991. Enron's first such opportunity was a natural gas power plant utilizing cogeneration that the company built near Middlesbrough, UK. The power plant was so large it could produce up to 3% of the United Kingdom's electricity demand with a capacity of over 1,875 megawatts. Seeing the success in England, the company developed and diversified its assets worldwide under the name of Enron International (EI), headed by former HNG executive Rebecca Mark. By 1994, EI's portfolio included assets in The Philippines, Australia, Guatemala, Germany, France, India, Argentina, the Caribbean, China, England, Colombia, Turkey, Bolivia, Brazil, Indonesia, Norway, Poland, and Japan. The division was producing a large share of earnings for Enron, contributing 205% of earnings in 1996. Mark and EI believed the water industry was the next market to be deregulated by authorities. Seeing the potential, they searched for ways to enter the market, similar to PGE.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1998, Enron International acquired Wessex Water for $2.88 billion. Wessex Water became the core asset of a new company, Azurix, which expanded to other water companies. After Azurix's promising IPO in June 1999, Enron \"sucked out over $1 billion in cash while loading it up with debt\", according to Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, authors of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Additionally, British water regulators required Wessex to cut its rates by 12% starting in April 2000, and an upgrade was required of the utility's aging infrastructure, estimated at costing over a billion dollars. By the end of 2000 Azurix had an operating profit of less than $100 million and was $2 billion in debt. In August 2000, after Azurix stock took a plunge following its earnings report, Mark resigned from Azurix and Enron. Azurix assets, including Wessex, were eventually sold by Enron.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "In 1990, Enron's chief operating officer Jeffrey Skilling hired Andrew Fastow, who was well acquainted with the burgeoning deregulated energy market that Skilling wanted to exploit. In 1993, Fastow began establishing numerous limited liability special-purpose entities, a common business practice in the energy industry. However, it also allowed Enron to transfer some of its liabilities off its books, allowing it to maintain a robust and generally increasing stock price and thus keep its critical investment grade credit ratings.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Enron was originally involved in transmitting and distributing electricity and natural gas throughout the US. The company developed, built, and operated power plants and pipelines while dealing with rules of law and other infrastructures worldwide. Enron owned a large network of natural gas pipelines, which stretched coast to coast and border to border including Northern Natural Gas, Florida Gas Transmission, Transwestern Pipeline Company, and a partnership in Northern Border Pipeline from Canada. The states of California, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island had already passed power deregulation laws by July 1996, the time of Enron's proposal to acquire Portland General Electric corporation. During 1998, Enron began operations in the water sector, creating the Azurix Corporation, which it part-floated on the New York Stock Exchange during June 1999. Azurix failed to become successful in the water utility market, and one of its major concessions, in Buenos Aires, was a large-scale money-loser.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Enron grew wealthy due largely to marketing, promoting power, and having a high stock price. Enron was named \"America's Most Innovative Company\" by Fortune for six consecutive years, from 1996 to 2001. It was on the Fortune's \"100 Best Companies to Work for in America\" list during 2000, and had offices that were stunning in their opulence. Enron was hailed by many, including labor and the workforce, as an overall great company, praised for its large long-term pensions, benefits for its workers, and extremely effective management until the exposure of its corporate fraud. The first analyst to question the company's success story was Daniel Scotto, an energy market expert at BNP Paribas, who issued a note in August 2001 entitled Enron: All stressed up and no place to go which encouraged investors to sell Enron stocks, although he only changed his recommendation on the stock from \"buy\" to \"neutral\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "As was later discovered, many of Enron's recorded assets and profits were inflated, wholly fraudulent, or nonexistent. One example was in 1999 when Enron promised to repay Merrill Lynch's investment with interest in order to show a profit on its books. Debts and losses were put into entities formed offshore that were not included in the company's financial statements; other sophisticated and arcane financial transactions between Enron and related companies were used to eliminate unprofitable entities from the company's books.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "The company's most valuable asset and the largest source of honest income, the 1930s-era Northern Natural Gas company, was eventually purchased by a group of Omaha investors who relocated its headquarters to their city; it is now a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy. NNG was established as collateral for a $2.5 billion capital infusion by Dynegy Corporation when Dynegy was planning to buy Enron. When Dynegy examined Enron's financial records carefully, they repudiated the deal and dismissed their CEO, Chuck Watson. The new chairman and CEO, the late Daniel Dienstbier, had been president of NNG and an Enron executive at one time and was forced out by Ken Lay. Dienstbier was an acquaintance of Warren Buffett. NNG continues to be profitable now.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In 2001, after a series of revelations involving irregular accounting procedures perpetrated throughout the 1990s involving Enron and its auditor Arthur Andersen that bordered on fraud, Enron filed for the then largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in history (since surpassed by those of Worldcom during 2002 and Lehman Brothers during 2008), resulting in $11 billion in shareholder losses.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "As the scandal progressed, Enron share prices decreased from US$90+9⁄16 during the summer of 2000, to just pennies. Enron's demise occurred after the revelation that much of its profit and revenue were the result of deals with special-purpose entities (limited partnerships which it controlled). This maneuver allowed many of Enron's debts and losses to disappear from its financial statements.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Enron filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. In addition, the scandal caused the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, which at the time was one of the Big Five of the world's accounting firms. The company was found guilty of obstruction of justice in 2002 for destroying documents related to the Enron audit. Since the SEC is not allowed to accept audits from convicted felons, Andersen was forced to stop auditing public companies. Although the conviction was dismissed in 2005 by the Supreme Court, the damage to the Andersen name has prevented it from recovering or reviving itself as a viable business even on a limited scale.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Enron also withdrew a naming-rights deal with the Houston Astros Major League Baseball club for its new stadium, which was known formerly as Enron Field (now Minute Maid Park).",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Enron used a variety of deceptive and fraudulent tactics and accounting practices to cover its fraud in reporting Enron's financial information. Special-purpose entities were created to mask significant liabilities from Enron's financial statements. These entities made Enron seem more profitable than it actually was, and created a dangerous spiral in which, each quarter, corporate officers would have to perform more and more financial deception to create the illusion of billions of dollars in profit while the company was actually losing money. This practice increased their stock price to new levels, at which point the executives began to work on insider information and trade millions of dollars worth of Enron stock. The executives and insiders at Enron knew about the offshore accounts that were hiding losses for the company; the investors, however, did not. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow directed the team that created the off-books companies and manipulated the deals to provide himself, his family, and his friends with hundreds of millions of dollars in guaranteed revenue, at the expense of the corporation for which he worked and its stockholders.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In 1999, Enron initiated EnronOnline, an Internet-based trading operation, which was used by virtually every energy company in the United States. By promoting the company's aggressive investment strategy, Enron's president and chief operating officer Jeffrey Skilling helped make Enron the biggest wholesaler of gas and electricity, trading over $27 billion per quarter. The corporation's financial claims, however, had to be accepted at face value. Under Skilling, Enron adopted mark-to-market accounting, in which anticipated future profits from any deal were tabulated as if currently real. Thus, Enron could record gains from what over time might turn out to be losses, as the company's fiscal health became secondary to manipulating its stock price on Wall Street during the so-called Tech boom. But when a company's success is measured by undocumented financial statements, actual balance sheets are inconvenient. Indeed, Enron's unscrupulous actions were often gambles to keep the deception going and so increase the stock price. An advancing price meant a continued infusion of investor capital on which debt-ridden Enron in large part subsisted (much like a financial \"pyramid\" or \"Ponzi scheme\"). Attempting to maintain the illusion, Skilling verbally attacked Wall Street analyst Richard Grubman, who questioned Enron's unusual accounting practice during a recorded conference telephone call. When Grubman complained that Enron was the only company that could not release a balance sheet along with its earnings statements, Skilling replied, \"Well, thank you very much, we appreciate that ... asshole.\" Though the comment was met with dismay and astonishment by press and public, it became an inside joke among many Enron employees, mocking Grubman for his perceived meddling rather than Skilling's offensiveness.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Enron initially planned to retain its three domestic pipeline companies as well as most of its overseas assets. However, before emerging from bankruptcy, Enron sold its domestic pipeline companies as CrossCountry Energy for $2.45 billion and later sold other assets to Vulcan Capital Management.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Enron sold its last business, Prisma Energy, during 2006, leaving Enron asset-less. During early 2007, its name was changed to Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation. Its goal is to repay the old Enron's remaining creditors and end Enron's affairs. In December 2008, it was announced that Enron's creditors would receive $7.2 billion from the company's liquidation, or approximately 17 percent of the debts owed by the company. After Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase were sued for their role in abetting Enron's practices with loans, the two companies agreed to give billions of dollars to Enron's creditors. By May 2011, $21.8 billion had been distributed to the creditors, totaling 53 percent of Enron's debts at the time of bankruptcy. Enron Creditors Recovery Corporation was ultimately dissolved on November 28, 2016.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Azurix, the former water utility part of the company, remains under Enron ownership, although it is currently asset-less. It is involved in several litigations against the government of Argentina claiming compensation relating to the negligence and corruption of the local governance during its management of the Buenos Aires water concession in 1999, which resulted in substantial amounts of debt (approx. $620 million) and the eventual collapse of the branch.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Soon after emerging from bankruptcy in November 2004, Enron's new board of directors sued 11 financial institutions for helping Lay, Fastow, Skilling and others hide Enron's true financial condition. The proceedings were dubbed the \"megaclaims litigation\". Among the defendants were Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup. As of 2008, Enron has settled with all of the institutions, ending with Citigroup. Enron was able to obtain nearly $7.2 billion to distribute to its creditors as a result of the megaclaims litigation. As of December 2009, some claim and process payments were still being distributed.",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Enron has been featured since its bankruptcy in popular culture, including in The Simpsons episodes That '90s Show (Homer buys Enron stocks while Marge chooses to keep her own Microsoft stocks) and Special Edna, which features a scene of an Enron-themed amusement park ride. The 2007 film Bee Movie also featured a joke reference to a parody company of Enron called \"Honron\" (a play on the words honey and Enron). The 2003 documentary The Corporation made frequent references to Enron post-bankruptcy, calling the company a \"bad apple\".",
"title": "2001 accounting scandals"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "During August 2000, Enron's stock price attained its greatest value of $90+9⁄16 ($90.56). At this time Enron executives, who possessed inside information on the hidden losses, began to sell their stock. At the same time, the general public and Enron's investors were told to buy the stock. Executives told the investors that the stock would continue to increase until it attained possibly the $130 to $140 range, while secretly unloading their shares.",
"title": "Insider trading scandal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "As executives sold their shares, the price began to decrease. Investors were told to continue buying stock or hold steady if they already owned Enron because the stock price would rebound in the near future. Kenneth Lay's strategy for responding to Enron's continuing problems was his demeanor. As he did many times, Lay would issue a statement or make an appearance to calm investors and assure them that Enron was doing well. In March 2001 an article by Bethany McLean appeared in Fortune magazine noting that no one understood how the company made money and questioning whether Enron stock was overvalued.",
"title": "Insider trading scandal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "By August 15, 2001, Enron's stock price had decreased to $42. Many of the investors still trusted Lay and believed that Enron would rule the market. They continued to buy or retain their stock as the equity value decreased. As October ended, the stock had decreased to $15. Many considered this a great opportunity to buy Enron stock because of what Lay had been telling them in the media.",
"title": "Insider trading scandal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Lay was accused of selling more than $70 million worth of stock at this time, which he used to repay cash advances on lines of credit. He sold another $29 million worth of stock in the open market. Also, Lay's wife, Linda, was accused of selling 500,000 shares of Enron stock totaling $1.2 million on November 28, 2001. The money earned from this sale did not go to the family but rather to charitable organizations, which had already received pledges of contributions from the foundation. Records show that Mrs. Lay made the sale order sometime between 10:00 and 10:20 am. News of Enron's problems, including the millions of dollars in losses they hid, became public about 10:30 that morning, and the stock price soon decreased to less than one dollar.",
"title": "Insider trading scandal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Former Enron executive Paula Rieker was charged with criminal insider trading and sentenced to two years probation. Rieker obtained 18,380 Enron shares for $15.51 a share. She sold that stock for $49.77 a share in July 2001, a week before the public was told what she already knew about the $102 million loss. In 2002, after the tumultuous fall of Enron's external auditor, and management consultant, Andersen LLP, former Andersen Director, John M. Cunningham coined the phrase, \"We have all been Enroned.\"",
"title": "Insider trading scandal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The fallout resulted in both Lay and Skilling being convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and insider trading. Lay died before sentencing, Skilling got 24 years and 4 months and a $45 million penalty (later reduced). Fastow was sentenced to six years of jail time, and Lou Pai settled out of court for $31.5 million.",
"title": "Insider trading scandal"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In October 2000, Daniel Scotto, the most renowned utility analyst on Wall Street, suspended his ratings on all energy companies conducting business in California because of the possibility that the companies would not receive full and adequate compensation for the deferred energy accounts used as the basis for the California Deregulation Plan enacted during the late 1990s. Five months later, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) was forced into bankruptcy. Republican Senator Phil Gramm, husband of Enron Board member Wendy Gramm and also the second-largest recipient of campaign contributions from Enron, succeeded in legislating California's energy commodity trading deregulation. Despite warnings from prominent consumer groups which stated that this law would give energy traders too much influence over energy commodity prices, the legislation was passed in December 2000.",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "As the periodical Public Citizen reported, \"Because of Enron's new, unregulated power auction, the company's 'Wholesale Services' revenues quadrupled – from $12 billion in the first quarter of 2000 to $48.4 billion in the first quarter of 2001.\"",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "After the passage of the deregulation law, California had a total of 38 Stage 3 rolling blackouts declared, until federal regulators intervened in June 2001. These blackouts occurred as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers, as well as from poor state management and regulatory oversight. Subsequently, Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California's energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time. These acts contributed to the need for rolling blackouts, which adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail customers. This scattered supply increased the price, and Enron traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 × its normal peak value.",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The callousness of the traders' attitude toward ratepayers was documented in an evidence tape of a conversation regarding the matter, and sarcastically referencing the confusion of retiree voters in Florida's Miami-Dade County in the November 2000, presidential election.",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "\"They're fucking taking all the money back from you guys? All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?\"",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "\"Yeah, Grandma Millie man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to fucking vote on the butterfly ballot.\" (Laughing from both sides.)",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "\"Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her ass for fucking $250 a megawatt-hour.\"",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The traders had been discussing the efforts of the Snohomish PUD in Northwestern Washington state to recover the massive overcharges that Enron had engineered. Morgan Stanley, which had taken Enron's place in the lawsuit, fought the release of the documents that the PUD had sought to make its case, but were being withheld by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.",
"title": "California's deregulation and subsequent energy crisis"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Enron traded in more than 30 different products, including oil and LNG transportation, broadband, principal investments, risk management for commodities, shipping / freight, streaming media, and water and wastewater. Products traded on EnronOnline in particular included petrochemicals, plastics, power, pulp and paper, steel, and weather risk management. Enron was also an extensive futures trader, including sugar, coffee, grains, hogs, and other meat futures. At the time of its bankruptcy filing in December 2001, Enron was structured into seven distinct business units.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Enron manufactured gas valves, circuit breakers, thermostats, and electrical equipment in Venezuela by means of INSELA SA, a 50–50 joint venture with General Electric. Enron owned three paper and pulp products companies: Garden State Paper, a newsprint mill; as well as Papiers Stadacona and St. Aurelie Timberlands. Enron had a controlling stake in the Louisiana-based petroleum exploration and production company Mariner Energy.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "Enron opened EnronOnline, an electronic trading platform for energy commodities, on November 29, 1999. Conceptualized by the company's European Gas Trading team, it was the first web-based transaction system that allowed buyers and sellers to buy, sell, and trade commodity products globally. It allowed users to do business only with Enron. The site allowed Enron to transact with participants in the global energy markets. The main commodities offered on EnronOnline were natural gas and electricity, although there were 500 other products including credit derivatives, bankruptcy swaps, pulp, gas, plastics, paper, steel, metals, freight, and TV commercial time. At its maximum, more than $6 billion worth of commodities were transacted by means of EnronOnline every day, but specialists questioned how Enron reported trades and calculated its profits, saying that the same fraudulent accounting that was rampant at Enron's other operations may have been used in trading.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "After Enron's bankruptcy in late 2001, EnronOnline was sold to the Swiss financial giant UBS. Within a year, UBS abandoned its efforts to relaunch the division and closed it in November 2002.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Enron International (EI) was Enron's wholesale asset development and asset management business. Its primary emphasis was developing and building natural gas power plants outside North America. Enron Engineering and Construction Company (EECC) was a wholly owned subsidiary of Enron International and built almost all of Enron International's power plants. Unlike other business units of Enron, Enron International had a strong cash flow at the bankruptcy filing. Enron International consisted of all of Enron's foreign power projects, including ones in Europe.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The company's Teesside plant was one of the largest gas-fired power stations in the world, built and operated by Enron from 1989, and produced 3 percent of the United Kingdom's energy needs. Enron owned half of the plant's equity, with the remaining 50 percent split between four regional electricity companies.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Rebecca Mark was the CEO of Enron International until she resigned to manage Enron's newly acquired water business, Azurix, in 1997. Mark had a major role in the development of the Dabhol project in India, Enron's largest international endeavor.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Enron International constructed power plants and pipelines across the globe. Some are presently still operating, including the massive Teesside plant in England. Others, like a barge-mounted plant off Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, cost Enron money through lawsuits and investment losses. Puerto Plata was a barge-mounted power plant next to the hotel Hotelero del Atlantico. When the plant was activated, winds blew soot from the plant onto the hotel guests' meals, blackening their food. The winds also blew garbage from nearby slums into the plant's water-intake system. For some time the only solution was to hire men who would row out and push the garbage away with their paddles. Through mid-2000 the company collected a paltry $3.5 million from a $95 million investment. Enron also had other investment projects in Europe, South America, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Jamaica, Venezuela, and across the Caribbean.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Around 1992 Indian experts came to the United States to find energy investors to help with India's energy shortage problems. During December 1993, Enron finalized a 20-year power-purchase contract with the Maharashtra State Electricity Board. The contract allowed Enron to construct a massive 2,015 megawatt power plant on a remote volcanic bluff 100 miles (160 km) south of Mumbai through a two-phase project called Dabhol Power Station. Construction would be completed in two phases, and Enron would form the Dabhol Power Company to help manage the plant. The power project was the first step in a $20 billion scheme to help rebuild and stabilize India's power grid. Enron, GE (which was selling turbines to the project), and Bechtel (which was actually constructing the plant), each contributed 10% equity with the remaining 90% covered by the MSEB",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In 1996, when India's Congress Party was no longer in power, the Indian government assessed the project as being excessively expensive and refused to pay for the plant and stopped construction. The MSEB was required by contract to continue to pay Enron plant maintenance charges, even if no power was purchased from the plant. The MSEB determined that it could not afford to purchase the power (at Rs. 8 per unit kWh) charged by Enron. The plant operator was unable to find alternate customers for Dabhol power due to the absence of a free market in the regulated structure of utilities in India.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "By 2000, the Dabhol plant was almost complete and Phase 1 had begun producing power. Enron as a whole, however, was heavily overextended, and in the summer of that year Mark and all the key executives at Enron International were asked to resign from Enron in an effort to reshape the company and get rid of asset businesses. Shortly thereafter a payment dispute with MSEB ensued, and Enron issued a stop-work order on the plant in June 2001. From 1996 until Enron's bankruptcy in 2001 the company tried to revive the project and revive interest in India's need for the power plant without success. By December 2001 the Enron scandal and bankruptcy cut short any opportunity to revive the construction and complete the plant. In 2005, an Indian government-run company, Ratnagiri Gas and Power, was set up to finish construction on the Dabhol facility and operate the plant.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "During the summer of 2001, Enron made an attempt to sell a number of Enron International's assets, many of which were not sold. The public and media believed it was unknown why Enron wanted to sell these assets, suspecting it was because Enron was in need of cash. Employees who worked with company assets were told in 2000 that Jeff Skilling believed that business assets were an outdated means of a company's worth, and instead he wanted to build a company based on \"intellectual assets\".",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Enron Global Exploration & Production Inc. (EGEP) was an Enron subsidiary that was born from the split of domestic assets via EOG Resources (formerly Enron Oil and Gas EOG) and international assets via EGEP (formerly Enron Oil and Gas Int'l, Ltd EOGIL). Among the EGEP assets were the Panna-Mukta and the South Tapti fields, discovered by the Indian state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which operated the fields initially. December 1994, a joint venture began between ONGC (40%), Enron (30%) and Reliance (30%). Mid-year of 2002, British Gas (BG) completed the acquisition of EGEP's 30% share of the Panna-Mukta and Tapti fields for $350 million, a few months before Enron filed bankruptcy.",
"title": "Products"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "During the mid-1990s, Enron established an endowment for the Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service, awarded by Rice University's Baker Institute to \"recognize outstanding individuals for their contributions to public service\". Recipients were:",
"title": "Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Greenspan, because of his position as the Fed chairman, was not at liberty to accept the $10,000 honorarium, the $15,000 sculpture, nor the crystal trophy, but only accepted the \"honor\" of being named an Enron Prize recipient. The situation was further complicated because a few days earlier, Enron had filed paperwork admitting it had falsified financial statements for five years. Greenspan did not mention Enron a single time during his speech. At the ceremony, Ken Lay stated, \"I'm looking forward to our first woman recipient.\" The next morning, it was reported in the Houston Chronicle that no decision had been made on whether the name of the prize would be changed. 19 days after the prize was awarded to Greenspan, Enron declared bankruptcy.",
"title": "Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In early 2002, Enron was awarded Harvard's (in)famous Ig Nobel Prize for \"Most Creative Use of Imaginary Numbers\". The various former members of the Enron management team all refused to accept the award in person, although no reason was given at the time.",
"title": "Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "Enron Corporation",
"title": "References"
}
]
| Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,600 staff and was a major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years. At the end of 2001, it was revealed that Enron's reported financial condition was sustained by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has become synonymous with willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States and was a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also affected the greater business world by causing, together with even larger fraudulent bankruptcy WorldCom, the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, which had been Enron and WorldCom's main auditor for years. Enron filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel. It ended its bankruptcy in November 2004, pursuant to a court-approved plan of reorganization. A new board of directors changed the name of Enron to Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., and emphasized reorganizing and liquidating certain operations and assets of the pre-bankruptcy Enron. On September 7, 2006, Enron sold its last remaining subsidiary, Prisma Energy International, to Ashmore Energy International Ltd.. It is the largest bankruptcy, due specifically to fraud, of all time. | 2001-08-07T08:58:13Z | 2023-12-19T16:04:41Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron |
10,168 | Eusebius of Alexandria | Eusebius of Alexandria is an author to whom certain extant homilies are attributed.
Nothing is known of the author. In all events, he was not a patriarch of Alexandria, as is affirmed in an early biography, written by one Johannes, a notary, and stating that Eusebius was called by Cyril to be his successor in the episcopate.
There has been much dispute regarding the details of his life and the age in which he lived. Galland (Vet. Patr. Biblioth., VIII, 23) says: "de Eusebio qui vulgo dicitur episcopus Alexandræ incerta omnia" (Concerning Eusebius, commonly called bishop of Alexandria there is nothing sure). His writings have been attributed to Eusebius of Emesa, Eusebius of Cæsarea, and others. According to an old biography said to have been written by his notary, the monk John, and discovered by Cardinal Mai, he lived in the fifth century and led a monastic life near Alexandria. The fame of his virtues attracted the attention of Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, who visited him with his clergy, and in 444, when dying, had him elected his successor, and consecrated him bishop, though much against his will. Eusebius displayed great zeal in the exercise of his office and did much good by his preaching. Among those he converted was a certain Alexander, a man of senatorial rank. After having ruled his see for seven or, according to another account, for twenty years, he made Alexander his successor and retired to the desert, whence Cyril had summoned him and there died in the odor of sanctity.
While Mai seems to have established the existence of a Eusebius of Alexandria who lived in the fifth century, it had been objected than neither the name of Eusebius or his successor Alexander, appears in the list of the occupants of that ancient see. Dioscurus is mentioned as the immediate successor of Cyril. Nor does the style of the homilies seem on the whole in keeping with the age of Cyril. It may be noted, however, that the biographer of Eusebius expressly states that the Cyril in question is the great opponent of Nestorius. Various solution of the difficulty have been proposed. Thilo thinks that the authorship of the homilies is to be assigned either to a certain monk – one of four brothers 3 of the fifth century, or to a presbyter and court chaplain of Justinian I, who took an active part in the theological strifes of the sixth century. Mai suggests that after the death of Cyril, there were two bishops at Alexandria, Dioscurus, the Monophysite leader, and Eusebius, the head of the Catholic party. The homilies cover a variety of subjects, and the author is one of the earliest patristic witnesses to the doctrine regarding the descent of Christ into Hell. A list of homilies with the complete text is given by Mai. They may also be found in Migne, which was published with an introduction by Rand in "Modern Philology", II, 261.
These homilies enjoyed some renown in the Eastern Church in the sixth and seventh centuries.
The discourses belong probably to the fifth or sixth century, and possibly originated in Alexandria. They deal with the life of Jesus of Nazareth and with questions of ecclesiastical life and practise, which they resolve in a monastic-ascetic way. Their literary character is not quite clear; while most of them are adapted for public delivery, not a few bear the character of ecclesiastical pronouncements. They are now in print except four included among John Chrysostom's works. The fragments preserved in the so-called Sacra parallela are to be found in Karl Holl's Fragmente vornicänischer Kirchenväter. A homily concerning the observance of Sunday is attributed by Zahn to Eusebius of Emesa. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eusebius of Alexandria is an author to whom certain extant homilies are attributed.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Nothing is known of the author. In all events, he was not a patriarch of Alexandria, as is affirmed in an early biography, written by one Johannes, a notary, and stating that Eusebius was called by Cyril to be his successor in the episcopate.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "There has been much dispute regarding the details of his life and the age in which he lived. Galland (Vet. Patr. Biblioth., VIII, 23) says: \"de Eusebio qui vulgo dicitur episcopus Alexandræ incerta omnia\" (Concerning Eusebius, commonly called bishop of Alexandria there is nothing sure). His writings have been attributed to Eusebius of Emesa, Eusebius of Cæsarea, and others. According to an old biography said to have been written by his notary, the monk John, and discovered by Cardinal Mai, he lived in the fifth century and led a monastic life near Alexandria. The fame of his virtues attracted the attention of Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, who visited him with his clergy, and in 444, when dying, had him elected his successor, and consecrated him bishop, though much against his will. Eusebius displayed great zeal in the exercise of his office and did much good by his preaching. Among those he converted was a certain Alexander, a man of senatorial rank. After having ruled his see for seven or, according to another account, for twenty years, he made Alexander his successor and retired to the desert, whence Cyril had summoned him and there died in the odor of sanctity.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "While Mai seems to have established the existence of a Eusebius of Alexandria who lived in the fifth century, it had been objected than neither the name of Eusebius or his successor Alexander, appears in the list of the occupants of that ancient see. Dioscurus is mentioned as the immediate successor of Cyril. Nor does the style of the homilies seem on the whole in keeping with the age of Cyril. It may be noted, however, that the biographer of Eusebius expressly states that the Cyril in question is the great opponent of Nestorius. Various solution of the difficulty have been proposed. Thilo thinks that the authorship of the homilies is to be assigned either to a certain monk – one of four brothers 3 of the fifth century, or to a presbyter and court chaplain of Justinian I, who took an active part in the theological strifes of the sixth century. Mai suggests that after the death of Cyril, there were two bishops at Alexandria, Dioscurus, the Monophysite leader, and Eusebius, the head of the Catholic party. The homilies cover a variety of subjects, and the author is one of the earliest patristic witnesses to the doctrine regarding the descent of Christ into Hell. A list of homilies with the complete text is given by Mai. They may also be found in Migne, which was published with an introduction by Rand in \"Modern Philology\", II, 261.",
"title": "Biography"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "These homilies enjoyed some renown in the Eastern Church in the sixth and seventh centuries.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The discourses belong probably to the fifth or sixth century, and possibly originated in Alexandria. They deal with the life of Jesus of Nazareth and with questions of ecclesiastical life and practise, which they resolve in a monastic-ascetic way. Their literary character is not quite clear; while most of them are adapted for public delivery, not a few bear the character of ecclesiastical pronouncements. They are now in print except four included among John Chrysostom's works. The fragments preserved in the so-called Sacra parallela are to be found in Karl Holl's Fragmente vornicänischer Kirchenväter. A homily concerning the observance of Sunday is attributed by Zahn to Eusebius of Emesa.",
"title": "Works"
}
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| Eusebius of Alexandria is an author to whom certain extant homilies are attributed. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-06T21:14:53Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebius_of_Alexandria |
10,169 | Eusebius of Angers | Eusebius (Bruno) of Angers (died September 1, 1081) was bishop of Angers, [[France himself and by his opponents Theodwin of Liège, Durand of Troarne, and Humbert of Mourmoutiers. But when he recognized the strength of the opposition, he favored a compromise; at any rate he advised Berengar is 1054 to swear to the formula presented to him.
Nevertheless, Berengar considered him his friend many years later and requested him to silence a certain Galfrid Martini or to arrange a disputation. In his reply Eusebius not only regretted the whole controversy, but also stated that he would abide by the words of the Bible, according to which the bread and wine after the consecration become the body and blood of the Lord (see transubstantiation); if one asks how this can take place, the answer must be that it is not according to the order of nature but in accordance with the divine omnipotence; at any rate one must be careful not to give offense to the plain Christian. The epistle is a downright renunciation of Berengar in case he should still maintain his view.
In favor of the supposition that Eusebius changed his opinion from deference to the Count of Anjou, the decided opponent of Berengar and his doctrine, it can be adduced that he did not defend Berengar against the hostilities of the court, and that for a long time he sided with this violent prince. It is also possible that the fact impressed itself upon Eusebius that the religious consciousness of the time more and more opposed Berengar. Our knowledge, however, is too fragmentary to pass a very accurate sentence. | [
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"text": "Nevertheless, Berengar considered him his friend many years later and requested him to silence a certain Galfrid Martini or to arrange a disputation. In his reply Eusebius not only regretted the whole controversy, but also stated that he would abide by the words of the Bible, according to which the bread and wine after the consecration become the body and blood of the Lord (see transubstantiation); if one asks how this can take place, the answer must be that it is not according to the order of nature but in accordance with the divine omnipotence; at any rate one must be careful not to give offense to the plain Christian. The epistle is a downright renunciation of Berengar in case he should still maintain his view.",
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"text": "In favor of the supposition that Eusebius changed his opinion from deference to the Count of Anjou, the decided opponent of Berengar and his doctrine, it can be adduced that he did not defend Berengar against the hostilities of the court, and that for a long time he sided with this violent prince. It is also possible that the fact impressed itself upon Eusebius that the religious consciousness of the time more and more opposed Berengar. Our knowledge, however, is too fragmentary to pass a very accurate sentence.",
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| Eusebius (Bruno) of Angers was bishop of Angers, [[France himself and by his opponents Theodwin of Liège, Durand of Troarne, and Humbert of Mourmoutiers. But when he recognized the strength of the opposition, he favored a compromise; at any rate he advised Berengar is 1054 to swear to the formula presented to him. Nevertheless, Berengar considered him his friend many years later and requested him to silence a certain Galfrid Martini or to arrange a disputation. In his reply Eusebius not only regretted the whole controversy, but also stated that he would abide by the words of the Bible, according to which the bread and wine after the consecration become the body and blood of the Lord; if one asks how this can take place, the answer must be that it is not according to the order of nature but in accordance with the divine omnipotence; at any rate one must be careful not to give offense to the plain Christian. The epistle is a downright renunciation of Berengar in case he should still maintain his view. In favor of the supposition that Eusebius changed his opinion from deference to the Count of Anjou, the decided opponent of Berengar and his doctrine, it can be adduced that he did not defend Berengar against the hostilities of the court, and that for a long time he sided with this violent prince. It is also possible that the fact impressed itself upon Eusebius that the religious consciousness of the time more and more opposed Berengar. Our knowledge, however, is too fragmentary to pass a very accurate sentence. | 2002-02-18T12:09:07Z | 2023-12-27T23:36:42Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebius_of_Angers |
10,172 | Eusebius | Eusebius of Caesarea (/juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek: Εὐσέβιος τῆς Καισαρείας Eusebios tēs Kaisareias; c. 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the Greek: Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek or Palestinian historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the biblical canon and is regarded as one of the most learned Christians during late antiquity. He wrote Demonstrations of the Gospel, Preparations for the Gospel and On Discrepancies between the Gospels, studies of the biblical text. As "Father of Church History" (not to be confused with the title of Church Father), he produced the Ecclesiastical History, On the Life of Pamphilus, the Chronicle and On the Martyrs. He also produced a biographical work on Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, who was Augustus between AD 306 and AD 337.
Little is known about the life of Eusebius. His successor at the See of Caesarea, Acacius, wrote a Life of Eusebius, a work that has since been lost. Eusebius' own surviving works probably only represent a small portion of his total output. Beyond notices in his extant writings, the major sources are the 5th-century ecclesiastical historians Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, and the 4th-century Christian author Jerome. There are assorted notices of his activities in the writings of his contemporaries Athanasius, Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Alexander of Alexandria. Eusebius' pupil, Eusebius of Emesa, provides some incidental information.
Most scholars date the birth of Eusebius to some point between AD 260 and 265. He was most likely born in or around Caesarea Maritima. Nothing is known about his parents. He was baptized and instructed in the city, and lived in Syria Palaestina in 296, when Diocletian's army passed through the region (in the Life of Constantine, Eusebius recalls seeing Constantine traveling with the army).
Eusebius was made presbyter by Agapius of Caesarea. Some, like theologian and ecclesiastical historian John Henry Newman, understand Eusebius' statement that he had heard Dorotheus of Tyre "expound the Scriptures wisely in the Church" to indicate that Eusebius was Dorotheus' pupil while the priest was resident in Antioch; others, like the scholar D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, deem the phrase too ambiguous to support the contention.
Through the activities of the theologian Origen (185/6–254) and the school of his follower Pamphilus (later 3rd century – 309), Caesarea became a center of Christian learning. Origen was largely responsible for the collection of usage information, or which churches were using which gospels, regarding the texts which became the New Testament. The information used to create the late-fourth-century Easter Letter, which declared accepted Christian writings, was probably based on the Ecclesiastical History [HE] of Eusebius of Caesarea, wherein he uses the information passed on to him by Origen to create both his list at HE 3:25 and Origen's list at HE 6:25. Eusebius got his information about what texts were accepted by the third-century churches throughout the known world, a great deal of which Origen knew of firsthand from his extensive travels, from the library and writings of Origen.
On his deathbed, Origen had made a bequest of his private library to the Christian community in the city. Together with the books of his patron Ambrosius, Origen's library (including the original manuscripts of his works) formed the core of the collection that Pamphilus established. Pamphilus also managed a school that was similar to (or perhaps a re-establishment of) that of Origen. Pamphilus was compared to Demetrius of Phalerum and Pisistratus, for he had gathered Bibles "from all parts of the world". Like his model Origen, Pamphilus maintained close contact with his students. Eusebius, in his history of the persecutions, alludes to the fact that many of the Caesarean martyrs lived together, presumably under Pamphilus.
Soon after Pamphilus settled in Caesarea (ca. 280s), he began teaching Eusebius, who was then somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. Because of his close relationship with his schoolmaster, Eusebius was sometimes called Eusebius Pamphili: "Eusebius, son of Pamphilus". The name may also indicate that Eusebius was made Pamphilus' heir. Pamphilus gave Eusebius a strong admiration for the thought of Origen. Neither Pamphilus nor Eusebius knew Origen personally; Pamphilus probably picked up Origenist ideas during his studies under Pierius (nicknamed "Origen Junior") in Alexandria.
Eusebius' Preparation for the Gospel bears witness to the literary tastes of Origen: Eusebius quotes no comedy, tragedy, or lyric poetry, but makes reference to all the works of Plato and to an extensive range of later philosophic works, largely from Middle Platonists from Philo to the late 2nd century. Whatever its secular contents, the primary aim of Origen and Pamphilus' school was to promote sacred learning. The library's biblical and theological contents were more impressive: Origen's Hexapla and Tetrapla; a copy of the original Aramaic version of the Gospel of Matthew; and many of Origen's own writings. Marginal comments in extant manuscripts note that Pamphilus and his friends and pupils, including Eusebius, corrected and revised much of the biblical text in their library. Their efforts made the hexaplaric Septuagint text increasingly popular in Syria and Palestine. Soon after joining Pamphilus' school, Eusebius started helping his master expand the library's collections and broaden access to its resources. At about this time Eusebius compiled a Collection of Ancient Martyrdoms, presumably for use as a general reference tool.
In the 290s, Eusebius began work on his most important work, the Ecclesiastical History, a narrative history of the Church and Christian community from the Apostolic Age to Eusebius' own time. At about the same time, he worked on his Chronicle, a universal calendar of events from the Creation to, again, Eusebius' own time. He completed the first editions of the Ecclesiastical History and Chronicle before 300.
Eusebius succeeded Agapius as Bishop of Caesarea soon after 313 and was called on by Arius who had been excommunicated by his bishop Alexander of Alexandria. An episcopal council in Caesarea pronounced Arius blameless. Eusebius enjoyed the favor of the Emperor Constantine. Because of this he was called upon to present the creed of his own church to the 318 attendees of the Council of Nicaea in 325. However, the anti-Arian creed from Palestine prevailed, becoming the basis for the Nicene Creed.
The theological views of Arius, that taught the subordination of the Son to the Father, continued to be controversial. Eustathius of Antioch strongly opposed the growing influence of Origen's theology as the root of Arianism. Eusebius, an admirer of Origen, was reproached by Eustathius for deviating from the Nicene faith. Eusebius prevailed and Eustathius was deposed at a synod in Antioch.
However, Athanasius of Alexandria became a more powerful opponent and in 334 he was summoned before a synod in Caesarea (which he refused to attend). In the following year, he was again summoned before a synod in Tyre at which Eusebius of Caesarea presided. Athanasius, foreseeing the result, went to Constantinople to bring his cause before the Emperor. Constantine called the bishops to his court, among them Eusebius. Athanasius was condemned and exiled at the end of 335. Eusebius remained in the Emperor's favour throughout this time and more than once was exonerated with the explicit approval of the Emperor Constantine. After the Emperor's death (c. 337), Eusebius wrote the Life of Constantine, an important historical work because of eyewitness accounts and the use of primary sources.
Of the extensive literary activity of Eusebius, a relatively large portion has been preserved. Although posterity suspected him of Arianism, Eusebius had made himself indispensable by his method of authorship; his comprehensive and careful excerpts from original sources saved his successors the painstaking labor of original research. Hence, much has been preserved, quoted by Eusebius, which otherwise would have been lost.
The literary productions of Eusebius reflect on the whole the course of his life. At first, he occupied himself with works on biblical criticism under the influence of Pamphilus and probably of Dorotheus of Tyre of the School of Antioch. Afterward, the persecutions under Diocletian and Galerius directed his attention to the martyrs of his own time and the past, and this led him to the history of the whole Church and finally to the history of the world, which, to him, was only a preparation for ecclesiastical history.
Then followed the time of the Arian controversies, and dogmatic questions came into the foreground. Christianity at last found recognition by the State; and this brought new problems – apologies of a different sort had to be prepared. Lastly, Eusebius wrote eulogies in praise of Constantine. To all this activity must be added numerous writings of a miscellaneous nature, addresses, letters, and the like, and exegetical works that extended over the whole of his life and that include both commentaries and an important treatise on the location of biblical place names and the distances between these cities.
Pamphilus and Eusebius occupied themselves with the textual criticism of the Septuagint text of the Old Testament and especially of the New Testament. An edition of the Septuagint seems to have been already prepared by Origen, which, according to Jerome, was revised and circulated by Eusebius and Pamphilus. For an easier survey of the material of the four Evangelists, Eusebius divided his edition of the New Testament into paragraphs and provided it with a synoptical table so that it might be easier to find the pericopes that belong together. These canon tables or "Eusebian canons" remained in use throughout the Middle Ages, and illuminated manuscript versions are important for the study of early medieval art, as they are the most elaborately decorated pages of many Gospel books. Eusebius detailed in Epistula ad Carpianum how to use his canons.
The Chronicle (Παντοδαπὴ Ἱστορία (Pantodape historia)) is divided into two parts. The first part, the Chronography (Χρονογραφία (Chronographia)), gives an epitome of universal history from the sources, arranged according to nations. The second part, the Canons (Χρονικοὶ Κανόνες (Chronikoi kanones)), furnishes a synchronism of the historical material in parallel columns, the equivalent of a parallel timeline.
The work as a whole has been lost in the original Greek, but it may be reconstructed from later chronographists of the Byzantine school who made excerpts from the work, especially George Syncellus. The tables of the second part have been completely preserved in a Latin translation by Jerome, and both parts are still extant in an Armenian translation. The loss of the Greek originals has given the Armenian translation a special importance; thus, the first part of Eusebius' Chronicle, of which only a few fragments exist in Greek, has been preserved entirely in Armenian, though with lacunae. The Chronicle as preserved extends to the year 325.
In his Church History or Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius wrote the first surviving history of the Christian Church as a chronologically ordered account, based on earlier sources, complete from the period of the Apostles to his own epoch. The time scheme correlated the history with the reigns of the Roman Emperors, and the scope was broad. Included were the bishops and other teachers of the Church, Christian relations with the Jews and those deemed heretical, and the Christian martyrs through 324. Although its accuracy and biases have been questioned, it remains an important source on the early church due to Eusebius's access to materials now lost.
Eusebius' Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini) is a eulogy or panegyric, and therefore its style and selection of facts are affected by its purpose, rendering it inadequate as a continuation of the Church History. As the historian Socrates Scholasticus said, at the opening of his history which was designed as a continuation of Eusebius, "Also in writing the life of Constantine, this same author has but slightly treated of matters regarding Arius, being more intent on the rhetorical finish of his composition and the praises of the emperor than on an accurate statement of facts." The work was unfinished at Eusebius' death. Some scholars have questioned the Eusebian authorship of this work.
Writing after Constantine had died, Eusebius claimed that the emperor himself had recounted to him that some time between the death of his father – the augustus Constantius – and his final battle against his rival Maxentius as augustus in the West, Constantine experienced a vision in which he and his soldiers beheld a Christian symbol, "a cross-shaped trophy formed from light", above the sun at midday. Attached to the symbol was the phrase "by this conquer" (ἐν τούτῳ νίκα, en toútōi níka), a phrase often rendered into Latin as "in hoc signo vinces". In a dream that night "the Christ of God appeared to him with the sign which had appeared in the sky, and urged him to make himself a copy of the sign which had appeared in the sky, and to use this as a protection against the attacks of the enemy." Eusebius relates that this happened "on a campaign he [Constantine] was conducting somewhere". It is unclear from Eusebius's description whether the shields were marked with a Christian cross or with a chi-rho, a staurogram, or another similar symbol.
The Latin text De mortibus persecutorum contains an early account of the 28 October 312 Battle of the Milvian Bridge written by Lactantius probably in 313, the year following the battle. Lactantius does not mention a vision in the sky but describes a revelatory dream on the eve of battle. Eusebius's work of that time, his Church History, also makes no mention of the vision. The Arch of Constantine, constructed in AD 315, neither depicts a vision nor any Christian insignia in its depiction of the battle. In his posthumous biography of Constantine, Eusebius agrees with Lactantius that Constantine received instructions in a dream to apply a Christian symbol as a device to his soldiers' shields, but unlike Lactantius and subsequent Christian tradition, Eusebius does not date the events to October 312 and does not connect Constantine's vision and dream-vision with the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.
Before he compiled his church history, Eusebius edited a collection of martyrdoms of the earlier period and a biography of Pamphilus. The martyrology has not survived as a whole, but it has been preserved almost completely in parts. It contained:
Of the life of Pamphilus, only a fragment survives. A work on the martyrs of Palestine in the time of Diocletian was composed after 311; numerous fragments are scattered in legendaries which have yet to be collected. The life of Constantine was compiled after the death of the emperor and the election of his sons as Augusti (337). It is more a rhetorical eulogy on the emperor than a history but is of great value on account of numerous documents incorporated into it.
To the class of apologetic and dogmatic works belong:
A number of writings, belonging in this category, have been entirely lost.
All of the exegetical works of Eusebius have suffered damage in transmission. The majority of them are known to us only from long portions quoted in Byzantine catena-commentaries. However these portions are very extensive. Extant are:
Eusebius also wrote a work 'Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum, On the Differences of the Gospels (including solutions). This was written for the purpose of harmonizing the contradictions in the reports of the different Evangelists. This work was recently (2011) translated into the English language by David J. Miller and Adam C. McCollum and was published under the name Eusebius of Caesarea: Gospel Problems and Solutions. The original work was also translated into Syriac, and lengthy quotations exist in a catena in that language, and also in Arabic catenas.
Eusebius also wrote treatises on the biblical past; these three treatises have been lost. They were:
The addresses and sermons of Eusebius are mostly lost, but some have been preserved, e.g., a sermon on the consecration of the church in Tyre and an address on the thirtieth anniversary of the reign of Constantine (336).
Most of Eusebius' letters are lost. His letters to Carpianus and Flacillus exist complete. Fragments of a letter to the empress Constantia also exists.
Eusebius is fairly unusual in his preterist, or fulfilled, eschatological view. Saying "the Holy Scriptures foretell that there will be unmistakable signs of the Coming of Christ. Now there were among the Hebrews three outstanding offices of dignity, which made the nation famous, firstly the kingship, secondly that of prophet, and lastly the high priesthood. The prophecies said that the abolition and complete destruction of all these three together would be the sign of the presence of the Christ. And that the proofs that the times had come, would lie in the ceasing of the Mosaic worship, the desolation of Jerusalem and its Temple, and the subjection of the whole Jewish race to its enemies. ...The holy oracles foretold that all these changes, which had not been made in the days of the prophets of old, would take place at the coming of the Christ, which I will presently shew to have been fulfilled as never before in accordance with the predictions" (Demonstratio Evangelica VIII).
From a dogmatic point of view, Eusebius is related in his views to Origen. Like Origen, he started from the fundamental thought of the absolute sovereignty (monarchia) of God. God is the cause of all beings. But he is not merely a cause; in him everything good is included, from him all life originates, and he is the source of all virtue. God sent Christ into the world that it may partake of the blessings included in the essence of God. Eusebius expressly distinguishes the Son as distinct from Father as a ray is also distinct from its source the sun.
Eusebius held that men were sinners by their own free choice and not by the necessity of their natures. Eusebius said:
The Creator of all things has impressed a natural law upon the soul of every man, as an assistant and ally in his conduct, pointing out to him the right way by this law; but, by the free liberty with which he is endowed, making the choice of what is best worthy of praise and acceptance, he has acted rightly, not by force, but from his own free-will, when he had it in his power to act otherwise, As, again, making him who chooses what is worst, deserving of blame and punishment, because he has by his own motion neglected the natural law, and becoming the origin and fountain of wickedness, and misusing himself, not from any extraneous necessity, but from free will and judgment. The fault is in him who chooses, not in God. For God has not made nature or the substance of the soul bad; for he who is good can make nothing but what is good. Everything is good which is according to nature. Every rational soul has naturally a good free-will, formed for the choice of what is good. But when a man acts wrongly, nature is not to be blamed; for what is wrong, takes place not according to nature, but contrary to nature, it being the work of choice, and not of nature.
A letter Eusebius is supposed to have written to Constantine's daughter Constantina, refusing to fulfill her request for images of Christ, was quoted in the decrees (now lost) of the Iconoclast Council of Hieria in 754, and later quoted in part in the rebuttal of the Hieria decrees in the Second Council of Nicaea of 787, now the only source from which some of the text is known. The authenticity or authorship of the letter remains uncertain.
In the June 2002 issue of the Church History journal, Pier Franco Beatrice reports that Eusebius testified that the word homoousios (consubstantial) "was inserted in the Nicene Creed solely by the personal order of Constantine."
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the word homoousios was inserted in the Nicene Creed solely by the personal order of Constantine. But this statement is highly problematic. It is very difficult to explain the seeming paradoxical fact that this word, along with the explanation given by Constantine, was accepted by the "Arian" Eusebius, whereas it has left no traces at all in the works of his opponents, the leaders of the anti-Arian party such as Alexander of Alexandria, Ossius of Cordova, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Eustathius of Antioch, who are usually considered Constantine's theological advisers and the strongest supporters of the council. Neither before nor during Constantine's time is there any evidence of a normal, well-established Christian use of the term homoousios in its strictly Trinitarian meaning. Having once excluded any relationship of the Nicene homoousios with the Christian tradition, it becomes legitimate to propose a new explanation, based on an analysis of two pagan documents which have so far never been taken into account. The main thesis of this paper is that homoousios came straight from Constantine's Hermetic background. As can be clearly seen in the Poimandres, and even more clearly in an inscription mentioned exclusively in the Theosophia, in the theological language of Egyptian paganism the word homoousios meant that the Nous-Father and the Logos-Son, who are two distinct beings, share the same perfection of the divine nature.
However, the council evidently did not force the insertion of the word and instead adopted a text related to the confession of Jerusalem. The role of Constantine remained uncertain during the council.
Alternate views have suggested that Gibbon's dismissal of Eusebius is inappropriate:
While many have shared Burckhardt's assessment, particularly with reference to the Life of Constantine, others, while not pretending to extol his merits, have acknowledged the irreplaceable value of his works which may principally reside in the copious quotations that they contain from other sources, often lost.
The earliest recorded feast day of Eusebius is found in the earliest known Syrian Martyrology dating to the year 411 translated by William Wright. The Martyrology lists his feast day as May 30. Eusebius continues to be venerated as a Saint by the modern-day Syrian Orthodox Church as well, with a feast day on February 29 according to the official calendar of Saints created by Corbishop Rajan Achen.
Eusebius was long venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop J.B. Lightfoot writes in his entry for St. Eusebius in Henry Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century AD, with an Account of Principal Sects and Heresies (1911) that "in the Martyrologium Romanum itself he held his place for centuries" and in "Gallican service-books the historian is commemorated as a saint." However, Lightfoot notes that in "the revision of this Martyrology under Gregory XIII his name was struck out, and Eusebius of Samosata was substituted, under the mistaken idea that Caesarea had been substituted for Samosata by a mistake." The Roman Catholic author Henri Valois includes in his translations on Eusebius' writings testimonies of ancient authors in favor and against Eusebius, to which in the favor category he includes evidence of Eusebius in several martyrologies and being called a "Blessed" dating back to Victorius of Aquitaine. Valois includes both Usuardus and Notker, who list his feast as June 21 in the Roman Martyrology, and a Gallican breviary is included for June 21 that reads as follows:
Of the holy Eusebius, bishop and confessor. Lesson 1. Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, on account of his friendship with Pamphilus the martyr, took from him the surname of Pamphili; inasmuch as along with this same Pamphilus he was a most diligent investigator of sacred literature. The man indeed is very worthy of being remembered in these times, both for his skill in many things, and for his wonderful genius, and by both Gentiles and Christians he was held distinguished and most noble among philosophers. This man, after having for a time labored in behalf of the Arian heresy, coming to the council of Nicæa, inspired by the Holy Spirit, followed the decision of the Fathers, and thereafter up to the time of his death lived in a most holy manner in the orthodox faith. Lesson 2. He was, moreover, very zealous in the study of the sacred Scriptures, and along with Pamphilus the martyr was a most diligent investigator of sacred literature. At the same time he has written many things, but especially the following books: The Præparatio Evangelica, the Ecclesiastical History, Against Porphyry, a very bitter enemy of the Christians; he has also composed Six Apologies in Behalf of Origen, a Life of Pamphilus the Martyr, from whom on account of friendship he took his surname, in three books; likewise very learned Commentaries on the hundred and fifty Psalms. Lesson 3. Moreover, as we read, after having ascertained the sufferings of many holy martyrs in all the provinces, and the lives of confessors and virgins, he has written concerning these saints twenty books; while on account of these books therefore, and especially on account of his Præparatio Evangelica, he was held most distinguished among the Gentiles, because of his love of truth he contemned the ancestral worship of the gods. He has written also a Chronicle, extending from the first year of Abraham up to the year 300 AD, which the divine Hieronymus has continued. Finally this Eusebius, after the conversion of Constantine the Great, was united to him by strong friendship as long as he lived.
A bone fragment relic of Eusebius within its original reliquary is on display at the Shrine of All Saints located within St. Martha's Catholic Church in Morton Grove, Illinois. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eusebius of Caesarea (/juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek: Εὐσέβιος τῆς Καισαρείας Eusebios tēs Kaisareias; c. 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the Greek: Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek or Palestinian historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the biblical canon and is regarded as one of the most learned Christians during late antiquity. He wrote Demonstrations of the Gospel, Preparations for the Gospel and On Discrepancies between the Gospels, studies of the biblical text. As \"Father of Church History\" (not to be confused with the title of Church Father), he produced the Ecclesiastical History, On the Life of Pamphilus, the Chronicle and On the Martyrs. He also produced a biographical work on Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, who was Augustus between AD 306 and AD 337.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Little is known about the life of Eusebius. His successor at the See of Caesarea, Acacius, wrote a Life of Eusebius, a work that has since been lost. Eusebius' own surviving works probably only represent a small portion of his total output. Beyond notices in his extant writings, the major sources are the 5th-century ecclesiastical historians Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, and the 4th-century Christian author Jerome. There are assorted notices of his activities in the writings of his contemporaries Athanasius, Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Alexander of Alexandria. Eusebius' pupil, Eusebius of Emesa, provides some incidental information.",
"title": "Sources"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Most scholars date the birth of Eusebius to some point between AD 260 and 265. He was most likely born in or around Caesarea Maritima. Nothing is known about his parents. He was baptized and instructed in the city, and lived in Syria Palaestina in 296, when Diocletian's army passed through the region (in the Life of Constantine, Eusebius recalls seeing Constantine traveling with the army).",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Eusebius was made presbyter by Agapius of Caesarea. Some, like theologian and ecclesiastical historian John Henry Newman, understand Eusebius' statement that he had heard Dorotheus of Tyre \"expound the Scriptures wisely in the Church\" to indicate that Eusebius was Dorotheus' pupil while the priest was resident in Antioch; others, like the scholar D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, deem the phrase too ambiguous to support the contention.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Through the activities of the theologian Origen (185/6–254) and the school of his follower Pamphilus (later 3rd century – 309), Caesarea became a center of Christian learning. Origen was largely responsible for the collection of usage information, or which churches were using which gospels, regarding the texts which became the New Testament. The information used to create the late-fourth-century Easter Letter, which declared accepted Christian writings, was probably based on the Ecclesiastical History [HE] of Eusebius of Caesarea, wherein he uses the information passed on to him by Origen to create both his list at HE 3:25 and Origen's list at HE 6:25. Eusebius got his information about what texts were accepted by the third-century churches throughout the known world, a great deal of which Origen knew of firsthand from his extensive travels, from the library and writings of Origen.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "On his deathbed, Origen had made a bequest of his private library to the Christian community in the city. Together with the books of his patron Ambrosius, Origen's library (including the original manuscripts of his works) formed the core of the collection that Pamphilus established. Pamphilus also managed a school that was similar to (or perhaps a re-establishment of) that of Origen. Pamphilus was compared to Demetrius of Phalerum and Pisistratus, for he had gathered Bibles \"from all parts of the world\". Like his model Origen, Pamphilus maintained close contact with his students. Eusebius, in his history of the persecutions, alludes to the fact that many of the Caesarean martyrs lived together, presumably under Pamphilus.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Soon after Pamphilus settled in Caesarea (ca. 280s), he began teaching Eusebius, who was then somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. Because of his close relationship with his schoolmaster, Eusebius was sometimes called Eusebius Pamphili: \"Eusebius, son of Pamphilus\". The name may also indicate that Eusebius was made Pamphilus' heir. Pamphilus gave Eusebius a strong admiration for the thought of Origen. Neither Pamphilus nor Eusebius knew Origen personally; Pamphilus probably picked up Origenist ideas during his studies under Pierius (nicknamed \"Origen Junior\") in Alexandria.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Eusebius' Preparation for the Gospel bears witness to the literary tastes of Origen: Eusebius quotes no comedy, tragedy, or lyric poetry, but makes reference to all the works of Plato and to an extensive range of later philosophic works, largely from Middle Platonists from Philo to the late 2nd century. Whatever its secular contents, the primary aim of Origen and Pamphilus' school was to promote sacred learning. The library's biblical and theological contents were more impressive: Origen's Hexapla and Tetrapla; a copy of the original Aramaic version of the Gospel of Matthew; and many of Origen's own writings. Marginal comments in extant manuscripts note that Pamphilus and his friends and pupils, including Eusebius, corrected and revised much of the biblical text in their library. Their efforts made the hexaplaric Septuagint text increasingly popular in Syria and Palestine. Soon after joining Pamphilus' school, Eusebius started helping his master expand the library's collections and broaden access to its resources. At about this time Eusebius compiled a Collection of Ancient Martyrdoms, presumably for use as a general reference tool.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In the 290s, Eusebius began work on his most important work, the Ecclesiastical History, a narrative history of the Church and Christian community from the Apostolic Age to Eusebius' own time. At about the same time, he worked on his Chronicle, a universal calendar of events from the Creation to, again, Eusebius' own time. He completed the first editions of the Ecclesiastical History and Chronicle before 300.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Eusebius succeeded Agapius as Bishop of Caesarea soon after 313 and was called on by Arius who had been excommunicated by his bishop Alexander of Alexandria. An episcopal council in Caesarea pronounced Arius blameless. Eusebius enjoyed the favor of the Emperor Constantine. Because of this he was called upon to present the creed of his own church to the 318 attendees of the Council of Nicaea in 325. However, the anti-Arian creed from Palestine prevailed, becoming the basis for the Nicene Creed.",
"title": "Bishop of Caesarea"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The theological views of Arius, that taught the subordination of the Son to the Father, continued to be controversial. Eustathius of Antioch strongly opposed the growing influence of Origen's theology as the root of Arianism. Eusebius, an admirer of Origen, was reproached by Eustathius for deviating from the Nicene faith. Eusebius prevailed and Eustathius was deposed at a synod in Antioch.",
"title": "Bishop of Caesarea"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "However, Athanasius of Alexandria became a more powerful opponent and in 334 he was summoned before a synod in Caesarea (which he refused to attend). In the following year, he was again summoned before a synod in Tyre at which Eusebius of Caesarea presided. Athanasius, foreseeing the result, went to Constantinople to bring his cause before the Emperor. Constantine called the bishops to his court, among them Eusebius. Athanasius was condemned and exiled at the end of 335. Eusebius remained in the Emperor's favour throughout this time and more than once was exonerated with the explicit approval of the Emperor Constantine. After the Emperor's death (c. 337), Eusebius wrote the Life of Constantine, an important historical work because of eyewitness accounts and the use of primary sources.",
"title": "Bishop of Caesarea"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Of the extensive literary activity of Eusebius, a relatively large portion has been preserved. Although posterity suspected him of Arianism, Eusebius had made himself indispensable by his method of authorship; his comprehensive and careful excerpts from original sources saved his successors the painstaking labor of original research. Hence, much has been preserved, quoted by Eusebius, which otherwise would have been lost.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The literary productions of Eusebius reflect on the whole the course of his life. At first, he occupied himself with works on biblical criticism under the influence of Pamphilus and probably of Dorotheus of Tyre of the School of Antioch. Afterward, the persecutions under Diocletian and Galerius directed his attention to the martyrs of his own time and the past, and this led him to the history of the whole Church and finally to the history of the world, which, to him, was only a preparation for ecclesiastical history.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Then followed the time of the Arian controversies, and dogmatic questions came into the foreground. Christianity at last found recognition by the State; and this brought new problems – apologies of a different sort had to be prepared. Lastly, Eusebius wrote eulogies in praise of Constantine. To all this activity must be added numerous writings of a miscellaneous nature, addresses, letters, and the like, and exegetical works that extended over the whole of his life and that include both commentaries and an important treatise on the location of biblical place names and the distances between these cities.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Pamphilus and Eusebius occupied themselves with the textual criticism of the Septuagint text of the Old Testament and especially of the New Testament. An edition of the Septuagint seems to have been already prepared by Origen, which, according to Jerome, was revised and circulated by Eusebius and Pamphilus. For an easier survey of the material of the four Evangelists, Eusebius divided his edition of the New Testament into paragraphs and provided it with a synoptical table so that it might be easier to find the pericopes that belong together. These canon tables or \"Eusebian canons\" remained in use throughout the Middle Ages, and illuminated manuscript versions are important for the study of early medieval art, as they are the most elaborately decorated pages of many Gospel books. Eusebius detailed in Epistula ad Carpianum how to use his canons.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Chronicle (Παντοδαπὴ Ἱστορία (Pantodape historia)) is divided into two parts. The first part, the Chronography (Χρονογραφία (Chronographia)), gives an epitome of universal history from the sources, arranged according to nations. The second part, the Canons (Χρονικοὶ Κανόνες (Chronikoi kanones)), furnishes a synchronism of the historical material in parallel columns, the equivalent of a parallel timeline.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The work as a whole has been lost in the original Greek, but it may be reconstructed from later chronographists of the Byzantine school who made excerpts from the work, especially George Syncellus. The tables of the second part have been completely preserved in a Latin translation by Jerome, and both parts are still extant in an Armenian translation. The loss of the Greek originals has given the Armenian translation a special importance; thus, the first part of Eusebius' Chronicle, of which only a few fragments exist in Greek, has been preserved entirely in Armenian, though with lacunae. The Chronicle as preserved extends to the year 325.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "In his Church History or Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius wrote the first surviving history of the Christian Church as a chronologically ordered account, based on earlier sources, complete from the period of the Apostles to his own epoch. The time scheme correlated the history with the reigns of the Roman Emperors, and the scope was broad. Included were the bishops and other teachers of the Church, Christian relations with the Jews and those deemed heretical, and the Christian martyrs through 324. Although its accuracy and biases have been questioned, it remains an important source on the early church due to Eusebius's access to materials now lost.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Eusebius' Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini) is a eulogy or panegyric, and therefore its style and selection of facts are affected by its purpose, rendering it inadequate as a continuation of the Church History. As the historian Socrates Scholasticus said, at the opening of his history which was designed as a continuation of Eusebius, \"Also in writing the life of Constantine, this same author has but slightly treated of matters regarding Arius, being more intent on the rhetorical finish of his composition and the praises of the emperor than on an accurate statement of facts.\" The work was unfinished at Eusebius' death. Some scholars have questioned the Eusebian authorship of this work.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Writing after Constantine had died, Eusebius claimed that the emperor himself had recounted to him that some time between the death of his father – the augustus Constantius – and his final battle against his rival Maxentius as augustus in the West, Constantine experienced a vision in which he and his soldiers beheld a Christian symbol, \"a cross-shaped trophy formed from light\", above the sun at midday. Attached to the symbol was the phrase \"by this conquer\" (ἐν τούτῳ νίκα, en toútōi níka), a phrase often rendered into Latin as \"in hoc signo vinces\". In a dream that night \"the Christ of God appeared to him with the sign which had appeared in the sky, and urged him to make himself a copy of the sign which had appeared in the sky, and to use this as a protection against the attacks of the enemy.\" Eusebius relates that this happened \"on a campaign he [Constantine] was conducting somewhere\". It is unclear from Eusebius's description whether the shields were marked with a Christian cross or with a chi-rho, a staurogram, or another similar symbol.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Latin text De mortibus persecutorum contains an early account of the 28 October 312 Battle of the Milvian Bridge written by Lactantius probably in 313, the year following the battle. Lactantius does not mention a vision in the sky but describes a revelatory dream on the eve of battle. Eusebius's work of that time, his Church History, also makes no mention of the vision. The Arch of Constantine, constructed in AD 315, neither depicts a vision nor any Christian insignia in its depiction of the battle. In his posthumous biography of Constantine, Eusebius agrees with Lactantius that Constantine received instructions in a dream to apply a Christian symbol as a device to his soldiers' shields, but unlike Lactantius and subsequent Christian tradition, Eusebius does not date the events to October 312 and does not connect Constantine's vision and dream-vision with the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Before he compiled his church history, Eusebius edited a collection of martyrdoms of the earlier period and a biography of Pamphilus. The martyrology has not survived as a whole, but it has been preserved almost completely in parts. It contained:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Of the life of Pamphilus, only a fragment survives. A work on the martyrs of Palestine in the time of Diocletian was composed after 311; numerous fragments are scattered in legendaries which have yet to be collected. The life of Constantine was compiled after the death of the emperor and the election of his sons as Augusti (337). It is more a rhetorical eulogy on the emperor than a history but is of great value on account of numerous documents incorporated into it.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "To the class of apologetic and dogmatic works belong:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "A number of writings, belonging in this category, have been entirely lost.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "All of the exegetical works of Eusebius have suffered damage in transmission. The majority of them are known to us only from long portions quoted in Byzantine catena-commentaries. However these portions are very extensive. Extant are:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Eusebius also wrote a work 'Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum, On the Differences of the Gospels (including solutions). This was written for the purpose of harmonizing the contradictions in the reports of the different Evangelists. This work was recently (2011) translated into the English language by David J. Miller and Adam C. McCollum and was published under the name Eusebius of Caesarea: Gospel Problems and Solutions. The original work was also translated into Syriac, and lengthy quotations exist in a catena in that language, and also in Arabic catenas.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Eusebius also wrote treatises on the biblical past; these three treatises have been lost. They were:",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "The addresses and sermons of Eusebius are mostly lost, but some have been preserved, e.g., a sermon on the consecration of the church in Tyre and an address on the thirtieth anniversary of the reign of Constantine (336).",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Most of Eusebius' letters are lost. His letters to Carpianus and Flacillus exist complete. Fragments of a letter to the empress Constantia also exists.",
"title": "Works"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Eusebius is fairly unusual in his preterist, or fulfilled, eschatological view. Saying \"the Holy Scriptures foretell that there will be unmistakable signs of the Coming of Christ. Now there were among the Hebrews three outstanding offices of dignity, which made the nation famous, firstly the kingship, secondly that of prophet, and lastly the high priesthood. The prophecies said that the abolition and complete destruction of all these three together would be the sign of the presence of the Christ. And that the proofs that the times had come, would lie in the ceasing of the Mosaic worship, the desolation of Jerusalem and its Temple, and the subjection of the whole Jewish race to its enemies. ...The holy oracles foretold that all these changes, which had not been made in the days of the prophets of old, would take place at the coming of the Christ, which I will presently shew to have been fulfilled as never before in accordance with the predictions\" (Demonstratio Evangelica VIII).",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "From a dogmatic point of view, Eusebius is related in his views to Origen. Like Origen, he started from the fundamental thought of the absolute sovereignty (monarchia) of God. God is the cause of all beings. But he is not merely a cause; in him everything good is included, from him all life originates, and he is the source of all virtue. God sent Christ into the world that it may partake of the blessings included in the essence of God. Eusebius expressly distinguishes the Son as distinct from Father as a ray is also distinct from its source the sun.",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Eusebius held that men were sinners by their own free choice and not by the necessity of their natures. Eusebius said:",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The Creator of all things has impressed a natural law upon the soul of every man, as an assistant and ally in his conduct, pointing out to him the right way by this law; but, by the free liberty with which he is endowed, making the choice of what is best worthy of praise and acceptance, he has acted rightly, not by force, but from his own free-will, when he had it in his power to act otherwise, As, again, making him who chooses what is worst, deserving of blame and punishment, because he has by his own motion neglected the natural law, and becoming the origin and fountain of wickedness, and misusing himself, not from any extraneous necessity, but from free will and judgment. The fault is in him who chooses, not in God. For God has not made nature or the substance of the soul bad; for he who is good can make nothing but what is good. Everything is good which is according to nature. Every rational soul has naturally a good free-will, formed for the choice of what is good. But when a man acts wrongly, nature is not to be blamed; for what is wrong, takes place not according to nature, but contrary to nature, it being the work of choice, and not of nature.",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "A letter Eusebius is supposed to have written to Constantine's daughter Constantina, refusing to fulfill her request for images of Christ, was quoted in the decrees (now lost) of the Iconoclast Council of Hieria in 754, and later quoted in part in the rebuttal of the Hieria decrees in the Second Council of Nicaea of 787, now the only source from which some of the text is known. The authenticity or authorship of the letter remains uncertain.",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In the June 2002 issue of the Church History journal, Pier Franco Beatrice reports that Eusebius testified that the word homoousios (consubstantial) \"was inserted in the Nicene Creed solely by the personal order of Constantine.\"",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the word homoousios was inserted in the Nicene Creed solely by the personal order of Constantine. But this statement is highly problematic. It is very difficult to explain the seeming paradoxical fact that this word, along with the explanation given by Constantine, was accepted by the \"Arian\" Eusebius, whereas it has left no traces at all in the works of his opponents, the leaders of the anti-Arian party such as Alexander of Alexandria, Ossius of Cordova, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Eustathius of Antioch, who are usually considered Constantine's theological advisers and the strongest supporters of the council. Neither before nor during Constantine's time is there any evidence of a normal, well-established Christian use of the term homoousios in its strictly Trinitarian meaning. Having once excluded any relationship of the Nicene homoousios with the Christian tradition, it becomes legitimate to propose a new explanation, based on an analysis of two pagan documents which have so far never been taken into account. The main thesis of this paper is that homoousios came straight from Constantine's Hermetic background. As can be clearly seen in the Poimandres, and even more clearly in an inscription mentioned exclusively in the Theosophia, in the theological language of Egyptian paganism the word homoousios meant that the Nous-Father and the Logos-Son, who are two distinct beings, share the same perfection of the divine nature.",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "However, the council evidently did not force the insertion of the word and instead adopted a text related to the confession of Jerusalem. The role of Constantine remained uncertain during the council.",
"title": "Doctrine"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Alternate views have suggested that Gibbon's dismissal of Eusebius is inappropriate:",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "While many have shared Burckhardt's assessment, particularly with reference to the Life of Constantine, others, while not pretending to extol his merits, have acknowledged the irreplaceable value of his works which may principally reside in the copious quotations that they contain from other sources, often lost.",
"title": "Assessment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The earliest recorded feast day of Eusebius is found in the earliest known Syrian Martyrology dating to the year 411 translated by William Wright. The Martyrology lists his feast day as May 30. Eusebius continues to be venerated as a Saint by the modern-day Syrian Orthodox Church as well, with a feast day on February 29 according to the official calendar of Saints created by Corbishop Rajan Achen.",
"title": "Veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Eusebius was long venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop J.B. Lightfoot writes in his entry for St. Eusebius in Henry Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century AD, with an Account of Principal Sects and Heresies (1911) that \"in the Martyrologium Romanum itself he held his place for centuries\" and in \"Gallican service-books the historian is commemorated as a saint.\" However, Lightfoot notes that in \"the revision of this Martyrology under Gregory XIII his name was struck out, and Eusebius of Samosata was substituted, under the mistaken idea that Caesarea had been substituted for Samosata by a mistake.\" The Roman Catholic author Henri Valois includes in his translations on Eusebius' writings testimonies of ancient authors in favor and against Eusebius, to which in the favor category he includes evidence of Eusebius in several martyrologies and being called a \"Blessed\" dating back to Victorius of Aquitaine. Valois includes both Usuardus and Notker, who list his feast as June 21 in the Roman Martyrology, and a Gallican breviary is included for June 21 that reads as follows:",
"title": "Veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Of the holy Eusebius, bishop and confessor. Lesson 1. Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, on account of his friendship with Pamphilus the martyr, took from him the surname of Pamphili; inasmuch as along with this same Pamphilus he was a most diligent investigator of sacred literature. The man indeed is very worthy of being remembered in these times, both for his skill in many things, and for his wonderful genius, and by both Gentiles and Christians he was held distinguished and most noble among philosophers. This man, after having for a time labored in behalf of the Arian heresy, coming to the council of Nicæa, inspired by the Holy Spirit, followed the decision of the Fathers, and thereafter up to the time of his death lived in a most holy manner in the orthodox faith. Lesson 2. He was, moreover, very zealous in the study of the sacred Scriptures, and along with Pamphilus the martyr was a most diligent investigator of sacred literature. At the same time he has written many things, but especially the following books: The Præparatio Evangelica, the Ecclesiastical History, Against Porphyry, a very bitter enemy of the Christians; he has also composed Six Apologies in Behalf of Origen, a Life of Pamphilus the Martyr, from whom on account of friendship he took his surname, in three books; likewise very learned Commentaries on the hundred and fifty Psalms. Lesson 3. Moreover, as we read, after having ascertained the sufferings of many holy martyrs in all the provinces, and the lives of confessors and virgins, he has written concerning these saints twenty books; while on account of these books therefore, and especially on account of his Præparatio Evangelica, he was held most distinguished among the Gentiles, because of his love of truth he contemned the ancestral worship of the gods. He has written also a Chronicle, extending from the first year of Abraham up to the year 300 AD, which the divine Hieronymus has continued. Finally this Eusebius, after the conversion of Constantine the Great, was united to him by strong friendship as long as he lived.",
"title": "Veneration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "A bone fragment relic of Eusebius within its original reliquary is on display at the Shrine of All Saints located within St. Martha's Catholic Church in Morton Grove, Illinois.",
"title": "Veneration"
}
]
| Eusebius of Caesarea, also known as Eusebius Pamphilus, was a Greek or Palestinian historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the biblical canon and is regarded as one of the most learned Christians during late antiquity. He wrote Demonstrations of the Gospel, Preparations for the Gospel and On Discrepancies between the Gospels, studies of the biblical text. As "Father of Church History", he produced the Ecclesiastical History, On the Life of Pamphilus, the Chronicle and On the Martyrs. He also produced a biographical work on Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, who was Augustus between AD 306 and AD 337. | 2001-12-01T00:47:53Z | 2023-12-28T21:31:34Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebius |
10,174 | Empiricism | In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. Empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences.
Historically, empiricism was associated with the "blank slate" concept (tabula rasa), according to which the human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through later experience.
Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.
Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, believes that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification". Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method.
The English term empirical derives from the Ancient Greek word ἐμπειρία, empeiria, which is cognate with and translates to the Latin experientia, from which the words experience and experiment are derived.
A central concept in science and the scientific method is that conclusions must be empirically based on the evidence of the senses. Both natural and social sciences use working hypotheses that are testable by observation and experiment. The term semi-empirical is sometimes used to describe theoretical methods that make use of basic axioms, established scientific laws, and previous experimental results in order to engage in reasoned model building and theoretical inquiry.
Philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from one's sense-based experience. In epistemology (theory of knowledge) empiricism is typically contrasted with rationalism, which holds that knowledge may be derived from reason independently of the senses, and in the philosophy of mind it is often contrasted with innatism, which holds that some knowledge and ideas are already present in the mind at birth. However, many Enlightenment rationalists and empiricists still made concessions towards each other. For example, the empiricist John Locke admitted that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone. Similarly, Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, held that we also have innate ideas. At the same time, the main continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz) were also advocates of the empirical "scientific method".
Between 600 and 200 BCE, the Vaisheshika school of Hindu philosophy, founded by the ancient Indian philosopher Kanada, accepted perception and inference as the only two reliable sources of knowledge. This is enumerated in his work Vaiśeṣika Sūtra. The Charvaka school held similar beliefs, asserting that perception is the only reliable source of knowledge while inference obtains knowledge with uncertainty.
The earliest Western proto-empiricists were the empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners, founded in 330 BCE. Its members rejected the doctrines of the dogmatic school, preferring to rely on the observation of phantasiai (i.e., phenomena, the appearances). The Empiric school was closely allied with the Pyrrhonist school of philosophy, which made the philosophical case for their proto-empiricism.
The notion of tabula rasa ("clean slate" or "blank tablet") connotes a view of mind as an originally blank or empty recorder (Locke used the words "white paper") on which experience leaves marks. This denies that humans have innate ideas. The notion dates back to Aristotle, c. 350 BC:
What the mind (nous) thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet (grammateion) which bears no actual writing (grammenon); this is just what happens in the case of the mind. (Aristotle, On the Soul, 3.4.4301).
Aristotle's explanation of how this was possible was not strictly empiricist in a modern sense, but rather based on his theory of potentiality and actuality, and experience of sense perceptions still requires the help of the active nous. These notions contrasted with Platonic notions of the human mind as an entity that pre-existed somewhere in the heavens, before being sent down to join a body on Earth (see Plato's Phaedo and Apology, as well as others). Aristotle was considered to give a more important position to sense perception than Plato, and commentators in the Middle Ages summarized one of his positions as "nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu" (Latin for "nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses").
This idea was later developed in ancient philosophy by the Stoic school, from about 330 BCE. Stoic epistemology generally emphasized that the mind starts blank, but acquires knowledge as the outside world is impressed upon it. The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as "When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon."
During the Middle Ages (from the 5th to the 15th century CE) Aristotle's theory of tabula rasa was developed by Islamic philosophers starting with Al Farabi (c. 872 – c. 951 CE), developing into an elaborate theory by Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037 CE) and demonstrated as a thought experiment by Ibn Tufail. For Avicenna (Ibn Sina), for example, the tabula rasa is a pure potentiality that is actualized through education, and knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning in which observations lead to propositional statements which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts". The intellect itself develops from a material intellect (al-'aql al-hayulani), which is a potentiality "that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-'aql al-fa'il), the state of the human intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge". So the immaterial "active intellect", separate from any individual person, is still essential for understanding to occur.
In the 12th century CE, the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and novelist Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebu Tophail" in the West) included the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through experience alone. The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
A similar Islamic theological novel, Theologus Autodidactus, was written by the Arab theologian and physician Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century. It also dealt with the theme of empiricism through the story of a feral child on a desert island, but departed from its predecessor by depicting the development of the protagonist's mind through contact with society rather than in isolation from society.
During the 13th century Thomas Aquinas adopted into scholasticism the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to the mind. Bonaventure (1221–1274), one of Aquinas' strongest intellectual opponents, offered some of the strongest arguments in favour of the Platonic idea of the mind.
In the late renaissance various writers began to question the medieval and classical understanding of knowledge acquisition in a more fundamental way. In political and historical writing Niccolò Machiavelli and his friend Francesco Guicciardini initiated a new realistic style of writing. Machiavelli in particular was scornful of writers on politics who judged everything in comparison to mental ideals and demanded that people should study the "effectual truth" instead. Their contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) said, "If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings."
Significantly, an empirical metaphysical system was developed by the Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio which had an enormous impact on the development of later Italian thinkers, including Telesio's students Antonio Persio and Sertorio Quattromani, his contemporaries Thomas Campanella and Giordano Bruno, and later British philosophers such as Francis Bacon, who regarded Telesio as "the first of the moderns.” Telesio's influence can also be seen on the French philosophers René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi.
The decidedly anti-Aristotelian and anti-clerical music theorist Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520 – 1591), father of Galileo and the inventor of monody, made use of the method in successfully solving musical problems, firstly, of tuning such as the relationship of pitch to string tension and mass in stringed instruments, and to volume of air in wind instruments; and secondly to composition, by his various suggestions to composers in his Dialogo della musica antica e moderna (Florence, 1581). The Italian word he used for "experiment" was esperienza. It is known that he was the essential pedagogical influence upon the young Galileo, his eldest son (cf. Coelho, ed. Music and Science in the Age of Galileo Galilei), arguably one of the most influential empiricists in history. Vincenzo, through his tuning research, found the underlying truth at the heart of the misunderstood myth of 'Pythagoras' hammers' (the square of the numbers concerned yielded those musical intervals, not the actual numbers, as believed), and through this and other discoveries that demonstrated the fallibility of traditional authorities, a radically empirical attitude developed, passed on to Galileo, which regarded "experience and demonstration" as the sine qua non of valid rational enquiry.
British empiricism, a retrospective characterization, emerged during the 17th century as an approach to early modern philosophy and modern science. Although both integral to this overarching transition, Francis Bacon, in England, first advocated for empiricism in 1620, whereas René Descartes, in France, laid the main groundwork upholding rationalism around 1640. (Bacon's natural philosophy was influenced by Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio and by Swiss physician Paracelsus.) Contributing later in the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza are retrospectively identified likewise as an empiricist and a rationalist, respectively. In the Enlightenment of the late 17th century, John Locke in England, and in the 18th century, both George Berkeley in England and David Hume in Scotland, all became leading exponents of empiricism, hence the dominance of empiricism in British philosophy. The distinction between rationalism and empiricism was not formally made until Immanuel Kant, in Germany, around 1780, who sought to merge the two views.
In response to the early-to-mid-17th-century "continental rationalism", John Locke (1632–1704) proposed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) a very influential view wherein the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori, i.e., based upon experience. Locke is famously attributed with holding the proposition that the human mind is a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet", in Locke's words "white paper", on which the experiences derived from sense impressions as a person's life proceeds are written. There are two sources of our ideas: sensation and reflection. In both cases, a distinction is made between simple and complex ideas. The former are unanalysable, and are broken down into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are essential for the object in question to be what it is. Without specific primary qualities, an object would not be what it is. For example, an apple is an apple because of the arrangement of its atomic structure. If an apple were structured differently, it would cease to be an apple. Secondary qualities are the sensory information we can perceive from its primary qualities. For example, an apple can be perceived in various colours, sizes, and textures but it is still identified as an apple. Therefore, its primary qualities dictate what the object essentially is, while its secondary qualities define its attributes. Complex ideas combine simple ones, and divide into substances, modes, and relations. According to Locke, our knowledge of things is a perception of ideas that are in accordance or discordance with each other, which is very different from the quest for certainty of Descartes.
A generation later, the Irish Anglican bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) determined that Locke's view immediately opened a door that would lead to eventual atheism. In response to Locke, he put forth in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) an important challenge to empiricism in which things only exist either as a result of their being perceived, or by virtue of the fact that they are an entity doing the perceiving. (For Berkeley, God fills in for humans by doing the perceiving whenever humans are not around to do it.) In his text Alciphron, Berkeley maintained that any order humans may see in nature is the language or handwriting of God. Berkeley's approach to empiricism would later come to be called subjective idealism.
Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) responded to Berkeley's criticisms of Locke, as well as other differences between early modern philosophers, and moved empiricism to a new level of skepticism. Hume argued in keeping with the empiricist view that all knowledge derives from sense experience, but he accepted that this has implications not normally acceptable to philosophers. He wrote for example, "Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. On this view, we must say that it is only probable that all men must die or that the sun will rise to-morrow, because neither of these can be demonstrated. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities—by ‘proofs’ meaning arguments from experience that leave no room for doubt or opposition." And,
I believe the most general and most popular explication of this matter, is to say [See Mr. Locke, chapter of power.], that finding from experience, that there are several new productions in matter, such as the motions and variations of body, and concluding that there must somewhere be a power capable of producing them, we arrive at last by this reasoning at the idea of power and efficacy. But to be convinced that this explication is more popular than philosophical, we need but reflect on two very obvious principles. First, That reason alone can never give rise to any original idea, and secondly, that reason, as distinguished from experience, can never make us conclude, that a cause or productive quality is absolutely requisite to every beginning of existence. Both these considerations have been sufficiently explained: and therefore shall not at present be any farther insisted on.
Hume divided all of human knowledge into two categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact (see also Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction). Mathematical and logical propositions (e.g. "that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides") are examples of the first, while propositions involving some contingent observation of the world (e.g. "the sun rises in the East") are examples of the second. All of people's "ideas", in turn, are derived from their "impressions". For Hume, an "impression" corresponds roughly with what we call a sensation. To remember or to imagine such impressions is to have an "idea". Ideas are therefore the faint copies of sensations.
Hume maintained that no knowledge, even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, can be conclusively established by reason. Rather, he maintained, our beliefs are more a result of accumulated habits, developed in response to accumulated sense experiences. Among his many arguments Hume also added another important slant to the debate about scientific method—that of the problem of induction. Hume argued that it requires inductive reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of inductive reasoning, and therefore the justification for inductive reasoning is a circular argument. Among Hume's conclusions regarding the problem of induction is that there is no certainty that the future will resemble the past. Thus, as a simple instance posed by Hume, we cannot know with certainty by inductive reasoning that the sun will continue to rise in the East, but instead come to expect it to do so because it has repeatedly done so in the past.
Hume concluded that such things as belief in an external world and belief in the existence of the self were not rationally justifiable. According to Hume these beliefs were to be accepted nonetheless because of their profound basis in instinct and custom. Hume's lasting legacy, however, was the doubt that his skeptical arguments cast on the legitimacy of inductive reasoning, allowing many skeptics who followed to cast similar doubt.
Most of Hume's followers have disagreed with his conclusion that belief in an external world is rationally unjustifiable, contending that Hume's own principles implicitly contained the rational justification for such a belief, that is, beyond being content to let the issue rest on human instinct, custom and habit. According to an extreme empiricist theory known as phenomenalism, anticipated by the arguments of both Hume and George Berkeley, a physical object is a kind of construction out of our experiences. Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects, properties, events (whatever is physical) are reducible to mental objects, properties, events. Ultimately, only mental objects, properties, events, exist—hence the closely related term subjective idealism. By the phenomenalistic line of thinking, to have a visual experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience of a certain kind of group of experiences. This type of set of experiences possesses a constancy and coherence that is lacking in the set of experiences of which hallucinations, for example, are a part. As John Stuart Mill put it in the mid-19th century, matter is the "permanent possibility of sensation". Mill's empiricism went a significant step beyond Hume in still another respect: in maintaining that induction is necessary for all meaningful knowledge including mathematics. As summarized by D.W. Hamlin:
[Mill] claimed that mathematical truths were merely very highly confirmed generalizations from experience; mathematical inference, generally conceived as deductive [and a priori] in nature, Mill set down as founded on induction. Thus, in Mill's philosophy there was no real place for knowledge based on relations of ideas. In his view logical and mathematical necessity is psychological; we are merely unable to conceive any other possibilities than those that logical and mathematical propositions assert. This is perhaps the most extreme version of empiricism known, but it has not found many defenders.
Mill's empiricism thus held that knowledge of any kind is not from direct experience but an inductive inference from direct experience. The problems other philosophers have had with Mill's position center around the following issues: Firstly, Mill's formulation encounters difficulty when it describes what direct experience is by differentiating only between actual and possible sensations. This misses some key discussion concerning conditions under which such "groups of permanent possibilities of sensation" might exist in the first place. Berkeley put God in that gap; the phenomenalists, including Mill, essentially left the question unanswered. In the end, lacking an acknowledgement of an aspect of "reality" that goes beyond mere "possibilities of sensation", such a position leads to a version of subjective idealism. Questions of how floor beams continue to support a floor while unobserved, how trees continue to grow while unobserved and untouched by human hands, etc., remain unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable in these terms. Secondly, Mill's formulation leaves open the unsettling possibility that the "gap-filling entities are purely possibilities and not actualities at all". Thirdly, Mill's position, by calling mathematics merely another species of inductive inference, misapprehends mathematics. It fails to fully consider the structure and method of mathematical science, the products of which are arrived at through an internally consistent deductive set of procedures which do not, either today or at the time Mill wrote, fall under the agreed meaning of induction.
The phenomenalist phase of post-Humean empiricism ended by the 1940s, for by that time it had become obvious that statements about physical things could not be translated into statements about actual and possible sense data. If a physical object statement is to be translatable into a sense-data statement, the former must be at least deducible from the latter. But it came to be realized that there is no finite set of statements about actual and possible sense-data from which we can deduce even a single physical-object statement. The translating or paraphrasing statement must be couched in terms of normal observers in normal conditions of observation. There is, however, no finite set of statements that are couched in purely sensory terms and can express the satisfaction of the condition of the presence of a normal observer. According to phenomenalism, to say that a normal observer is present is to make the hypothetical statement that were a doctor to inspect the observer, the observer would appear to the doctor to be normal. But, of course, the doctor himself must be a normal observer. If we are to specify this doctor's normality in sensory terms, we must make reference to a second doctor who, when inspecting the sense organs of the first doctor, would himself have to have the sense data a normal observer has when inspecting the sense organs of a subject who is a normal observer. And if we are to specify in sensory terms that the second doctor is a normal observer, we must refer to a third doctor, and so on (also see the third man).
Logical empiricism (also logical positivism or neopositivism) was an early 20th-century attempt to synthesize the essential ideas of British empiricism (e.g. a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain insights from mathematical logic that had been developed by Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Some of the key figures in this movement were Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick and the rest of the Vienna Circle, along with A. J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach.
The neopositivists subscribed to a notion of philosophy as the conceptual clarification of the methods, insights and discoveries of the sciences. They saw in the logical symbolism elaborated by Frege (1848–1925) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) a powerful instrument that could rationally reconstruct all scientific discourse into an ideal, logically perfect, language that would be free of the ambiguities and deformations of natural language. This gave rise to what they saw as metaphysical pseudoproblems and other conceptual confusions. By combining Frege's thesis that all mathematical truths are logical with the early Wittgenstein's idea that all logical truths are mere linguistic tautologies, they arrived at a twofold classification of all propositions: the "analytic" (a priori) and the "synthetic" (a posteriori). On this basis, they formulated a strong principle of demarcation between sentences that have sense and those that do not: the so-called "verification principle". Any sentence that is not purely logical, or is unverifiable, is devoid of meaning. As a result, most metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic and other traditional philosophical problems came to be considered pseudoproblems.
In the extreme empiricism of the neopositivists—at least before the 1930s—any genuinely synthetic assertion must be reducible to an ultimate assertion (or set of ultimate assertions) that expresses direct observations or perceptions. In later years, Carnap and Neurath abandoned this sort of phenomenalism in favor of a rational reconstruction of knowledge into the language of an objective spatio-temporal physics. That is, instead of translating sentences about physical objects into sense-data, such sentences were to be translated into so-called protocol sentences, for example, "X at location Y and at time T observes such and such". The central theses of logical positivism (verificationism, the analytic–synthetic distinction, reductionism, etc.) came under sharp attack after World War II by thinkers such as Nelson Goodman, W. V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, Karl Popper, and Richard Rorty. By the late 1960s, it had become evident to most philosophers that the movement had pretty much run its course, though its influence is still significant among contemporary analytic philosophers such as Michael Dummett and other anti-realists.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, several forms of pragmatic philosophy arose. The ideas of pragmatism, in its various forms, developed mainly from discussions between Charles Sanders Peirce and William James when both men were at Harvard in the 1870s. James popularized the term "pragmatism", giving Peirce full credit for its patrimony, but Peirce later demurred from the tangents that the movement was taking, and redubbed what he regarded as the original idea with the name of "pragmaticism". Along with its pragmatic theory of truth, this perspective integrates the basic insights of empirical (experience-based) and rational (concept-based) thinking.
Charles Peirce (1839–1914) was highly influential in laying the groundwork for today's empirical scientific method. Although Peirce severely criticized many elements of Descartes' peculiar brand of rationalism, he did not reject rationalism outright. Indeed, he concurred with the main ideas of rationalism, most importantly the idea that rational concepts can be meaningful and the idea that rational concepts necessarily go beyond the data given by empirical observation. In later years he even emphasized the concept-driven side of the then ongoing debate between strict empiricism and strict rationalism, in part to counterbalance the excesses to which some of his cohorts had taken pragmatism under the "data-driven" strict-empiricist view.
Among Peirce's major contributions was to place inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning in a complementary rather than competitive mode, the latter of which had been the primary trend among the educated since David Hume wrote a century before. To this, Peirce added the concept of abductive reasoning. The combined three forms of reasoning serve as a primary conceptual foundation for the empirically based scientific method today. Peirce's approach "presupposes that (1) the objects of knowledge are real things, (2) the characters (properties) of real things do not depend on our perceptions of them, and (3) everyone who has sufficient experience of real things will agree on the truth about them. According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
In his Harvard "Lectures on Pragmatism" (1903), Peirce enumerated what he called the "three cotary propositions of pragmatism" (L: cos, cotis whetstone), saying that they "put the edge on the maxim of pragmatism". First among these, he listed the peripatetic-thomist observation mentioned above, but he further observed that this link between sensory perception and intellectual conception is a two-way street. That is, it can be taken to say that whatever we find in the intellect is also incipiently in the senses. Hence, if theories are theory-laden then so are the senses, and perception itself can be seen as a species of abductive inference, its difference being that it is beyond control and hence beyond critique—in a word, incorrigible. This in no way conflicts with the fallibility and revisability of scientific concepts, since it is only the immediate percept in its unique individuality or "thisness"—what the Scholastics called its haecceity—that stands beyond control and correction. Scientific concepts, on the other hand, are general in nature, and transient sensations do in another sense find correction within them. This notion of perception as abduction has received periodic revivals in artificial intelligence and cognitive science research, most recently for instance with the work of Irvin Rock on indirect perception.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, William James (1842–1910) coined the term "radical empiricism" to describe an offshoot of his form of pragmatism, which he argued could be dealt with separately from his pragmatism—though in fact the two concepts are intertwined in James's published lectures. James maintained that the empirically observed "directly apprehended universe needs ... no extraneous trans-empirical connective support", by which he meant to rule out the perception that there can be any value added by seeking supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. James' "radical empiricism" is thus not radical in the context of the term "empiricism", but is instead fairly consistent with the modern use of the term "empirical". His method of argument in arriving at this view, however, still readily encounters debate within philosophy even today.
John Dewey (1859–1952) modified James' pragmatism to form a theory known as instrumentalism. The role of sense experience in Dewey's theory is crucial, in that he saw experience as unified totality of things through which everything else is interrelated. Dewey's basic thought, in accordance with empiricism, was that reality is determined by past experience. Therefore, humans adapt their past experiences of things to perform experiments upon and test the pragmatic values of such experience. The value of such experience is measured experientially and scientifically, and the results of such tests generate ideas that serve as instruments for future experimentation, in physical sciences as in ethics. Thus, ideas in Dewey's system retain their empiricist flavour in that they are only known a posteriori. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. Empiricists may argue that traditions (or customs) arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Historically, empiricism was associated with the \"blank slate\" concept (tabula rasa), according to which the human mind is \"blank\" at birth and develops its thoughts only through later experience.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, believes that \"knowledge is based on experience\" and that \"knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification\". Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The English term empirical derives from the Ancient Greek word ἐμπειρία, empeiria, which is cognate with and translates to the Latin experientia, from which the words experience and experiment are derived.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "A central concept in science and the scientific method is that conclusions must be empirically based on the evidence of the senses. Both natural and social sciences use working hypotheses that are testable by observation and experiment. The term semi-empirical is sometimes used to describe theoretical methods that make use of basic axioms, established scientific laws, and previous experimental results in order to engage in reasoned model building and theoretical inquiry.",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Philosophical empiricists hold no knowledge to be properly inferred or deduced unless it is derived from one's sense-based experience. In epistemology (theory of knowledge) empiricism is typically contrasted with rationalism, which holds that knowledge may be derived from reason independently of the senses, and in the philosophy of mind it is often contrasted with innatism, which holds that some knowledge and ideas are already present in the mind at birth. However, many Enlightenment rationalists and empiricists still made concessions towards each other. For example, the empiricist John Locke admitted that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone. Similarly, Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method, held that we also have innate ideas. At the same time, the main continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz) were also advocates of the empirical \"scientific method\".",
"title": "Background"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Between 600 and 200 BCE, the Vaisheshika school of Hindu philosophy, founded by the ancient Indian philosopher Kanada, accepted perception and inference as the only two reliable sources of knowledge. This is enumerated in his work Vaiśeṣika Sūtra. The Charvaka school held similar beliefs, asserting that perception is the only reliable source of knowledge while inference obtains knowledge with uncertainty.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The earliest Western proto-empiricists were the empiric school of ancient Greek medical practitioners, founded in 330 BCE. Its members rejected the doctrines of the dogmatic school, preferring to rely on the observation of phantasiai (i.e., phenomena, the appearances). The Empiric school was closely allied with the Pyrrhonist school of philosophy, which made the philosophical case for their proto-empiricism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The notion of tabula rasa (\"clean slate\" or \"blank tablet\") connotes a view of mind as an originally blank or empty recorder (Locke used the words \"white paper\") on which experience leaves marks. This denies that humans have innate ideas. The notion dates back to Aristotle, c. 350 BC:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "What the mind (nous) thinks must be in it in the same sense as letters are on a tablet (grammateion) which bears no actual writing (grammenon); this is just what happens in the case of the mind. (Aristotle, On the Soul, 3.4.4301).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Aristotle's explanation of how this was possible was not strictly empiricist in a modern sense, but rather based on his theory of potentiality and actuality, and experience of sense perceptions still requires the help of the active nous. These notions contrasted with Platonic notions of the human mind as an entity that pre-existed somewhere in the heavens, before being sent down to join a body on Earth (see Plato's Phaedo and Apology, as well as others). Aristotle was considered to give a more important position to sense perception than Plato, and commentators in the Middle Ages summarized one of his positions as \"nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu\" (Latin for \"nothing in the intellect without first being in the senses\").",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "This idea was later developed in ancient philosophy by the Stoic school, from about 330 BCE. Stoic epistemology generally emphasized that the mind starts blank, but acquires knowledge as the outside world is impressed upon it. The doxographer Aetius summarizes this view as \"When a man is born, the Stoics say, he has the commanding part of his soul like a sheet of paper ready for writing upon.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "During the Middle Ages (from the 5th to the 15th century CE) Aristotle's theory of tabula rasa was developed by Islamic philosophers starting with Al Farabi (c. 872 – c. 951 CE), developing into an elaborate theory by Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037 CE) and demonstrated as a thought experiment by Ibn Tufail. For Avicenna (Ibn Sina), for example, the tabula rasa is a pure potentiality that is actualized through education, and knowledge is attained through \"empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts\" developed through a \"syllogistic method of reasoning in which observations lead to propositional statements which when compounded lead to further abstract concepts\". The intellect itself develops from a material intellect (al-'aql al-hayulani), which is a potentiality \"that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-'aql al-fa'il), the state of the human intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge\". So the immaterial \"active intellect\", separate from any individual person, is still essential for understanding to occur.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In the 12th century CE, the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and novelist Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail (known as \"Abubacer\" or \"Ebu Tophail\" in the West) included the theory of tabula rasa as a thought experiment in his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child \"from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society\" on a desert island, through experience alone. The Latin translation of his philosophical novel, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "A similar Islamic theological novel, Theologus Autodidactus, was written by the Arab theologian and physician Ibn al-Nafis in the 13th century. It also dealt with the theme of empiricism through the story of a feral child on a desert island, but departed from its predecessor by depicting the development of the protagonist's mind through contact with society rather than in isolation from society.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "During the 13th century Thomas Aquinas adopted into scholasticism the Aristotelian position that the senses are essential to the mind. Bonaventure (1221–1274), one of Aquinas' strongest intellectual opponents, offered some of the strongest arguments in favour of the Platonic idea of the mind.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In the late renaissance various writers began to question the medieval and classical understanding of knowledge acquisition in a more fundamental way. In political and historical writing Niccolò Machiavelli and his friend Francesco Guicciardini initiated a new realistic style of writing. Machiavelli in particular was scornful of writers on politics who judged everything in comparison to mental ideals and demanded that people should study the \"effectual truth\" instead. Their contemporary, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) said, \"If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Significantly, an empirical metaphysical system was developed by the Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio which had an enormous impact on the development of later Italian thinkers, including Telesio's students Antonio Persio and Sertorio Quattromani, his contemporaries Thomas Campanella and Giordano Bruno, and later British philosophers such as Francis Bacon, who regarded Telesio as \"the first of the moderns.” Telesio's influence can also be seen on the French philosophers René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The decidedly anti-Aristotelian and anti-clerical music theorist Vincenzo Galilei (c. 1520 – 1591), father of Galileo and the inventor of monody, made use of the method in successfully solving musical problems, firstly, of tuning such as the relationship of pitch to string tension and mass in stringed instruments, and to volume of air in wind instruments; and secondly to composition, by his various suggestions to composers in his Dialogo della musica antica e moderna (Florence, 1581). The Italian word he used for \"experiment\" was esperienza. It is known that he was the essential pedagogical influence upon the young Galileo, his eldest son (cf. Coelho, ed. Music and Science in the Age of Galileo Galilei), arguably one of the most influential empiricists in history. Vincenzo, through his tuning research, found the underlying truth at the heart of the misunderstood myth of 'Pythagoras' hammers' (the square of the numbers concerned yielded those musical intervals, not the actual numbers, as believed), and through this and other discoveries that demonstrated the fallibility of traditional authorities, a radically empirical attitude developed, passed on to Galileo, which regarded \"experience and demonstration\" as the sine qua non of valid rational enquiry.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "British empiricism, a retrospective characterization, emerged during the 17th century as an approach to early modern philosophy and modern science. Although both integral to this overarching transition, Francis Bacon, in England, first advocated for empiricism in 1620, whereas René Descartes, in France, laid the main groundwork upholding rationalism around 1640. (Bacon's natural philosophy was influenced by Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio and by Swiss physician Paracelsus.) Contributing later in the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza are retrospectively identified likewise as an empiricist and a rationalist, respectively. In the Enlightenment of the late 17th century, John Locke in England, and in the 18th century, both George Berkeley in England and David Hume in Scotland, all became leading exponents of empiricism, hence the dominance of empiricism in British philosophy. The distinction between rationalism and empiricism was not formally made until Immanuel Kant, in Germany, around 1780, who sought to merge the two views.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In response to the early-to-mid-17th-century \"continental rationalism\", John Locke (1632–1704) proposed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) a very influential view wherein the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori, i.e., based upon experience. Locke is famously attributed with holding the proposition that the human mind is a tabula rasa, a \"blank tablet\", in Locke's words \"white paper\", on which the experiences derived from sense impressions as a person's life proceeds are written. There are two sources of our ideas: sensation and reflection. In both cases, a distinction is made between simple and complex ideas. The former are unanalysable, and are broken down into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are essential for the object in question to be what it is. Without specific primary qualities, an object would not be what it is. For example, an apple is an apple because of the arrangement of its atomic structure. If an apple were structured differently, it would cease to be an apple. Secondary qualities are the sensory information we can perceive from its primary qualities. For example, an apple can be perceived in various colours, sizes, and textures but it is still identified as an apple. Therefore, its primary qualities dictate what the object essentially is, while its secondary qualities define its attributes. Complex ideas combine simple ones, and divide into substances, modes, and relations. According to Locke, our knowledge of things is a perception of ideas that are in accordance or discordance with each other, which is very different from the quest for certainty of Descartes.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "A generation later, the Irish Anglican bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) determined that Locke's view immediately opened a door that would lead to eventual atheism. In response to Locke, he put forth in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) an important challenge to empiricism in which things only exist either as a result of their being perceived, or by virtue of the fact that they are an entity doing the perceiving. (For Berkeley, God fills in for humans by doing the perceiving whenever humans are not around to do it.) In his text Alciphron, Berkeley maintained that any order humans may see in nature is the language or handwriting of God. Berkeley's approach to empiricism would later come to be called subjective idealism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) responded to Berkeley's criticisms of Locke, as well as other differences between early modern philosophers, and moved empiricism to a new level of skepticism. Hume argued in keeping with the empiricist view that all knowledge derives from sense experience, but he accepted that this has implications not normally acceptable to philosophers. He wrote for example, \"Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. On this view, we must say that it is only probable that all men must die or that the sun will rise to-morrow, because neither of these can be demonstrated. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities—by ‘proofs’ meaning arguments from experience that leave no room for doubt or opposition.\" And,",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "I believe the most general and most popular explication of this matter, is to say [See Mr. Locke, chapter of power.], that finding from experience, that there are several new productions in matter, such as the motions and variations of body, and concluding that there must somewhere be a power capable of producing them, we arrive at last by this reasoning at the idea of power and efficacy. But to be convinced that this explication is more popular than philosophical, we need but reflect on two very obvious principles. First, That reason alone can never give rise to any original idea, and secondly, that reason, as distinguished from experience, can never make us conclude, that a cause or productive quality is absolutely requisite to every beginning of existence. Both these considerations have been sufficiently explained: and therefore shall not at present be any farther insisted on.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Hume divided all of human knowledge into two categories: relations of ideas and matters of fact (see also Kant's analytic-synthetic distinction). Mathematical and logical propositions (e.g. \"that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides\") are examples of the first, while propositions involving some contingent observation of the world (e.g. \"the sun rises in the East\") are examples of the second. All of people's \"ideas\", in turn, are derived from their \"impressions\". For Hume, an \"impression\" corresponds roughly with what we call a sensation. To remember or to imagine such impressions is to have an \"idea\". Ideas are therefore the faint copies of sensations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Hume maintained that no knowledge, even the most basic beliefs about the natural world, can be conclusively established by reason. Rather, he maintained, our beliefs are more a result of accumulated habits, developed in response to accumulated sense experiences. Among his many arguments Hume also added another important slant to the debate about scientific method—that of the problem of induction. Hume argued that it requires inductive reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of inductive reasoning, and therefore the justification for inductive reasoning is a circular argument. Among Hume's conclusions regarding the problem of induction is that there is no certainty that the future will resemble the past. Thus, as a simple instance posed by Hume, we cannot know with certainty by inductive reasoning that the sun will continue to rise in the East, but instead come to expect it to do so because it has repeatedly done so in the past.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Hume concluded that such things as belief in an external world and belief in the existence of the self were not rationally justifiable. According to Hume these beliefs were to be accepted nonetheless because of their profound basis in instinct and custom. Hume's lasting legacy, however, was the doubt that his skeptical arguments cast on the legitimacy of inductive reasoning, allowing many skeptics who followed to cast similar doubt.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Most of Hume's followers have disagreed with his conclusion that belief in an external world is rationally unjustifiable, contending that Hume's own principles implicitly contained the rational justification for such a belief, that is, beyond being content to let the issue rest on human instinct, custom and habit. According to an extreme empiricist theory known as phenomenalism, anticipated by the arguments of both Hume and George Berkeley, a physical object is a kind of construction out of our experiences. Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects, properties, events (whatever is physical) are reducible to mental objects, properties, events. Ultimately, only mental objects, properties, events, exist—hence the closely related term subjective idealism. By the phenomenalistic line of thinking, to have a visual experience of a real physical thing is to have an experience of a certain kind of group of experiences. This type of set of experiences possesses a constancy and coherence that is lacking in the set of experiences of which hallucinations, for example, are a part. As John Stuart Mill put it in the mid-19th century, matter is the \"permanent possibility of sensation\". Mill's empiricism went a significant step beyond Hume in still another respect: in maintaining that induction is necessary for all meaningful knowledge including mathematics. As summarized by D.W. Hamlin:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "[Mill] claimed that mathematical truths were merely very highly confirmed generalizations from experience; mathematical inference, generally conceived as deductive [and a priori] in nature, Mill set down as founded on induction. Thus, in Mill's philosophy there was no real place for knowledge based on relations of ideas. In his view logical and mathematical necessity is psychological; we are merely unable to conceive any other possibilities than those that logical and mathematical propositions assert. This is perhaps the most extreme version of empiricism known, but it has not found many defenders.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Mill's empiricism thus held that knowledge of any kind is not from direct experience but an inductive inference from direct experience. The problems other philosophers have had with Mill's position center around the following issues: Firstly, Mill's formulation encounters difficulty when it describes what direct experience is by differentiating only between actual and possible sensations. This misses some key discussion concerning conditions under which such \"groups of permanent possibilities of sensation\" might exist in the first place. Berkeley put God in that gap; the phenomenalists, including Mill, essentially left the question unanswered. In the end, lacking an acknowledgement of an aspect of \"reality\" that goes beyond mere \"possibilities of sensation\", such a position leads to a version of subjective idealism. Questions of how floor beams continue to support a floor while unobserved, how trees continue to grow while unobserved and untouched by human hands, etc., remain unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable in these terms. Secondly, Mill's formulation leaves open the unsettling possibility that the \"gap-filling entities are purely possibilities and not actualities at all\". Thirdly, Mill's position, by calling mathematics merely another species of inductive inference, misapprehends mathematics. It fails to fully consider the structure and method of mathematical science, the products of which are arrived at through an internally consistent deductive set of procedures which do not, either today or at the time Mill wrote, fall under the agreed meaning of induction.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The phenomenalist phase of post-Humean empiricism ended by the 1940s, for by that time it had become obvious that statements about physical things could not be translated into statements about actual and possible sense data. If a physical object statement is to be translatable into a sense-data statement, the former must be at least deducible from the latter. But it came to be realized that there is no finite set of statements about actual and possible sense-data from which we can deduce even a single physical-object statement. The translating or paraphrasing statement must be couched in terms of normal observers in normal conditions of observation. There is, however, no finite set of statements that are couched in purely sensory terms and can express the satisfaction of the condition of the presence of a normal observer. According to phenomenalism, to say that a normal observer is present is to make the hypothetical statement that were a doctor to inspect the observer, the observer would appear to the doctor to be normal. But, of course, the doctor himself must be a normal observer. If we are to specify this doctor's normality in sensory terms, we must make reference to a second doctor who, when inspecting the sense organs of the first doctor, would himself have to have the sense data a normal observer has when inspecting the sense organs of a subject who is a normal observer. And if we are to specify in sensory terms that the second doctor is a normal observer, we must refer to a third doctor, and so on (also see the third man).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Logical empiricism (also logical positivism or neopositivism) was an early 20th-century attempt to synthesize the essential ideas of British empiricism (e.g. a strong emphasis on sensory experience as the basis for knowledge) with certain insights from mathematical logic that had been developed by Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Some of the key figures in this movement were Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick and the rest of the Vienna Circle, along with A. J. Ayer, Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The neopositivists subscribed to a notion of philosophy as the conceptual clarification of the methods, insights and discoveries of the sciences. They saw in the logical symbolism elaborated by Frege (1848–1925) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) a powerful instrument that could rationally reconstruct all scientific discourse into an ideal, logically perfect, language that would be free of the ambiguities and deformations of natural language. This gave rise to what they saw as metaphysical pseudoproblems and other conceptual confusions. By combining Frege's thesis that all mathematical truths are logical with the early Wittgenstein's idea that all logical truths are mere linguistic tautologies, they arrived at a twofold classification of all propositions: the \"analytic\" (a priori) and the \"synthetic\" (a posteriori). On this basis, they formulated a strong principle of demarcation between sentences that have sense and those that do not: the so-called \"verification principle\". Any sentence that is not purely logical, or is unverifiable, is devoid of meaning. As a result, most metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic and other traditional philosophical problems came to be considered pseudoproblems.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In the extreme empiricism of the neopositivists—at least before the 1930s—any genuinely synthetic assertion must be reducible to an ultimate assertion (or set of ultimate assertions) that expresses direct observations or perceptions. In later years, Carnap and Neurath abandoned this sort of phenomenalism in favor of a rational reconstruction of knowledge into the language of an objective spatio-temporal physics. That is, instead of translating sentences about physical objects into sense-data, such sentences were to be translated into so-called protocol sentences, for example, \"X at location Y and at time T observes such and such\". The central theses of logical positivism (verificationism, the analytic–synthetic distinction, reductionism, etc.) came under sharp attack after World War II by thinkers such as Nelson Goodman, W. V. Quine, Hilary Putnam, Karl Popper, and Richard Rorty. By the late 1960s, it had become evident to most philosophers that the movement had pretty much run its course, though its influence is still significant among contemporary analytic philosophers such as Michael Dummett and other anti-realists.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In the late 19th and early 20th century, several forms of pragmatic philosophy arose. The ideas of pragmatism, in its various forms, developed mainly from discussions between Charles Sanders Peirce and William James when both men were at Harvard in the 1870s. James popularized the term \"pragmatism\", giving Peirce full credit for its patrimony, but Peirce later demurred from the tangents that the movement was taking, and redubbed what he regarded as the original idea with the name of \"pragmaticism\". Along with its pragmatic theory of truth, this perspective integrates the basic insights of empirical (experience-based) and rational (concept-based) thinking.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Charles Peirce (1839–1914) was highly influential in laying the groundwork for today's empirical scientific method. Although Peirce severely criticized many elements of Descartes' peculiar brand of rationalism, he did not reject rationalism outright. Indeed, he concurred with the main ideas of rationalism, most importantly the idea that rational concepts can be meaningful and the idea that rational concepts necessarily go beyond the data given by empirical observation. In later years he even emphasized the concept-driven side of the then ongoing debate between strict empiricism and strict rationalism, in part to counterbalance the excesses to which some of his cohorts had taken pragmatism under the \"data-driven\" strict-empiricist view.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Among Peirce's major contributions was to place inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning in a complementary rather than competitive mode, the latter of which had been the primary trend among the educated since David Hume wrote a century before. To this, Peirce added the concept of abductive reasoning. The combined three forms of reasoning serve as a primary conceptual foundation for the empirically based scientific method today. Peirce's approach \"presupposes that (1) the objects of knowledge are real things, (2) the characters (properties) of real things do not depend on our perceptions of them, and (3) everyone who has sufficient experience of real things will agree on the truth about them. According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In his Harvard \"Lectures on Pragmatism\" (1903), Peirce enumerated what he called the \"three cotary propositions of pragmatism\" (L: cos, cotis whetstone), saying that they \"put the edge on the maxim of pragmatism\". First among these, he listed the peripatetic-thomist observation mentioned above, but he further observed that this link between sensory perception and intellectual conception is a two-way street. That is, it can be taken to say that whatever we find in the intellect is also incipiently in the senses. Hence, if theories are theory-laden then so are the senses, and perception itself can be seen as a species of abductive inference, its difference being that it is beyond control and hence beyond critique—in a word, incorrigible. This in no way conflicts with the fallibility and revisability of scientific concepts, since it is only the immediate percept in its unique individuality or \"thisness\"—what the Scholastics called its haecceity—that stands beyond control and correction. Scientific concepts, on the other hand, are general in nature, and transient sensations do in another sense find correction within them. This notion of perception as abduction has received periodic revivals in artificial intelligence and cognitive science research, most recently for instance with the work of Irvin Rock on indirect perception.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Around the beginning of the 20th century, William James (1842–1910) coined the term \"radical empiricism\" to describe an offshoot of his form of pragmatism, which he argued could be dealt with separately from his pragmatism—though in fact the two concepts are intertwined in James's published lectures. James maintained that the empirically observed \"directly apprehended universe needs ... no extraneous trans-empirical connective support\", by which he meant to rule out the perception that there can be any value added by seeking supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. James' \"radical empiricism\" is thus not radical in the context of the term \"empiricism\", but is instead fairly consistent with the modern use of the term \"empirical\". His method of argument in arriving at this view, however, still readily encounters debate within philosophy even today.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "John Dewey (1859–1952) modified James' pragmatism to form a theory known as instrumentalism. The role of sense experience in Dewey's theory is crucial, in that he saw experience as unified totality of things through which everything else is interrelated. Dewey's basic thought, in accordance with empiricism, was that reality is determined by past experience. Therefore, humans adapt their past experiences of things to perform experiments upon and test the pragmatic values of such experience. The value of such experience is measured experientially and scientifically, and the results of such tests generate ideas that serve as instruments for future experimentation, in physical sciences as in ethics. Thus, ideas in Dewey's system retain their empiricist flavour in that they are only known a posteriori.",
"title": "History"
}
]
| In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empiricism emphasizes the central role of empirical evidence in the formation of ideas, rather than innate ideas or traditions. Empiricists may argue that traditions arise due to relations of previous sensory experiences. Historically, empiricism was associated with the "blank slate" concept, according to which the human mind is "blank" at birth and develops its thoughts only through later experience. Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Empiricism, often used by natural scientists, believes that "knowledge is based on experience" and that "knowledge is tentative and probabilistic, subject to continued revision and falsification". Empirical research, including experiments and validated measurement tools, guides the scientific method. | 2001-12-01T02:53:12Z | 2023-12-18T15:12:06Z | [
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10,175 | Estampie | The estampie (French: estampie, Occitan and Catalan: estampida, Italian: istanpitta) is a medieval dance and musical form which was a popular instrumental and vocal form in the 13th and 14th centuries. The name was also applied to poetry.
The estampie is similar in form to the lai, consisting of a succession of repeated notes. According to Johannes de Grocheio, there were both vocal and instrumental estampies (for which he used the Latin calque "stantipes"), which differed somewhat in form.
Grocheio calls the sections in both the French vocal and instrumental estampie puncta (singular punctus), Each puncta has a pair of lines that repeat the same melody, in the form:
The two statements of the melody in each punctus differ only in their endings, described as apertum ("open") and clausum ("closed") by Grocheio, who believed that six puncta were standard for the stantipes (his term for the estampie), though he was aware of stantipes with seven puncta. The structure can therefore be diagrammed as:
In an instrumental estampie, the open and closed endings of the puncta are the same each time, so that the end of the punctum serves as the refrain, in the form:
a+x, a+y; b+x, b+y, c+x, c+y, etc.
In comparison to other dance forms, Grocheio considered the instrumental estampie "complicated," with puncta of varying lengths This is in contrast to the more regular verse length of the ductia. There are also more puncta in an estampie than in a ductia. He further states that this difficulty captivates the attention of both the players and listeners because of these complications. According to Grocheio, the vocal estampie begins with a refrain, which is repeated at the end of each stanza, with text and melody independent of the stanza. However, surviving songs do not include a section labeled as a refrain, so some scholars suggest that a convention must have existed for choosing lines to use as a refrain. Like the instrumental form, the vocal dance was complicated enough to require concentration, which helps to distract young people from wicked thoughts.
The estampie is the first known genre of medieval era dance music which continues to exist today. The earliest reported example of this musical form is the song "Kalenda maya", written by the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (1180–1207), possibly to a preexisting melody. 14th century examples include estampies with subtitles such as "Isabella" and "Tre fontane".
Sources for individual songs do not generally indicate what instruments were used. However, according to Grocheio, the vielle was the supreme instrument of the period, and the stantipes, together with the cantus coronatus and ductia, were the principal forms played on vielles before the wealthy in their celebration. Though the estampie is generally monophonic, there are also two-voice compositions in the form of an estampie, such as the two for keyboard in the Robertsbridge Fragment. The French estampie was performed in a lively triple meter, a primary division of three beats to the bar.
According to the OED, the name comes from the Provençal estampida, feminine of estampit, the past participle of estampir "to resound". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The estampie (French: estampie, Occitan and Catalan: estampida, Italian: istanpitta) is a medieval dance and musical form which was a popular instrumental and vocal form in the 13th and 14th centuries. The name was also applied to poetry.",
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},
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"text": "The estampie is similar in form to the lai, consisting of a succession of repeated notes. According to Johannes de Grocheio, there were both vocal and instrumental estampies (for which he used the Latin calque \"stantipes\"), which differed somewhat in form.",
"title": "Musical form"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Grocheio calls the sections in both the French vocal and instrumental estampie puncta (singular punctus), Each puncta has a pair of lines that repeat the same melody, in the form:",
"title": "Musical form"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The two statements of the melody in each punctus differ only in their endings, described as apertum (\"open\") and clausum (\"closed\") by Grocheio, who believed that six puncta were standard for the stantipes (his term for the estampie), though he was aware of stantipes with seven puncta. The structure can therefore be diagrammed as:",
"title": "Musical form"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In an instrumental estampie, the open and closed endings of the puncta are the same each time, so that the end of the punctum serves as the refrain, in the form:",
"title": "Musical form"
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"text": "a+x, a+y; b+x, b+y, c+x, c+y, etc.",
"title": "Musical form"
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{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In comparison to other dance forms, Grocheio considered the instrumental estampie \"complicated,\" with puncta of varying lengths This is in contrast to the more regular verse length of the ductia. There are also more puncta in an estampie than in a ductia. He further states that this difficulty captivates the attention of both the players and listeners because of these complications. According to Grocheio, the vocal estampie begins with a refrain, which is repeated at the end of each stanza, with text and melody independent of the stanza. However, surviving songs do not include a section labeled as a refrain, so some scholars suggest that a convention must have existed for choosing lines to use as a refrain. Like the instrumental form, the vocal dance was complicated enough to require concentration, which helps to distract young people from wicked thoughts.",
"title": "Musical form"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The estampie is the first known genre of medieval era dance music which continues to exist today. The earliest reported example of this musical form is the song \"Kalenda maya\", written by the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (1180–1207), possibly to a preexisting melody. 14th century examples include estampies with subtitles such as \"Isabella\" and \"Tre fontane\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Sources for individual songs do not generally indicate what instruments were used. However, according to Grocheio, the vielle was the supreme instrument of the period, and the stantipes, together with the cantus coronatus and ductia, were the principal forms played on vielles before the wealthy in their celebration. Though the estampie is generally monophonic, there are also two-voice compositions in the form of an estampie, such as the two for keyboard in the Robertsbridge Fragment. The French estampie was performed in a lively triple meter, a primary division of three beats to the bar.",
"title": "Instrumentation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "According to the OED, the name comes from the Provençal estampida, feminine of estampit, the past participle of estampir \"to resound\".",
"title": "Etymology"
}
]
| The estampie is a medieval dance and musical form which was a popular instrumental and vocal form in the 13th and 14th centuries. The name was also applied to poetry. | 2001-12-01T05:02:14Z | 2023-12-25T04:46:35Z | [
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10,176 | Experimental cancer treatment | Experimental cancer treatments are mainstream medical therapies intended to treat cancer by improving on, supplementing or replacing conventional methods (surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy). However, researchers are still trying to determine whether these treatments are safe and effective treatments. Experimental cancer treatments are normally available only to people who participate in formal research programs, which are called clinical trials. Occasionally, a seriously ill person may be able to access an experimental drug through an expanded access program. Some of the treatments have regulatory approval for treating other conditions. Health insurance and publicly funded health care programs normally refuse to pay for experimental cancer treatments.
The entries listed below vary between theoretical therapies to unproven controversial therapies. Many of these treatments are alleged to help against only specific forms of cancer. It is not a list of treatments widely available at hospitals.
The twin goals of research are to determine whether the treatment actually works (called efficacy) and whether it is sufficiently safe. Regulatory processes attempt to balance the potential benefits with the potential harms, so that people given the treatment are more likely to benefit from it than to be harmed by it.
Medical research for cancer begins much like research for any disease. In organized studies of new treatments for cancer, the pre-clinical development of drugs, devices, and techniques begins in laboratories, either with isolated cells or in small animals, most commonly rats or mice. In other cases, the proposed treatment for cancer is already in use for some other medical condition, in which case more is known about its safety and potential efficacy.
Clinical trials are the study of treatments in humans. The first-in-human tests of a potential treatment are called Phase I studies. Early clinical trials typically enroll a very small number of patients, and the purpose is to identify major safety issues and the maximum tolerated dose, which is the highest dose that does not produce serious or fatal adverse effects. The dose given in these trials may be far too small to produce any useful effect. In most research, these early trials may involve healthy people, but cancer studies normally enroll only people with relatively severe forms of the disease in this stage of testing. On average, 95% of the participants in these early trials receive no benefit, but all are exposed to the risk of adverse effects. Most participants show signs of optimism bias (the irrational belief that they will beat the odds).
Later studies, called Phase II and Phase III studies, enroll more people, and the goal is to determine whether the treatment actually works. Phase III studies are frequently randomized controlled trials, with the experimental treatment being compared to the current best available treatment rather than to a placebo. In some cases, the Phase III trial provides the best available treatment to all participants, in addition to some of the patients receiving the experimental treatment.
Chemotherapeutic drugs have a hard time penetrating tumors to kill them at their core because these cells may lack a good blood supply . Researchers have been using anaerobic bacteria, such as Clostridium novyi, to consume the interior of oxygen-poor tumours. These should then die when they come in contact with the tumor's oxygenated sides, meaning they would be harmless to the rest of the body. A major problem has been that bacteria do not consume all parts of the malignant tissue. However, combining the therapy with chemotherapeutic treatments can help to solve this problem.
Another strategy is to use anaerobic bacteria that have been transformed with an enzyme that can convert a non-toxic prodrug into a toxic drug. With the proliferation of the bacteria in the necrotic and hypoxic areas of the tumor, the enzyme is expressed solely in the tumor. Thus, a systemically applied prodrug is metabolised to the toxic drug only in the tumor. This has been demonstrated to be effective with the nonpathogenic anaerobe Clostridium sporogenes.
HAMLET (human alpha-lactalbumin made lethal to tumor cells) is a molecular complex derived from human breast milk that kills tumor cells by a process resembling programmed cell death (apoptosis). As of 2008, it had been tested in humans with skin papillomas and bladder cancer.
Several drug therapies are being developed based on p53, the tumour suppressor gene that protects the cell in response to damage and stress. It is analogous to deciding what to do with a damaged car: p53 brings everything to a halt, and then decides whether to fix the cell or, if the cell is beyond repair, to destroy the cell. This protective function of p53 is disabled in most cancer cells, allowing them to multiply without check. Restoration of p53 activity in tumours (where possible) has been shown to inhibit tumour growth and can even shrink the tumour.
As p53 protein levels are usually kept low, one could block its degradation and allow large amounts of p53 to accumulate, thus stimulating p53 activity and its antitumour effects. Drugs that utilize this mechanism include nutlin and MI-219, which are both in phase I clinical trials. As of 2009, there are also other drugs that are still in the preclinical stage of testing, such as RITA and MITA.
BI811283 is a small molecule inhibitor of the aurora B kinase protein being developed by Boehringer Ingelheim for use as an anti-cancer agent. As of 2010, BI 811283 is currently in the early stages of clinical development and is undergoing first-in-human trials in patients with solid tumors and Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.
Itraconazole, sometimes abbreviated ITZ, is an antifungal medication used to treat a number of fungal infections. Recent research works suggest itraconazole (ITZ) could also be used in the treatment of cancer by inhibiting the hedgehog pathway in a similar way to Sonidegib.
The majority of breast cancers are androgen receptor (AR) positive and SARMs may help treat these cancers, although promising results have only been obtained with cancers that are both estrogen receptor (ER) positive and AR positive. Anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) were historically used successfully to treat AR positive breast cancer, but were phased out after the development of anti-estrogen therapies, due to androgenic side effects and concerns about aromatization to estrogen. SARMs have some of the same therapeutic effects as AAS, but fewer side effects, and they cannot be aromatized. Although a trial on AR positive triple negative breast cancer was ended early due to lack of efficacy, ostarine showed benefits in some patients with ER+, AR+ metastatic breast cancer in a phase II study. In patients with more than 40 percent AR positivity as determined by immunohistochemistry, the clinical benefit rate (CBR) was 80 percent and the objective response rate (ORR) was 48 percent—which was considered promising given that the patients had advanced disease and had been heavily pretreated. In 2022, the FDA granted fast track designation to ostarine for AR+, ER+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer. SARMs have also shown antitumor effects in prostate cancer.
Introduction of tumor suppressor genes into rapidly dividing cells has been thought to slow down or arrest tumor growth. Adenoviruses are a commonly utilized vector for this purpose. Much research has focused on the use of adenoviruses that cannot reproduce, or reproduce only to a limited extent, within the patient to ensure safety via the avoidance of cytolytic destruction of noncancerous cells infected with the vector. However, new studies focus on adenoviruses that can be permitted to reproduce, and destroy cancerous cells in the process, since the adenoviruses' ability to infect normal cells is substantially impaired, potentially resulting in a far more effective treatment.
Another use of gene therapy is the introduction of enzymes into these cells that make them susceptible to particular chemotherapy agents; studies with introducing thymidine kinase in gliomas, making them susceptible to aciclovir, are in their experimental stage.
Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence, often a result of environmental or dietary damage to the histone receptors within the cell. Current research has shown that epigenetic pharmaceuticals could be a putative replacement or adjuvant therapy for currently accepted treatment methods such as radiation and chemotherapy, or could enhance the effects of these current treatments. It has been shown that the epigenetic control of the proto-onco regions and the tumor suppressor sequences by conformational changes in histones directly affects the formation and progression of cancer. Epigenetics also has the factor of reversibility, a characteristic that other cancer treatments do not offer.
Some investigators, like Randy Jirtle, PhD, of Duke University Medical Center, think epigenetics may ultimately turn out to have a greater role in disease than genetics.
Because most malignant cells rely on the activity of the protein telomerase for their immortality, it has been proposed that a drug that inactivates telomerase might be effective against a broad spectrum of malignancies. At the same time, most healthy tissues in the body express little if any telomerase, and would function normally in its absence. Currently, inositol hexaphosphate, which is available over-the-counter, is undergoing testing in cancer research due to its telomerase-inhibiting abilities.
A number of research groups have experimented with the use of telomerase inhibitors in animal models, and as of 2005 and 2006 phase I and II human clinical trials are underway. Geron Corporation is currently conducting two clinical trials involving telomerase inhibitors. One uses a vaccine (GRNVAC1) and the other uses a lipidated oligonucleotide (GRN163L).
Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is generally a non-invasive treatment using a combination of light and a photosensitive drug, such as 5-ALA, Foscan, Metvix, padeliporfin (Tookad, WST09, WST11), Photofrin, or Visudyne. The drug is triggered by light of a specific wavelength.
Localized and whole-body application of heat has been proposed as a technique for the treatment of malignant tumours. Intense heating will cause denaturation and coagulation of cellular proteins, rapidly killing cells within a tumour.
More prolonged moderate heating to temperatures just a few degrees above normal (39.5 °C) can cause more subtle changes. A mild heat treatment combined with other stresses can cause cell death by apoptosis. There are many biochemical consequences to the heat shock response within the cell, including slowed cell division and increased sensitivity to ionizing radiation therapy. The purpose of overheating the tumor cells is to create a lack of oxygen so that the heated cells become overacidified, which leads to a lack of nutrients in the tumor. This in turn disrupts the metabolism of the cells so that cell death (apoptosis) can set in. In certain cases chemotherapy or radiation that has previously not had any effect can be made effective. Hyperthermia alters the cell walls by means of so-called heat shock proteins. The cancer cells then react very much more effectively to the cytostatics and radiation. If hyperthermia is used conscientiously it has no serious side effects.
There are many techniques by which heat may be delivered. Some of the most common involve the use of focused ultrasound (FUS or HIFU), microwave heating, induction heating, magnetic hyperthermia, and direct application of heat through the use of heated saline pumped through catheters. Experiments with carbon nanotubes that selectively bind to cancer cells have been performed. Lasers are then used that pass harmlessly through the body, but heat the nanotubes, causing the death of the cancer cells. Similar results have also been achieved with other types of nanoparticles, including gold-coated nanoshells and nanorods that exhibit certain degrees of 'tunability' of the absorption properties of the nanoparticles to the wavelength of light for irradiation. The success of this approach to cancer treatment rests on the existence of an 'optical window' in which biological tissue (i.e., healthy cells) are completely transparent at the wavelength of the laser light, while nanoparticles are highly absorbing at the same wavelength. Such a 'window' exists in the so-called near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this way, the laser light can pass through the system without harming healthy tissue, and only diseased cells, where the nanoparticles reside, get hot and are killed.
Magnetic Hyperthermia makes use of magnetic nanoparticles, which can be injected into tumours and then generate heat when subjected to an alternating magnetic field.
One of the challenges in thermal therapy is delivering the appropriate amount of heat to the correct part of the patient's body. A great deal of current research focuses on precisely positioning heat delivery devices (catheters, microwave, and ultrasound applicators, etc.) using ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging, as well as of developing new types of nanoparticles that make them particularly efficient absorbers while offering little or no concerns about toxicity to the circulation system. Clinicians also hope to use advanced imaging techniques to monitor heat treatments in real time—heat-induced changes in tissue are sometimes perceptible using these imaging instruments. In magnetic hyperthermia or magnetic fluid hyperthermia method, it will be easier to control temperature distribution by controlling the velocity of ferrofluid injection and size of magnetic nanoparticles.
Heat treatment involves using radio waves to heat up tiny metals that are implanted in cancerous tissue. Gold nanoparticles or carbon nanotubes are the most likely candidate. Promising preclinical trials have been conducted, although clinical trials may not be held for another few years.
Another method that is entirely non-invasive referred to as Tumor Treating Fields has already reached clinical trial stage in many countries. The concept applies an electric field through a tumour region using electrodes external to the body. Successful trials have shown the process effectiveness to be greater than chemotherapy and there are no side-effects and only negligible time spent away from normal daily activities. This treatment is still in very early development stages for many types of cancer.
High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is still in investigatory phases in many places around the world. In China it has CFDA approval and over 180 treatment centres have been established in China, Hong Kong, and Korea. HIFU has been successfully used to treat cancer to destroy tumours of the bone, brain, breast, liver, pancreas, rectum, kidney, testes, and prostate. Several thousand patients have been treated with various types of tumours. HIFU has CE approval for palliative care for bone metastasis. Experimentally, palliative care has been provided for cases of advanced pancreatic cancer. High-energy therapeutic ultrasound could increase higher-density anti-cancer drug load and nanomedicines to target tumor sites by 20x fold higher than traditional target cancer therapy.
Cold atmospheric plasma or CAP for short is an emerging modality for the treatment of solid tumors Recently, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) indicated promising anti-neoplastic effects on several tumors, e.g. melanoma, glioma, and pancreatic cancer cells [5, 6, 7], and therefore could be an efficient method for anti-cancer treatment in clinical urology in the future. One example of an experimental technology utilizing Cold Atmospheric plasma is Theraphi
Tumor Treating Fields is a novel FDA-approved cancer treatment therapy that uses alternating electric field to disturb the rapid cell division exhibited by cancer cells.
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments are the diverse group of medical and healthcare systems, practices, and products that are not part of conventional medicine and have not been proven to be effective. Complementary medicine usually refers to methods and substances used along with conventional medicine, while alternative medicine refers to compounds used instead of conventional medicine. CAM use is common among people with cancer.
Most complementary and alternative medicines for cancer have not been rigorously studied or tested. Some alternative treatments that have been proven ineffective continue to be marketed and promoted. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Experimental cancer treatments are mainstream medical therapies intended to treat cancer by improving on, supplementing or replacing conventional methods (surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy). However, researchers are still trying to determine whether these treatments are safe and effective treatments. Experimental cancer treatments are normally available only to people who participate in formal research programs, which are called clinical trials. Occasionally, a seriously ill person may be able to access an experimental drug through an expanded access program. Some of the treatments have regulatory approval for treating other conditions. Health insurance and publicly funded health care programs normally refuse to pay for experimental cancer treatments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The entries listed below vary between theoretical therapies to unproven controversial therapies. Many of these treatments are alleged to help against only specific forms of cancer. It is not a list of treatments widely available at hospitals.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The twin goals of research are to determine whether the treatment actually works (called efficacy) and whether it is sufficiently safe. Regulatory processes attempt to balance the potential benefits with the potential harms, so that people given the treatment are more likely to benefit from it than to be harmed by it.",
"title": "Studying treatments for cancer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Medical research for cancer begins much like research for any disease. In organized studies of new treatments for cancer, the pre-clinical development of drugs, devices, and techniques begins in laboratories, either with isolated cells or in small animals, most commonly rats or mice. In other cases, the proposed treatment for cancer is already in use for some other medical condition, in which case more is known about its safety and potential efficacy.",
"title": "Studying treatments for cancer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Clinical trials are the study of treatments in humans. The first-in-human tests of a potential treatment are called Phase I studies. Early clinical trials typically enroll a very small number of patients, and the purpose is to identify major safety issues and the maximum tolerated dose, which is the highest dose that does not produce serious or fatal adverse effects. The dose given in these trials may be far too small to produce any useful effect. In most research, these early trials may involve healthy people, but cancer studies normally enroll only people with relatively severe forms of the disease in this stage of testing. On average, 95% of the participants in these early trials receive no benefit, but all are exposed to the risk of adverse effects. Most participants show signs of optimism bias (the irrational belief that they will beat the odds).",
"title": "Studying treatments for cancer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Later studies, called Phase II and Phase III studies, enroll more people, and the goal is to determine whether the treatment actually works. Phase III studies are frequently randomized controlled trials, with the experimental treatment being compared to the current best available treatment rather than to a placebo. In some cases, the Phase III trial provides the best available treatment to all participants, in addition to some of the patients receiving the experimental treatment.",
"title": "Studying treatments for cancer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Chemotherapeutic drugs have a hard time penetrating tumors to kill them at their core because these cells may lack a good blood supply . Researchers have been using anaerobic bacteria, such as Clostridium novyi, to consume the interior of oxygen-poor tumours. These should then die when they come in contact with the tumor's oxygenated sides, meaning they would be harmless to the rest of the body. A major problem has been that bacteria do not consume all parts of the malignant tissue. However, combining the therapy with chemotherapeutic treatments can help to solve this problem.",
"title": "Bacterial treatments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Another strategy is to use anaerobic bacteria that have been transformed with an enzyme that can convert a non-toxic prodrug into a toxic drug. With the proliferation of the bacteria in the necrotic and hypoxic areas of the tumor, the enzyme is expressed solely in the tumor. Thus, a systemically applied prodrug is metabolised to the toxic drug only in the tumor. This has been demonstrated to be effective with the nonpathogenic anaerobe Clostridium sporogenes.",
"title": "Bacterial treatments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "HAMLET (human alpha-lactalbumin made lethal to tumor cells) is a molecular complex derived from human breast milk that kills tumor cells by a process resembling programmed cell death (apoptosis). As of 2008, it had been tested in humans with skin papillomas and bladder cancer.",
"title": "Drug therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Several drug therapies are being developed based on p53, the tumour suppressor gene that protects the cell in response to damage and stress. It is analogous to deciding what to do with a damaged car: p53 brings everything to a halt, and then decides whether to fix the cell or, if the cell is beyond repair, to destroy the cell. This protective function of p53 is disabled in most cancer cells, allowing them to multiply without check. Restoration of p53 activity in tumours (where possible) has been shown to inhibit tumour growth and can even shrink the tumour.",
"title": "Drug therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "As p53 protein levels are usually kept low, one could block its degradation and allow large amounts of p53 to accumulate, thus stimulating p53 activity and its antitumour effects. Drugs that utilize this mechanism include nutlin and MI-219, which are both in phase I clinical trials. As of 2009, there are also other drugs that are still in the preclinical stage of testing, such as RITA and MITA.",
"title": "Drug therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "BI811283 is a small molecule inhibitor of the aurora B kinase protein being developed by Boehringer Ingelheim for use as an anti-cancer agent. As of 2010, BI 811283 is currently in the early stages of clinical development and is undergoing first-in-human trials in patients with solid tumors and Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.",
"title": "Drug therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Itraconazole, sometimes abbreviated ITZ, is an antifungal medication used to treat a number of fungal infections. Recent research works suggest itraconazole (ITZ) could also be used in the treatment of cancer by inhibiting the hedgehog pathway in a similar way to Sonidegib.",
"title": "Drug therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The majority of breast cancers are androgen receptor (AR) positive and SARMs may help treat these cancers, although promising results have only been obtained with cancers that are both estrogen receptor (ER) positive and AR positive. Anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) were historically used successfully to treat AR positive breast cancer, but were phased out after the development of anti-estrogen therapies, due to androgenic side effects and concerns about aromatization to estrogen. SARMs have some of the same therapeutic effects as AAS, but fewer side effects, and they cannot be aromatized. Although a trial on AR positive triple negative breast cancer was ended early due to lack of efficacy, ostarine showed benefits in some patients with ER+, AR+ metastatic breast cancer in a phase II study. In patients with more than 40 percent AR positivity as determined by immunohistochemistry, the clinical benefit rate (CBR) was 80 percent and the objective response rate (ORR) was 48 percent—which was considered promising given that the patients had advanced disease and had been heavily pretreated. In 2022, the FDA granted fast track designation to ostarine for AR+, ER+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer. SARMs have also shown antitumor effects in prostate cancer.",
"title": "Drug therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Introduction of tumor suppressor genes into rapidly dividing cells has been thought to slow down or arrest tumor growth. Adenoviruses are a commonly utilized vector for this purpose. Much research has focused on the use of adenoviruses that cannot reproduce, or reproduce only to a limited extent, within the patient to ensure safety via the avoidance of cytolytic destruction of noncancerous cells infected with the vector. However, new studies focus on adenoviruses that can be permitted to reproduce, and destroy cancerous cells in the process, since the adenoviruses' ability to infect normal cells is substantially impaired, potentially resulting in a far more effective treatment.",
"title": "Gene therapy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Another use of gene therapy is the introduction of enzymes into these cells that make them susceptible to particular chemotherapy agents; studies with introducing thymidine kinase in gliomas, making them susceptible to aciclovir, are in their experimental stage.",
"title": "Gene therapy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence, often a result of environmental or dietary damage to the histone receptors within the cell. Current research has shown that epigenetic pharmaceuticals could be a putative replacement or adjuvant therapy for currently accepted treatment methods such as radiation and chemotherapy, or could enhance the effects of these current treatments. It has been shown that the epigenetic control of the proto-onco regions and the tumor suppressor sequences by conformational changes in histones directly affects the formation and progression of cancer. Epigenetics also has the factor of reversibility, a characteristic that other cancer treatments do not offer.",
"title": "Epigenetic options"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Some investigators, like Randy Jirtle, PhD, of Duke University Medical Center, think epigenetics may ultimately turn out to have a greater role in disease than genetics.",
"title": "Epigenetic options"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Because most malignant cells rely on the activity of the protein telomerase for their immortality, it has been proposed that a drug that inactivates telomerase might be effective against a broad spectrum of malignancies. At the same time, most healthy tissues in the body express little if any telomerase, and would function normally in its absence. Currently, inositol hexaphosphate, which is available over-the-counter, is undergoing testing in cancer research due to its telomerase-inhibiting abilities.",
"title": "Telomerase deactivation therapy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "A number of research groups have experimented with the use of telomerase inhibitors in animal models, and as of 2005 and 2006 phase I and II human clinical trials are underway. Geron Corporation is currently conducting two clinical trials involving telomerase inhibitors. One uses a vaccine (GRNVAC1) and the other uses a lipidated oligonucleotide (GRN163L).",
"title": "Telomerase deactivation therapy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is generally a non-invasive treatment using a combination of light and a photosensitive drug, such as 5-ALA, Foscan, Metvix, padeliporfin (Tookad, WST09, WST11), Photofrin, or Visudyne. The drug is triggered by light of a specific wavelength.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Localized and whole-body application of heat has been proposed as a technique for the treatment of malignant tumours. Intense heating will cause denaturation and coagulation of cellular proteins, rapidly killing cells within a tumour.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "More prolonged moderate heating to temperatures just a few degrees above normal (39.5 °C) can cause more subtle changes. A mild heat treatment combined with other stresses can cause cell death by apoptosis. There are many biochemical consequences to the heat shock response within the cell, including slowed cell division and increased sensitivity to ionizing radiation therapy. The purpose of overheating the tumor cells is to create a lack of oxygen so that the heated cells become overacidified, which leads to a lack of nutrients in the tumor. This in turn disrupts the metabolism of the cells so that cell death (apoptosis) can set in. In certain cases chemotherapy or radiation that has previously not had any effect can be made effective. Hyperthermia alters the cell walls by means of so-called heat shock proteins. The cancer cells then react very much more effectively to the cytostatics and radiation. If hyperthermia is used conscientiously it has no serious side effects.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "There are many techniques by which heat may be delivered. Some of the most common involve the use of focused ultrasound (FUS or HIFU), microwave heating, induction heating, magnetic hyperthermia, and direct application of heat through the use of heated saline pumped through catheters. Experiments with carbon nanotubes that selectively bind to cancer cells have been performed. Lasers are then used that pass harmlessly through the body, but heat the nanotubes, causing the death of the cancer cells. Similar results have also been achieved with other types of nanoparticles, including gold-coated nanoshells and nanorods that exhibit certain degrees of 'tunability' of the absorption properties of the nanoparticles to the wavelength of light for irradiation. The success of this approach to cancer treatment rests on the existence of an 'optical window' in which biological tissue (i.e., healthy cells) are completely transparent at the wavelength of the laser light, while nanoparticles are highly absorbing at the same wavelength. Such a 'window' exists in the so-called near-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this way, the laser light can pass through the system without harming healthy tissue, and only diseased cells, where the nanoparticles reside, get hot and are killed.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Magnetic Hyperthermia makes use of magnetic nanoparticles, which can be injected into tumours and then generate heat when subjected to an alternating magnetic field.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "One of the challenges in thermal therapy is delivering the appropriate amount of heat to the correct part of the patient's body. A great deal of current research focuses on precisely positioning heat delivery devices (catheters, microwave, and ultrasound applicators, etc.) using ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging, as well as of developing new types of nanoparticles that make them particularly efficient absorbers while offering little or no concerns about toxicity to the circulation system. Clinicians also hope to use advanced imaging techniques to monitor heat treatments in real time—heat-induced changes in tissue are sometimes perceptible using these imaging instruments. In magnetic hyperthermia or magnetic fluid hyperthermia method, it will be easier to control temperature distribution by controlling the velocity of ferrofluid injection and size of magnetic nanoparticles.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Heat treatment involves using radio waves to heat up tiny metals that are implanted in cancerous tissue. Gold nanoparticles or carbon nanotubes are the most likely candidate. Promising preclinical trials have been conducted, although clinical trials may not be held for another few years.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Another method that is entirely non-invasive referred to as Tumor Treating Fields has already reached clinical trial stage in many countries. The concept applies an electric field through a tumour region using electrodes external to the body. Successful trials have shown the process effectiveness to be greater than chemotherapy and there are no side-effects and only negligible time spent away from normal daily activities. This treatment is still in very early development stages for many types of cancer.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is still in investigatory phases in many places around the world. In China it has CFDA approval and over 180 treatment centres have been established in China, Hong Kong, and Korea. HIFU has been successfully used to treat cancer to destroy tumours of the bone, brain, breast, liver, pancreas, rectum, kidney, testes, and prostate. Several thousand patients have been treated with various types of tumours. HIFU has CE approval for palliative care for bone metastasis. Experimentally, palliative care has been provided for cases of advanced pancreatic cancer. High-energy therapeutic ultrasound could increase higher-density anti-cancer drug load and nanomedicines to target tumor sites by 20x fold higher than traditional target cancer therapy.",
"title": "Radiation therapies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Cold atmospheric plasma or CAP for short is an emerging modality for the treatment of solid tumors Recently, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) indicated promising anti-neoplastic effects on several tumors, e.g. melanoma, glioma, and pancreatic cancer cells [5, 6, 7], and therefore could be an efficient method for anti-cancer treatment in clinical urology in the future. One example of an experimental technology utilizing Cold Atmospheric plasma is Theraphi",
"title": "Cold atmospheric plasma treatment"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "Tumor Treating Fields is a novel FDA-approved cancer treatment therapy that uses alternating electric field to disturb the rapid cell division exhibited by cancer cells.",
"title": "Electromagnetic treatments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments are the diverse group of medical and healthcare systems, practices, and products that are not part of conventional medicine and have not been proven to be effective. Complementary medicine usually refers to methods and substances used along with conventional medicine, while alternative medicine refers to compounds used instead of conventional medicine. CAM use is common among people with cancer.",
"title": "Complementary and alternative treatments"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Most complementary and alternative medicines for cancer have not been rigorously studied or tested. Some alternative treatments that have been proven ineffective continue to be marketed and promoted.",
"title": "Complementary and alternative treatments"
}
]
| Experimental cancer treatments are mainstream medical therapies intended to treat cancer by improving on, supplementing or replacing conventional methods. However, researchers are still trying to determine whether these treatments are safe and effective treatments. Experimental cancer treatments are normally available only to people who participate in formal research programs, which are called clinical trials. Occasionally, a seriously ill person may be able to access an experimental drug through an expanded access program. Some of the treatments have regulatory approval for treating other conditions. Health insurance and publicly funded health care programs normally refuse to pay for experimental cancer treatments. The entries listed below vary between theoretical therapies to unproven controversial therapies. Many of these treatments are alleged to help against only specific forms of cancer. It is not a list of treatments widely available at hospitals. | 2001-12-01T09:12:14Z | 2023-12-12T10:24:59Z | [
"Template:Citation needed",
"Template:Further",
"Template:Cite book",
"Template:Emerging technologies",
"Template:See also",
"Template:Main",
"Template:Cite web",
"Template:Tumors",
"Template:Cite news",
"Template:More medical citations needed",
"Template:Use dmy dates",
"Template:As of",
"Template:Reflist",
"Template:Cite journal"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_cancer_treatment |
10,181 | Emission | Emission may refer to: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Emission may refer to:",
"title": ""
}
]
| Emission may refer to: | 2001-12-02T16:35:56Z | 2023-10-03T12:16:14Z | [
"Template:Wiktionary",
"Template:TOC right",
"Template:Disambiguation"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission |
10,183 | Environmental movement in the United States | The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments.
The environmental movement today consists of both large national groups and also many smaller local groups with local concerns. Some resemble the old U.S. conservation movement - whose modern expression is The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society and National Geographic Society - American organizations with a worldwide influence. Increasingly that movement is organized around addressing climate change in the United States alongside interrelated issues like climate justice and broader environmental justice issues.
As public awareness and the environmental sciences have improved in recent years, environmental issues have broadened to include key concepts such as "sustainability" and also new emerging concerns such as ozone depletion, global warming, acid rain, land use and biogenetic pollution.
Environmental movements often interact or are linked with other social movements, e.g. for peace, human rights, and animal rights; and against nuclear weapons and/or nuclear power, endemic diseases, poverty, hunger, etc.
Some US colleges are now going green by signing the "President's Climate Commitment," a document that a college President can sign to enable said colleges to practice environmentalism by switching to solar power, etc.
Early European settlers came to the United States brought from Europe the concept of the commons. In the colonial era, access to natural resources was allocated by individual towns, and disputes over fisheries or land use were resolved at the local level. Changing technologies, however, strained traditional ways of resolving disputes of resource use, and local governments had limited control over powerful special interests. For example, the damming of rivers for mills cut off upriver towns from fisheries; logging and clearing of forest in watersheds harmed local fisheries downstream. In New England, many farmers became uneasy as they noticed clearing of the forest changed stream flows and a decrease in bird population which helped control insects and other pests. These concerns become widely known with the publication of Man and Nature (1864) by George Perkins Marsh. The environmental impact method of analysis is generally the main mode for determining what issues the environmental movement is involved in. This model is used to determine how to proceed in situations that are detrimental to the environment by choosing the way that is least damaging and has the fewest lasting implications.
Conservation first became a national issue during the progressive era's conservation movement (1890s - 1920s). The early national conservation movement shifted emphasis to scientific management which favored larger enterprises and control began to shift from local governments to the states and the federal government.(Judd) Some writers credit sportsmen, hunters and fishermen with the increasing influence of the conservation movement. In the 1870s sportsman magazines such as American Sportsmen, Forest and Stream, and Field and Stream are seen as leading to the growth of the conservation movement.(Reiger) This conservation movement also urged the establishment of state and national parks and forests, wildlife refuges, and national monuments intended to preserve noteworthy natural features. Conservation groups focus primarily on an issue that's origins are rooted in general expansion. As Industrialization became more prominent as well as the increasing trend towards Urbanization the conservative environmental movement began. Contrary to popular belief conservation groups are not against expansion in general, instead, they are concerned with efficiency with resources and land development.
Theodore Roosevelt and his close ally George Bird Grinnell, were motivated by the wanton waste that was taking place at the hand of market hunting. This practice resulted in placing a large number of North American game species on the edge of extinction. Roosevelt recognized that the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Government was too wasteful and inefficient. In any case, they noted, most of the natural resources in the western states were already owned by the federal government. The best course of action, they argued, was a long-term plan devised by national experts to maximize the long-term economic benefits of natural resources. To accomplish the mission, Roosevelt and Grinnell formed the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887. The club was made up of the best minds and influential men of the day. The Boone and Crockett Club's contingency of conservationists, scientists, politicians, and intellectuals became Roosevelt's closest advisers during his march to preserve wildlife and habitat across North America. As president, Theodore Roosevelt became a prominent conservationist, putting the issue high on the national agenda. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt was deeply committed to conserving natural resources and is considered to be the nation's first conservation President. He encouraged the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230,000,000 acres (93,000,000 ha) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more Federal land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.
Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five National Parks, and signed the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 new U.S. National Monuments. He also established the first 51 Bird Reserves, four Game Preserves, and 150 National Forests, including Shoshone National Forest, the nation's first. The area of the United States that he placed under public protection totals approximately 230,000,000 acres (930,000 km).
Gifford Pinchot had been appointed by McKinley as chief of Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. In 1905, his department gained control of the national forest reserves. Pinchot promoted private use (for a fee) under federal supervision. In 1907, Roosevelt designated sixteen million acres (65,000 km) of new national forests just minutes before a deadline.
In May 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty."
In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, who had a very different view of conservation and tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. Working through the Sierra Club he founded, Muir succeeded in 1905 in having Congress transfer the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the National Park Service. While Muir wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees." Muir and the Sierra Club vehemently opposed the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite in order to provide water to the city of San Francisco. Roosevelt and Pinchot supported the dam, as did President Woodrow Wilson. The Hetch Hetchy dam was finished in 1923 and is still in operation, but the Sierra Club still wants to tear it down.
Other influential conservationists of the Progressive Era included George Bird Grinnell (a prominent sportsman who founded the Boone and Crockett Club), the Izaak Walton League and John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club in 1892. Conservationists organized the National Parks Conservation Association, the Audubon Society, and other groups that still remain active.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–45), like his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, was an ardent conservationist. He used numerous programs of the departments of Agriculture and Interior to end wasteful land-use, mitigate the effects of the Dust Bowl, and efficiently develop natural resources in the West. One of the most popular of all New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps (1933–1943), which sent two million poor young men to work in rural and wilderness areas, primarily on conservation projects.
After World War II increasing encroachment on wilderness land evoked the continued resistance of conservationists, who succeeded in blocking a number of projects in the 1950s and 1960s, including the proposed Bridge Canyon Dam that would have backed up the waters of the Colorado River into the Grand Canyon National Park.
The Inter-American Conference on the Conservation of Renewable Natural Resources met in 1948 as a collection of nearly 200 scientists from all over the Americans forming the trusteeship principle that:
"No generation can exclusively own the renewable resources by which it lives. We hold the commonwealth in trust for prosperity, and to lessen or destroy it is to commit treason against the future"
During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, several events occurred which raised the public awareness of harm to the environment caused by man. In 1954, the 23 man crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Lucky Dragon was exposed to radioactive fallout from a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll. By 1969, the public reaction to an ecologically catastrophic oil spill from an offshore well in California's Santa Barbara Channel, Barry Commoner's protest against nuclear testing, along with Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, and Paul R. Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968) all added anxiety about the environment. Pictures of Earth from space emphasized that the earth was small and fragile.
As the public became more aware of environmental issues, concern about air pollution, water pollution, solid waste disposal, dwindling energy resources, radiation, pesticide poisoning (particularly use of DDT as described in Carson's influential Silent Spring), noise pollution, and other environmental problems engaged a broadening number of sympathizers. That public support for environmental concerns was widespread became clear in the Earth Day demonstrations of 1970.
Several books after the middle of the 20th century contributed to the rise of American environmentalism (as distinct from the longer-established conservation movement), especially among college and university students and the more literate public. One was the publication of the first textbook on ecology, Fundamentals of Ecology, by Eugene Odum and Howard Odum, in 1953. Another was the appearance of the Carson's 1962 best-seller Silent Spring. Her book brought about a whole new interpretation of pesticides by exposing their harmful effects in nature. From this book, many began referring to Carson as the "mother of the environmental movement". Another influential development was a 1965 lawsuit, Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, opposing the construction of a power plant on Storm King Mountain in New York (state), which is said to have given birth to modern United States environmental law. The wide popularity of The Whole Earth Catalogs, starting in 1968, was quite influential among the younger, hands-on, activist generation of the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, in addition to opposing environmental degradation and protecting wilderness, an increased focus on coexisting with natural biodiversity has appeared, a strain that is apparent in the movement for sustainable agriculture and in the concept of Reconciliation Ecology.
During his time as U.S President, Lyndon Johnson would sign over 300 environment protection measures into law. This was credited as forming the legal basis of the modern environmental movement.
In the modern wilderness preservation movement, important philosophical roles are played by the writings of John Muir who had been activist in the late 19th and early 20th century. Along with Muir perhaps most influential in the modern movement is Henry David Thoreau who published Walden in 1854. Also important was forester and ecologist Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of the Wilderness Society in 1935, who wrote a classic of nature observation and ethical philosophy, A Sand County Almanac, (1949).
There is also a growing movement of campers and other people who enjoy outdoor recreation activities to help preserve the environment while spending time in the wilderness.
The anti-nuclear movement in the United States consists of more than 80 anti-nuclear groups that have acted to oppose nuclear power or nuclear weapons, or both, in the United States. These groups include the Abalone Alliance, Clamshell Alliance, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Physicians for Social Responsibility. The anti-nuclear movement has delayed construction or halted commitments to build some new nuclear plants, and has pressured the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to enforce and strengthen the safety regulations for nuclear power plants.
Anti-nuclear protests reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s and grew out of the environmental movement. Campaigns which captured national public attention involved the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, Diablo Canyon Power Plant, Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant, and Three Mile Island. On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to the cold war arms race. It was the largest anti-nuclear protest and the largest political demonstration in American history. International Day of Nuclear Disarmament protests were held on June 20, 1983 at 50 sites across the United States. There were many Nevada Desert Experience protests and peace camps at the Nevada Test Site during the 1980s and 1990s.
More recent campaigning by anti-nuclear groups has related to several nuclear power plants including the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, Indian Point Energy Center, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station, Salem Nuclear Power Plant, and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. There have also been campaigns relating to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, the Idaho National Laboratory, proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the Hanford Site, the Nevada Test Site, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and transportation of nuclear waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Some scientists and engineers have expressed reservations about nuclear power, including: Barry Commoner, S. David Freeman, John Gofman, Arnold Gundersen, Mark Z. Jacobson, Amory Lovins, Arjun Makhijani, Gregory Minor, Joseph Romm and Benjamin K. Sovacool. Scientists who have opposed nuclear weapons include Linus Pauling and Eugene Rabinowitch.
Antitoxics groups are a subgroup that is affiliated with the Environmental Movement in the United States, that is primarily concerned with the effects that cities and their by-products have on humans. This aspect of the movement is a self-proclaimed "movement of housewives". Concern around the issues of groundwater contamination and air pollution rose in the early 1980s and individuals involved in antitoxics groups claim that they are concerned for the health of their families. A prominent case can be seen in the Love Canal Homeowner's association (LCHA); in this case, a housing development was built on a site that had been used for toxic dumping by the Hooker Chemical Company. As a result of this dumping, the residents had symptoms of skin irritation, Lois Gibbs, a resident of the development, started a grassroots campaign for reparations. Eventual success led to the government having to purchase homes that were sold in the development.
Prior to the 1970s the protection of basic air and water supplies was a matter mainly left to each state. During the 1970s, the primary responsibility for clean air and water shifted to the federal government. Growing concerns, both environmental and economic, from cities and towns as well as sportsman and other local groups, and senators such as Maine's Edmund S. Muskie, led to the passage of extensive legislation, notably the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. Other legislation included the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which established the Council on Environmental Quality; the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972; the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (1976), the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1977, which became known as the Clean Water Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund Act (1980). These laws regulated public drinking water systems, toxic substances, pesticides, and ocean dumping; and protected wildlife, wilderness, and wild and scenic rivers. Moreover, the new laws provide for pollution research, standard setting, contaminated site cleanup, monitoring, and enforcement.
The creation of these laws led to a major shift in the environmental movement. Groups such as the Sierra Club shifted focus from local issues to becoming a lobby in Washington and new groups, for example, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense, arose to influence politics as well. (Larson)
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan sought to curtail the scope of environmental protection taking steps such as appointing James G. Watt. The major environmental groups responded with mass mailings which led to increased membership and donations.
When industry groups lobbied to weaken regulation and a backlash against environmental regulations, the so-called wise use movement gained importance and influence.(Larson)
In 2004, with the environmental movement seemingly stalled, some environmentalists started questioning whether "environmentalism" was even a useful political framework. According to a controversial essay titled "The Death of Environmentalism " (Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, 2004) American environmentalism has been remarkably successful in protecting the air, water, and large stretches of wilderness in North America and Europe, but these environmentalists have stagnated as a vital force for cultural and political change.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus wrote, "Today environmentalism is just another special interest. Evidence for this can be found in its concepts, its proposals, and its reasoning. What stands out is how arbitrary environmental leaders are about what gets counted and what doesn't as 'environmental.' Most of the movement's leading thinkers, funders, and advocates do not question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we should be doing." Their essay was followed by a speech in San Francisco called "Is Environmentalism Dead?" by former Sierra Club President, Adam Werbach, who argued for the evolution of environmentalism into a more expansive, relevant and powerful progressive politics. Werbach endorsed building an environmental movement that is more relevant to average Americans and controversially chose to lead Wal-Mart's effort to take sustainability mainstream.
These "post-environmental movement" thinkers argue that the ecological crises the human species faces in the 21st century are qualitatively different from the problems the environmental movement was created to address in the 1960s and 1970s. They argue that climate change and habitat destruction are global and more complex, therefore demanding far deeper transformations of the economy, the culture and political life. The consequence of environmentalism's outdated and arbitrary definition, they argue, is a political irrelevancy.
These "politically neutral" groups tend to avoid global conflicts and view the settlement of inter-human conflict as separate from regard for nature – in direct contradiction to the ecology movement and peace movement which have increasingly close links: while Green Parties, Greenpeace, and groups like the ACTivist Magazine regard ecology, biodiversity, and an end to non-human extinction as an absolute basis for peace, the local groups may not, and see a high degree of global competition and conflict as justifiable if it lets them preserve their own local uniqueness. However, such groups tend not to "burn out" and to sustain for long periods, even generations, protecting the same local treasures.
Local groups increasingly find that they benefit from collaboration, e.g. on consensus decision-making methods, or making simultaneous policy, or relying on common legal resources, or even sometimes a common glossary. However, the differences between the various groups that make up the modern environmental movement tend to outweigh such similarities, and they rarely co-operate directly except on a few major global questions. In a notable exception, over 1,000 local groups from around the country united for a single day of action as part of the Step It Up 2007 campaign for real solutions to global warming.
Groups such as The Bioregional Revolution are calling on the need to bridge these differences, as the converging problems of the 21st century they claim compel the people to unite and to take decisive action. They promote bioregionalism, permaculture, and local economies as solutions to these problems, overpopulation, global warming, global epidemics, and water scarcity, but most notably to "peak oil" – the prediction that the country is likely to reach a maximum in global oil production which could spell drastic changes in many aspects of the residents' everyday lives.
Many environmental lawsuits turn on the question of who has standing; are the legal issues limited to property owners, or does the general public have a right to intervene? Christopher D. Stone's 1972 essay, "Should trees have standing?" seriously addressed the question of whether natural objects themselves should have legal rights, including the right to participate in lawsuits. Stone suggested that there was nothing absurd in this view, and noted that many entities now regarded as having legal rights were, in the past, regarded as "things" that were regarded as legally rightless; for example, aliens, children and women. His essay is sometimes regarded as an example of the fallacy of hypostatization.
One of the earliest lawsuits to establish that citizens may sue for environmental and aesthetic harms was Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, decided in 1965 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The case helped halt the construction of a power plant on Storm King Mountain in New York State. See also United States environmental law and David Sive, an attorney who was involved in the case.
Conservation biology is an important and rapidly developing field. One way to avoid the stigma of an "ism" was to evolve early anti-nuclear groups into the more scientific Green Parties, sprout new NGOs such as Greenpeace and Earth Action, and devoted groups to protecting global biodiversity and preventing global warming and climate change. But in the process, much of the emotional appeal, and many of the original aesthetic goals were lost. Nonetheless, these groups have well-defined ethical and political views, backed by science.
Some people are skeptical of the environmental movement and feel that it is more deeply rooted in politics than science. Although there have been serious debates about climate change and effects of some pesticides and herbicides that mimic animal sex steroids, science has shown that some of the claims of environmentalists have credence.
Novelist Michael Crichton appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on September 28, 2005, to address concerns and recommended the employment of double-blind experimentation in environmental research. Crichton suggested that because environmental issues are so political in nature, policymakers need neutral, conclusive data to base their decisions on, rather than conjecture and rhetoric, and double-blind experiments are the most efficient way to achieve that aim.
A consistent theme acknowledged by both supporters and critics (though more commonly vocalized by critics) of the environmental movement is that we know very little about the Earth we live in. Most fields of environmental studies are relatively new, and therefore what research we have is limited and does not date far enough back for us to completely understand long-term environmental trends. This has led a number of environmentalists to support the use of the precautionary principle in policy-making, which ultimately asserts that we don't know how certain actions may affect the environment and because there is reason to believe they may cause more harm than good we should refrain from such actions.
In the December 1994 Wild Forest Review, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair wrote "The mainstream environmental movement was elitist, highly paid, detached from the people, indifferent to the working class, and a firm ally of big government.…The environmental movement is now accurately perceived as just another well-financed and cynical special interest group, its rancid infrastructure supported by Democratic Party operatives and millions in grants from corporate foundations."
Historians have criticized the modern environmental movement for having romantic idealizations of wilderness. William Cronon writes "wilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest." Cronon claims that "to the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead."
Similarly Michael Pollan has argued that the wilderness ethic leads people to dismiss areas whose wildness is less than absolute. In his book Second Nature, Pollan writes that "once a landscape is no longer 'virgin' it is typically written off as fallen, lost to nature, irredeemable."
Within the environmental movement, an ideological debate has taken place between those with an ecocentric viewpoint and an anthropocentric viewpoint. The anthropocentric view has been seen as the conservationist approach to the environment with nature viewed, at least in part, as a resource to be used by man. In contrast to the conservationist approach the ecocentric view, associated with John Muir, Henry David Thoreau and William Wordsworth referred to as the preservationist movement. This approach sees nature in a more spiritual way. Many environmental historians consider the split between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. During the preservation/conservation debate, the term preservationist becomes to be seen as a pejorative term.
While the ecocentric view focused on biodiversity and wilderness protection the anthropocentric view focuses on urban pollution and social justice. Some environmental writers, for example, William Cronon have criticized the ecocentric view as have a dualist view as a man being separate from nature. Critics of the anthropocentric viewpoint contend that the environmental movement has been taken over by so-called leftist with an agenda beyond environmental protection.
Environmentalists became much more influential in American politics after the creation or strengthening of numerous US environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and the formation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. These successes were followed by the enactment of a whole series of laws regulating waste (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act), toxic substances (Toxic Substances Control Act), pesticides (FIFRA: Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act), clean-up of polluted sites (Superfund), protection of endangered species (Endangered Species Act), and more.
Fewer environmental laws have been passed in the last decade as corporations and other conservative interests have increased their influence over American politics. Corporate cooperation against environmental lobbyists has been organized by the Wise Use group. At the same time, many environmentalists have been turning toward other means of persuasion, such as working with business, community, and other partners to promote sustainable development. Since the 1970s, coalitions and interests groups have directed themselves along the democrat and republican party lines.
Much environmental activism is directed towards conservation as well as the prevention or elimination of pollution. However, conservation movements, ecology movements, peace movements, green parties, green- and eco-anarchists often subscribe to very different ideologies, while supporting the same goals as those who call themselves "environmentalists". To outsiders, these groups or factions can appear to be indistinguishable.
As human population and industrial activity continue to increase, environmentalists often find themselves in serious conflict with those who believe that human and industrial activities should not be overly regulated or restricted, such as some libertarians.
Environmentalists often clash with others, particularly "corporate interests," over issues of the management of natural resources, like in the case of the atmosphere as a "carbon dump", the focus of climate change, and global warming controversy. They usually seek to protect commonly owned or unowned resources for future generations.
While most environmentalists are mainstream and peaceful, a small minority are more radical in their approach. Adherents of radical environmentalism and ecological anarchism are involved in direct action campaigns to protect the environment. Some campaigns have employed controversial tactics including sabotage, blockades, and arson, while most use peaceful protests such as marches, tree sitting, and the like. There is substantial debate within the environmental movement as to the acceptability of these tactics, but almost all environmentalists condemn violent actions that can harm humans.
In 2023, for the first time in the history of the United States, the police killed an environmental activist during a protest. The protesters were camping in Atlanta's South River Forest, a natural area that the City of Atlanta and Police planned to raze in order to erect a police training facility to be called "Cop City." Police attacked protesters on 18 January 2023. One protester, Tortuguita or, Manuel Esteban Páez Terán was killed and seven more were arrested. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The environmental movement today consists of both large national groups and also many smaller local groups with local concerns. Some resemble the old U.S. conservation movement - whose modern expression is The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society and National Geographic Society - American organizations with a worldwide influence. Increasingly that movement is organized around addressing climate change in the United States alongside interrelated issues like climate justice and broader environmental justice issues.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "As public awareness and the environmental sciences have improved in recent years, environmental issues have broadened to include key concepts such as \"sustainability\" and also new emerging concerns such as ozone depletion, global warming, acid rain, land use and biogenetic pollution.",
"title": "Scope of the movement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Environmental movements often interact or are linked with other social movements, e.g. for peace, human rights, and animal rights; and against nuclear weapons and/or nuclear power, endemic diseases, poverty, hunger, etc.",
"title": "Scope of the movement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Some US colleges are now going green by signing the \"President's Climate Commitment,\" a document that a college President can sign to enable said colleges to practice environmentalism by switching to solar power, etc.",
"title": "Scope of the movement"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Early European settlers came to the United States brought from Europe the concept of the commons. In the colonial era, access to natural resources was allocated by individual towns, and disputes over fisheries or land use were resolved at the local level. Changing technologies, however, strained traditional ways of resolving disputes of resource use, and local governments had limited control over powerful special interests. For example, the damming of rivers for mills cut off upriver towns from fisheries; logging and clearing of forest in watersheds harmed local fisheries downstream. In New England, many farmers became uneasy as they noticed clearing of the forest changed stream flows and a decrease in bird population which helped control insects and other pests. These concerns become widely known with the publication of Man and Nature (1864) by George Perkins Marsh. The environmental impact method of analysis is generally the main mode for determining what issues the environmental movement is involved in. This model is used to determine how to proceed in situations that are detrimental to the environment by choosing the way that is least damaging and has the fewest lasting implications.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Conservation first became a national issue during the progressive era's conservation movement (1890s - 1920s). The early national conservation movement shifted emphasis to scientific management which favored larger enterprises and control began to shift from local governments to the states and the federal government.(Judd) Some writers credit sportsmen, hunters and fishermen with the increasing influence of the conservation movement. In the 1870s sportsman magazines such as American Sportsmen, Forest and Stream, and Field and Stream are seen as leading to the growth of the conservation movement.(Reiger) This conservation movement also urged the establishment of state and national parks and forests, wildlife refuges, and national monuments intended to preserve noteworthy natural features. Conservation groups focus primarily on an issue that's origins are rooted in general expansion. As Industrialization became more prominent as well as the increasing trend towards Urbanization the conservative environmental movement began. Contrary to popular belief conservation groups are not against expansion in general, instead, they are concerned with efficiency with resources and land development.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Theodore Roosevelt and his close ally George Bird Grinnell, were motivated by the wanton waste that was taking place at the hand of market hunting. This practice resulted in placing a large number of North American game species on the edge of extinction. Roosevelt recognized that the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Government was too wasteful and inefficient. In any case, they noted, most of the natural resources in the western states were already owned by the federal government. The best course of action, they argued, was a long-term plan devised by national experts to maximize the long-term economic benefits of natural resources. To accomplish the mission, Roosevelt and Grinnell formed the Boone and Crockett Club in 1887. The club was made up of the best minds and influential men of the day. The Boone and Crockett Club's contingency of conservationists, scientists, politicians, and intellectuals became Roosevelt's closest advisers during his march to preserve wildlife and habitat across North America. As president, Theodore Roosevelt became a prominent conservationist, putting the issue high on the national agenda. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt was deeply committed to conserving natural resources and is considered to be the nation's first conservation President. He encouraged the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230,000,000 acres (93,000,000 ha) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more Federal land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five National Parks, and signed the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 new U.S. National Monuments. He also established the first 51 Bird Reserves, four Game Preserves, and 150 National Forests, including Shoshone National Forest, the nation's first. The area of the United States that he placed under public protection totals approximately 230,000,000 acres (930,000 km).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Gifford Pinchot had been appointed by McKinley as chief of Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. In 1905, his department gained control of the national forest reserves. Pinchot promoted private use (for a fee) under federal supervision. In 1907, Roosevelt designated sixteen million acres (65,000 km) of new national forests just minutes before a deadline.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In May 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: \"Conservation as a National Duty.\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, who had a very different view of conservation and tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. Working through the Sierra Club he founded, Muir succeeded in 1905 in having Congress transfer the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the National Park Service. While Muir wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, \"to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees.\" Muir and the Sierra Club vehemently opposed the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite in order to provide water to the city of San Francisco. Roosevelt and Pinchot supported the dam, as did President Woodrow Wilson. The Hetch Hetchy dam was finished in 1923 and is still in operation, but the Sierra Club still wants to tear it down.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Other influential conservationists of the Progressive Era included George Bird Grinnell (a prominent sportsman who founded the Boone and Crockett Club), the Izaak Walton League and John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club in 1892. Conservationists organized the National Parks Conservation Association, the Audubon Society, and other groups that still remain active.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–45), like his cousin Theodore Roosevelt, was an ardent conservationist. He used numerous programs of the departments of Agriculture and Interior to end wasteful land-use, mitigate the effects of the Dust Bowl, and efficiently develop natural resources in the West. One of the most popular of all New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps (1933–1943), which sent two million poor young men to work in rural and wilderness areas, primarily on conservation projects.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "After World War II increasing encroachment on wilderness land evoked the continued resistance of conservationists, who succeeded in blocking a number of projects in the 1950s and 1960s, including the proposed Bridge Canyon Dam that would have backed up the waters of the Colorado River into the Grand Canyon National Park.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Inter-American Conference on the Conservation of Renewable Natural Resources met in 1948 as a collection of nearly 200 scientists from all over the Americans forming the trusteeship principle that:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "\"No generation can exclusively own the renewable resources by which it lives. We hold the commonwealth in trust for prosperity, and to lessen or destroy it is to commit treason against the future\"",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, several events occurred which raised the public awareness of harm to the environment caused by man. In 1954, the 23 man crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Lucky Dragon was exposed to radioactive fallout from a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll. By 1969, the public reaction to an ecologically catastrophic oil spill from an offshore well in California's Santa Barbara Channel, Barry Commoner's protest against nuclear testing, along with Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, and Paul R. Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968) all added anxiety about the environment. Pictures of Earth from space emphasized that the earth was small and fragile.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "As the public became more aware of environmental issues, concern about air pollution, water pollution, solid waste disposal, dwindling energy resources, radiation, pesticide poisoning (particularly use of DDT as described in Carson's influential Silent Spring), noise pollution, and other environmental problems engaged a broadening number of sympathizers. That public support for environmental concerns was widespread became clear in the Earth Day demonstrations of 1970.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Several books after the middle of the 20th century contributed to the rise of American environmentalism (as distinct from the longer-established conservation movement), especially among college and university students and the more literate public. One was the publication of the first textbook on ecology, Fundamentals of Ecology, by Eugene Odum and Howard Odum, in 1953. Another was the appearance of the Carson's 1962 best-seller Silent Spring. Her book brought about a whole new interpretation of pesticides by exposing their harmful effects in nature. From this book, many began referring to Carson as the \"mother of the environmental movement\". Another influential development was a 1965 lawsuit, Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, opposing the construction of a power plant on Storm King Mountain in New York (state), which is said to have given birth to modern United States environmental law. The wide popularity of The Whole Earth Catalogs, starting in 1968, was quite influential among the younger, hands-on, activist generation of the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, in addition to opposing environmental degradation and protecting wilderness, an increased focus on coexisting with natural biodiversity has appeared, a strain that is apparent in the movement for sustainable agriculture and in the concept of Reconciliation Ecology.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "During his time as U.S President, Lyndon Johnson would sign over 300 environment protection measures into law. This was credited as forming the legal basis of the modern environmental movement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In the modern wilderness preservation movement, important philosophical roles are played by the writings of John Muir who had been activist in the late 19th and early 20th century. Along with Muir perhaps most influential in the modern movement is Henry David Thoreau who published Walden in 1854. Also important was forester and ecologist Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of the Wilderness Society in 1935, who wrote a classic of nature observation and ethical philosophy, A Sand County Almanac, (1949).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "There is also a growing movement of campers and other people who enjoy outdoor recreation activities to help preserve the environment while spending time in the wilderness.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The anti-nuclear movement in the United States consists of more than 80 anti-nuclear groups that have acted to oppose nuclear power or nuclear weapons, or both, in the United States. These groups include the Abalone Alliance, Clamshell Alliance, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Physicians for Social Responsibility. The anti-nuclear movement has delayed construction or halted commitments to build some new nuclear plants, and has pressured the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to enforce and strengthen the safety regulations for nuclear power plants.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Anti-nuclear protests reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s and grew out of the environmental movement. Campaigns which captured national public attention involved the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, Diablo Canyon Power Plant, Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant, and Three Mile Island. On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to the cold war arms race. It was the largest anti-nuclear protest and the largest political demonstration in American history. International Day of Nuclear Disarmament protests were held on June 20, 1983 at 50 sites across the United States. There were many Nevada Desert Experience protests and peace camps at the Nevada Test Site during the 1980s and 1990s.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "More recent campaigning by anti-nuclear groups has related to several nuclear power plants including the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, Indian Point Energy Center, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station, Salem Nuclear Power Plant, and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. There have also been campaigns relating to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, the Idaho National Laboratory, proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the Hanford Site, the Nevada Test Site, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and transportation of nuclear waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Some scientists and engineers have expressed reservations about nuclear power, including: Barry Commoner, S. David Freeman, John Gofman, Arnold Gundersen, Mark Z. Jacobson, Amory Lovins, Arjun Makhijani, Gregory Minor, Joseph Romm and Benjamin K. Sovacool. Scientists who have opposed nuclear weapons include Linus Pauling and Eugene Rabinowitch.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Antitoxics groups are a subgroup that is affiliated with the Environmental Movement in the United States, that is primarily concerned with the effects that cities and their by-products have on humans. This aspect of the movement is a self-proclaimed \"movement of housewives\". Concern around the issues of groundwater contamination and air pollution rose in the early 1980s and individuals involved in antitoxics groups claim that they are concerned for the health of their families. A prominent case can be seen in the Love Canal Homeowner's association (LCHA); in this case, a housing development was built on a site that had been used for toxic dumping by the Hooker Chemical Company. As a result of this dumping, the residents had symptoms of skin irritation, Lois Gibbs, a resident of the development, started a grassroots campaign for reparations. Eventual success led to the government having to purchase homes that were sold in the development.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Prior to the 1970s the protection of basic air and water supplies was a matter mainly left to each state. During the 1970s, the primary responsibility for clean air and water shifted to the federal government. Growing concerns, both environmental and economic, from cities and towns as well as sportsman and other local groups, and senators such as Maine's Edmund S. Muskie, led to the passage of extensive legislation, notably the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. Other legislation included the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which established the Council on Environmental Quality; the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972; the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Safe Drinking Water Act (1974), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (1976), the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1977, which became known as the Clean Water Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, commonly known as the Superfund Act (1980). These laws regulated public drinking water systems, toxic substances, pesticides, and ocean dumping; and protected wildlife, wilderness, and wild and scenic rivers. Moreover, the new laws provide for pollution research, standard setting, contaminated site cleanup, monitoring, and enforcement.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The creation of these laws led to a major shift in the environmental movement. Groups such as the Sierra Club shifted focus from local issues to becoming a lobby in Washington and new groups, for example, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense, arose to influence politics as well. (Larson)",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan sought to curtail the scope of environmental protection taking steps such as appointing James G. Watt. The major environmental groups responded with mass mailings which led to increased membership and donations.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "When industry groups lobbied to weaken regulation and a backlash against environmental regulations, the so-called wise use movement gained importance and influence.(Larson)",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 2004, with the environmental movement seemingly stalled, some environmentalists started questioning whether \"environmentalism\" was even a useful political framework. According to a controversial essay titled \"The Death of Environmentalism \" (Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, 2004) American environmentalism has been remarkably successful in protecting the air, water, and large stretches of wilderness in North America and Europe, but these environmentalists have stagnated as a vital force for cultural and political change.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Shellenberger and Nordhaus wrote, \"Today environmentalism is just another special interest. Evidence for this can be found in its concepts, its proposals, and its reasoning. What stands out is how arbitrary environmental leaders are about what gets counted and what doesn't as 'environmental.' Most of the movement's leading thinkers, funders, and advocates do not question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we should be doing.\" Their essay was followed by a speech in San Francisco called \"Is Environmentalism Dead?\" by former Sierra Club President, Adam Werbach, who argued for the evolution of environmentalism into a more expansive, relevant and powerful progressive politics. Werbach endorsed building an environmental movement that is more relevant to average Americans and controversially chose to lead Wal-Mart's effort to take sustainability mainstream.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "These \"post-environmental movement\" thinkers argue that the ecological crises the human species faces in the 21st century are qualitatively different from the problems the environmental movement was created to address in the 1960s and 1970s. They argue that climate change and habitat destruction are global and more complex, therefore demanding far deeper transformations of the economy, the culture and political life. The consequence of environmentalism's outdated and arbitrary definition, they argue, is a political irrelevancy.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "These \"politically neutral\" groups tend to avoid global conflicts and view the settlement of inter-human conflict as separate from regard for nature – in direct contradiction to the ecology movement and peace movement which have increasingly close links: while Green Parties, Greenpeace, and groups like the ACTivist Magazine regard ecology, biodiversity, and an end to non-human extinction as an absolute basis for peace, the local groups may not, and see a high degree of global competition and conflict as justifiable if it lets them preserve their own local uniqueness. However, such groups tend not to \"burn out\" and to sustain for long periods, even generations, protecting the same local treasures.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Local groups increasingly find that they benefit from collaboration, e.g. on consensus decision-making methods, or making simultaneous policy, or relying on common legal resources, or even sometimes a common glossary. However, the differences between the various groups that make up the modern environmental movement tend to outweigh such similarities, and they rarely co-operate directly except on a few major global questions. In a notable exception, over 1,000 local groups from around the country united for a single day of action as part of the Step It Up 2007 campaign for real solutions to global warming.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Groups such as The Bioregional Revolution are calling on the need to bridge these differences, as the converging problems of the 21st century they claim compel the people to unite and to take decisive action. They promote bioregionalism, permaculture, and local economies as solutions to these problems, overpopulation, global warming, global epidemics, and water scarcity, but most notably to \"peak oil\" – the prediction that the country is likely to reach a maximum in global oil production which could spell drastic changes in many aspects of the residents' everyday lives.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Many environmental lawsuits turn on the question of who has standing; are the legal issues limited to property owners, or does the general public have a right to intervene? Christopher D. Stone's 1972 essay, \"Should trees have standing?\" seriously addressed the question of whether natural objects themselves should have legal rights, including the right to participate in lawsuits. Stone suggested that there was nothing absurd in this view, and noted that many entities now regarded as having legal rights were, in the past, regarded as \"things\" that were regarded as legally rightless; for example, aliens, children and women. His essay is sometimes regarded as an example of the fallacy of hypostatization.",
"title": "Environmental rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "One of the earliest lawsuits to establish that citizens may sue for environmental and aesthetic harms was Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, decided in 1965 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The case helped halt the construction of a power plant on Storm King Mountain in New York State. See also United States environmental law and David Sive, an attorney who was involved in the case.",
"title": "Environmental rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Conservation biology is an important and rapidly developing field. One way to avoid the stigma of an \"ism\" was to evolve early anti-nuclear groups into the more scientific Green Parties, sprout new NGOs such as Greenpeace and Earth Action, and devoted groups to protecting global biodiversity and preventing global warming and climate change. But in the process, much of the emotional appeal, and many of the original aesthetic goals were lost. Nonetheless, these groups have well-defined ethical and political views, backed by science.",
"title": "Environmental rights"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "Some people are skeptical of the environmental movement and feel that it is more deeply rooted in politics than science. Although there have been serious debates about climate change and effects of some pesticides and herbicides that mimic animal sex steroids, science has shown that some of the claims of environmentalists have credence.",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Novelist Michael Crichton appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on September 28, 2005, to address concerns and recommended the employment of double-blind experimentation in environmental research. Crichton suggested that because environmental issues are so political in nature, policymakers need neutral, conclusive data to base their decisions on, rather than conjecture and rhetoric, and double-blind experiments are the most efficient way to achieve that aim.",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "A consistent theme acknowledged by both supporters and critics (though more commonly vocalized by critics) of the environmental movement is that we know very little about the Earth we live in. Most fields of environmental studies are relatively new, and therefore what research we have is limited and does not date far enough back for us to completely understand long-term environmental trends. This has led a number of environmentalists to support the use of the precautionary principle in policy-making, which ultimately asserts that we don't know how certain actions may affect the environment and because there is reason to believe they may cause more harm than good we should refrain from such actions.",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "In the December 1994 Wild Forest Review, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair wrote \"The mainstream environmental movement was elitist, highly paid, detached from the people, indifferent to the working class, and a firm ally of big government.…The environmental movement is now accurately perceived as just another well-financed and cynical special interest group, its rancid infrastructure supported by Democratic Party operatives and millions in grants from corporate foundations.\"",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Historians have criticized the modern environmental movement for having romantic idealizations of wilderness. William Cronon writes \"wilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest.\" Cronon claims that \"to the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead.\"",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Similarly Michael Pollan has argued that the wilderness ethic leads people to dismiss areas whose wildness is less than absolute. In his book Second Nature, Pollan writes that \"once a landscape is no longer 'virgin' it is typically written off as fallen, lost to nature, irredeemable.\"",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Within the environmental movement, an ideological debate has taken place between those with an ecocentric viewpoint and an anthropocentric viewpoint. The anthropocentric view has been seen as the conservationist approach to the environment with nature viewed, at least in part, as a resource to be used by man. In contrast to the conservationist approach the ecocentric view, associated with John Muir, Henry David Thoreau and William Wordsworth referred to as the preservationist movement. This approach sees nature in a more spiritual way. Many environmental historians consider the split between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot. During the preservation/conservation debate, the term preservationist becomes to be seen as a pejorative term.",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "While the ecocentric view focused on biodiversity and wilderness protection the anthropocentric view focuses on urban pollution and social justice. Some environmental writers, for example, William Cronon have criticized the ecocentric view as have a dualist view as a man being separate from nature. Critics of the anthropocentric viewpoint contend that the environmental movement has been taken over by so-called leftist with an agenda beyond environmental protection.",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Environmentalists became much more influential in American politics after the creation or strengthening of numerous US environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act and the formation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. These successes were followed by the enactment of a whole series of laws regulating waste (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act), toxic substances (Toxic Substances Control Act), pesticides (FIFRA: Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act), clean-up of polluted sites (Superfund), protection of endangered species (Endangered Species Act), and more.",
"title": "Environmentalism and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "Fewer environmental laws have been passed in the last decade as corporations and other conservative interests have increased their influence over American politics. Corporate cooperation against environmental lobbyists has been organized by the Wise Use group. At the same time, many environmentalists have been turning toward other means of persuasion, such as working with business, community, and other partners to promote sustainable development. Since the 1970s, coalitions and interests groups have directed themselves along the democrat and republican party lines.",
"title": "Environmentalism and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "Much environmental activism is directed towards conservation as well as the prevention or elimination of pollution. However, conservation movements, ecology movements, peace movements, green parties, green- and eco-anarchists often subscribe to very different ideologies, while supporting the same goals as those who call themselves \"environmentalists\". To outsiders, these groups or factions can appear to be indistinguishable.",
"title": "Environmentalism and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "As human population and industrial activity continue to increase, environmentalists often find themselves in serious conflict with those who believe that human and industrial activities should not be overly regulated or restricted, such as some libertarians.",
"title": "Environmentalism and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Environmentalists often clash with others, particularly \"corporate interests,\" over issues of the management of natural resources, like in the case of the atmosphere as a \"carbon dump\", the focus of climate change, and global warming controversy. They usually seek to protect commonly owned or unowned resources for future generations.",
"title": "Environmentalism and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "While most environmentalists are mainstream and peaceful, a small minority are more radical in their approach. Adherents of radical environmentalism and ecological anarchism are involved in direct action campaigns to protect the environment. Some campaigns have employed controversial tactics including sabotage, blockades, and arson, while most use peaceful protests such as marches, tree sitting, and the like. There is substantial debate within the environmental movement as to the acceptability of these tactics, but almost all environmentalists condemn violent actions that can harm humans.",
"title": "Environmentalism and politics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "In 2023, for the first time in the history of the United States, the police killed an environmental activist during a protest. The protesters were camping in Atlanta's South River Forest, a natural area that the City of Atlanta and Police planned to raze in order to erect a police training facility to be called \"Cop City.\" Police attacked protesters on 18 January 2023. One protester, Tortuguita or, Manuel Esteban Páez Terán was killed and seven more were arrested.",
"title": "Clashes by police"
}
]
| The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments. The environmental movement today consists of both large national groups and also many smaller local groups with local concerns. Some resemble the old U.S. conservation movement - whose modern expression is The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society and National Geographic Society - American organizations with a worldwide influence. Increasingly that movement is organized around addressing climate change in the United States alongside interrelated issues like climate justice and broader environmental justice issues. | 2001-12-03T15:03:14Z | 2023-12-31T14:26:52Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_movement_in_the_United_States |
10,184 | Environmentalist | An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities". An environmentalist is engaged in or believes in the philosophy of environmentalism or one of the related philosophies.
The environmental movement has a number of subcommunities, with different approaches and focuses – each developing distinct movements and identities. Environmentalists are sometimes referred to by critics with informal or derogatory terms such as "greenie" and "tree-hugger", with some members of the public associating the most radical environmentalists with these derogatory terms.
The environmental movement contains a number of subcommunities, that have developed with different approaches and philosophies in different parts of the world. Notably, the early environmental movement experienced a deep tension between the philosophies of conservation and broader environmental protection. In recent decades the rise to prominence of environmental justice, indigenous rights and key environmental crises like the climate crises, has led to the development of other environmentalist identities. Environmentalists can be describe as one of the following:
The public recognition of the climate crisis and emergence of the climate movement in the beginning of the 21st century led to a distinct group of activists. Activations like the School Strike for Climate and Fridays for Future, have led to a new generation of youth activists like Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin and Vanessa Nakate who have created a global youth climate movement.
One notable strain of environmentalism, comes from the philosophy of the conservation movement. Conservationists are concerned with leaving the environment in a better state than the condition they found it distinct from human interaction. The conservation movement is associated with the early parts of the environmental movement of the 19th and 20th century.
Environmental defenders or environmental human rights defenders are individuals or collectives who protect the environment from harms resulting from resource extraction, hazardous waste disposal, infrastructure projects, land appropriation, or other dangers. In 2019, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously recognised their importance to environmental protection. The term environmental defender is broadly applied to a diverse range of environmental groups and leaders from different cultures that all employ different tactics and hold different agendas. Use of the term is contested, as it homogenizes such a wide range of groups and campaigns, many of whom do not self-identify with the term and may not have explicit aims to protect the environment (being motivated primarily by social justice concerns).
The adoption of environmentalist into a distinct political ideology led to the development of political parties called "green parties", typically with a leftist political approach to overlapping issues of environmental and social wellbeing.
Water protectors are activists, organizers, and cultural workers focused on the defense of the world's water and water systems. The water protector name, analysis and style of activism arose from Indigenous communities in North America during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Reservation, which began with an encampment on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard's land in April, 2016.
Water protectors are similar to land defenders, but are distinguished from other environmental activists by this philosophy and approach that is rooted in an indigenous cultural perspective that sees water and the land as sacred. This relationship with water moves beyond simply having access to clean drinking water, and comes from the beliefs that water is necessary for life and that water is a relative and therefore it must be treated with respect. As such, the reasons for protection of water are older, more holistic, and integrated into a larger cultural and spiritual whole than in most modern forms of environmental activism, which may be more based in seeing water and other extractive resources as commodities.
Some of the notable environmentalists who have been active in lobbying for environmental protection and conservation include:
In recent years, there are not only environmentalists for natural environment but also environmentalists for human environment. For instance, the activists who call for "mental green space" by getting rid of disadvantages of internet, cable TV, and smartphones have been called "info-environmentalists". | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, \"a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities\". An environmentalist is engaged in or believes in the philosophy of environmentalism or one of the related philosophies.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The environmental movement has a number of subcommunities, with different approaches and focuses – each developing distinct movements and identities. Environmentalists are sometimes referred to by critics with informal or derogatory terms such as \"greenie\" and \"tree-hugger\", with some members of the public associating the most radical environmentalists with these derogatory terms.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The environmental movement contains a number of subcommunities, that have developed with different approaches and philosophies in different parts of the world. Notably, the early environmental movement experienced a deep tension between the philosophies of conservation and broader environmental protection. In recent decades the rise to prominence of environmental justice, indigenous rights and key environmental crises like the climate crises, has led to the development of other environmentalist identities. Environmentalists can be describe as one of the following:",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The public recognition of the climate crisis and emergence of the climate movement in the beginning of the 21st century led to a distinct group of activists. Activations like the School Strike for Climate and Fridays for Future, have led to a new generation of youth activists like Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin and Vanessa Nakate who have created a global youth climate movement.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "One notable strain of environmentalism, comes from the philosophy of the conservation movement. Conservationists are concerned with leaving the environment in a better state than the condition they found it distinct from human interaction. The conservation movement is associated with the early parts of the environmental movement of the 19th and 20th century.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Environmental defenders or environmental human rights defenders are individuals or collectives who protect the environment from harms resulting from resource extraction, hazardous waste disposal, infrastructure projects, land appropriation, or other dangers. In 2019, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously recognised their importance to environmental protection. The term environmental defender is broadly applied to a diverse range of environmental groups and leaders from different cultures that all employ different tactics and hold different agendas. Use of the term is contested, as it homogenizes such a wide range of groups and campaigns, many of whom do not self-identify with the term and may not have explicit aims to protect the environment (being motivated primarily by social justice concerns).",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The adoption of environmentalist into a distinct political ideology led to the development of political parties called \"green parties\", typically with a leftist political approach to overlapping issues of environmental and social wellbeing.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Water protectors are activists, organizers, and cultural workers focused on the defense of the world's water and water systems. The water protector name, analysis and style of activism arose from Indigenous communities in North America during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Reservation, which began with an encampment on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard's land in April, 2016.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Water protectors are similar to land defenders, but are distinguished from other environmental activists by this philosophy and approach that is rooted in an indigenous cultural perspective that sees water and the land as sacred. This relationship with water moves beyond simply having access to clean drinking water, and comes from the beliefs that water is necessary for life and that water is a relative and therefore it must be treated with respect. As such, the reasons for protection of water are older, more holistic, and integrated into a larger cultural and spiritual whole than in most modern forms of environmental activism, which may be more based in seeing water and other extractive resources as commodities.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Some of the notable environmentalists who have been active in lobbying for environmental protection and conservation include:",
"title": "Notable environmentalists"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In recent years, there are not only environmentalists for natural environment but also environmentalists for human environment. For instance, the activists who call for \"mental green space\" by getting rid of disadvantages of internet, cable TV, and smartphones have been called \"info-environmentalists\".",
"title": "Extension"
}
]
| An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities". An environmentalist is engaged in or believes in the philosophy of environmentalism or one of the related philosophies. The environmental movement has a number of subcommunities, with different approaches and focuses – each developing distinct movements and identities. Environmentalists are sometimes referred to by critics with informal or derogatory terms such as "greenie" and "tree-hugger", with some members of the public associating the most radical environmentalists with these derogatory terms. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-11-30T01:09:12Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalist |
10,186 | Eastern Orthodox Church | The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church, or officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptised members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via local synods. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the head of the Catholic Church (the pope). Nevertheless, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognised by them as primus inter pares ("first among equals"), a title formerly given to the patriarch of Rome. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Western Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern and Southeastern Europe.
Eastern Orthodox theology is based on the Scriptures and holy tradition, which incorporates the dogmatic decrees of the seven ecumenical councils, and the teaching of the Church Fathers. The church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, and that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles. It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, as passed down by holy tradition. Its patriarchates, descending from the pentarchy, and other autocephalous and autonomous churches, reflect a variety of hierarchical organisation. It recognises seven major sacraments, of which the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in synaxis. The church teaches that through consecration invoked by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the God-bearer and honoured in devotions.
The Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch—except for some breaks of communion such as the Photian schism or the Acacian schism—shared communion with the Church of Rome until the East–West Schism in 1054. The 1054 schism was the culmination of mounting theological, political, and cultural disputes, particularly over the authority of the pope, between those churches. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the various Oriental Orthodox Churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, all separating primarily over differences in Christology.
The Eastern Orthodox Church is the primary religious denomination in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Belarus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, North Macedonia, Cyprus, and Montenegro, is also dominant and widespread in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and maintains a distinguished presence in Germany, Spain, the United States, and Uzbekistan. Although originating in Western Asia the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians now live in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, and Siberia. Roughly half of Eastern Orthodox Christians live in the post-Soviet states, mostly in Russia. The communities in the former Byzantine regions of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean are among the oldest Orthodox communities from the Middle East, which are decreasing due to forced migration driven by increased religious persecution. Eastern Orthodox communities outside Western Asia, Asia Minor, Caucasia and Eastern Europe, including those in North America, Western Europe, and Australia, have been formed through diaspora, conversions, and missionary activity.
The Eastern Orthodox Church is defined as the Eastern Christians which recognise the seven ecumenical councils and usually are in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Patriarchate of Antioch, and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The Eastern Orthodox churches "are defined positively by their adherence to the dogmatic definitions of the seven [ecumenical] councils, by the strong sense of not being a sect or a denomination but simply continuing the Christian church, and, despite their varied origins, by adherence to the Byzantine rite". Those churches are negatively defined by their rejection of papal immediate and universal supremacy.
The seven ecumenical councils recognised by the Eastern Orthodox churches are: Nicaea I, Constantinople I, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople II, Constantinople III, and Nicaea II. Those churches consider the Quinisext Council "shar[es] the ecumenical authority of Constantinople III. "By an agreement that appears to be in place in the [Eastern] Orthodox world, possibly the council held in 879 to vindicate the Patriarch Photius will at some future date be recognized as the eighth [ecumenical] council" by the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Western Rite Orthodoxy exists both outside and inside Eastern Orthodoxy. Within Eastern Orthodoxy, it is practised by a vicariate of the Antiochian Orthodox church.
In keeping with the church's teaching on universality and with the Nicene Creed, Eastern Orthodox authorities such as Raphael of Brooklyn have insisted that the full name of the church has always included the term "Catholic", as in "Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church".
The official name of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the "Orthodox Catholic Church". It is the name by which the church refers to itself and which is issued in its liturgical or canonical texts. Eastern Orthodox theologians refer to the church as Catholic. This name and longer variants containing "Catholic" are also recognised and referenced in other books and publications by secular or non-Eastern Orthodox writers. The catechism of Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow published in the 19th century is titled: The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church (Russian: Пространный христианский катехизис православныя, кафолическия восточныя Церкви).
From ancient times through the first millennium, Greek was the most prevalent shared language in the demographic regions where the Byzantine Empire flourished, and Greek, being the language in which the New Testament was written, was the primary liturgical language of the church. For this reason, the eastern churches were sometimes identified as "Greek" (in contrast to the "Roman" or "Latin" church, which used a Latin translation of the Bible), even before the Great Schism of 1054. After 1054, "Greek Orthodox" or "Greek Catholic" marked a church as being in communion with Constantinople, much as "Catholic" did for communion with the Catholic Church.
In Hungarian, the church is still commonly called "Eastern Greek" (Hungarian: Görögkeleti). This identification with Greek, however, became increasingly confusing with time. Missionaries brought Eastern Orthodoxy to many regions without ethnic Greeks, where the Greek language was not spoken. In addition, struggles between Rome and Constantinople to control parts of Southeastern Europe resulted in the conversion of some churches to the Catholic Church, which then also used "Greek Catholic" to indicate their continued use of the Byzantine rites. Today, only a minority of Eastern Orthodox adherents use Greek as the language of worship.
"Eastern", then, indicates the geographical element in the church's origin and development, while "Orthodox" indicates the faith, as well as communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. There are additional Christian churches in the east that are in communion with neither the Catholic Church nor the Eastern Orthodox Church, who tend to be distinguished by the category named "Oriental Orthodox". While the Eastern Orthodox Church continues officially to call itself "Catholic", for reasons of universality, the common title of "Eastern Orthodox Church" avoids casual confusion with the Catholic Church.
The first known use of the phrase "the catholic Church" (he katholike ekklesia) occurred in a letter written about AD 110 from one Greek church to another (Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans). The letter states: "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church." Thus, almost from the beginning, Christians referred to the Christian Church as the "one, holy, catholic (from the Greek καθολική, 'according to the whole, universal') and apostolic Church". The Eastern Orthodox Church claims that it is today the continuation and preservation of that same early church.
A number of other Christian churches also make a similar claim: the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assyrian Church, and the Oriental Orthodox. In the Eastern Orthodox view, the Assyrians and Orientals left the Orthodox Church in the years following the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) and the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), respectively, in their refusal to accept those councils' Christological definitions. Similarly, the churches in Rome and Constantinople separated in an event known as the East–West Schism, traditionally dated to the year 1054, although it was more a gradual process than a sudden break.
To all these churches, the claim to catholicity (universality, oneness with the ancient Church) is important for multiple doctrinal reasons that have more bearing internally in each church than in their relation to the others, now separated in faith. The meaning of holding to a faith that is true is the primary reason why anyone's statement of which church split off from which other has any significance at all; the issues go as deep as the schisms. The depth of this meaning in the Eastern Orthodox Church is registered first in its use of the word "Orthodox" itself, a union of Greek orthos ("straight", "correct", "true", "right") and doxa ("common belief", from the ancient verb δοκέω-δοκῶ which is translated "to believe", "to think", "to consider", "to imagine", "to assume").
The dual meanings of doxa, with "glory" or "glorification" (of God by the church and of the church by God), especially in worship, yield the pair "correct belief" and "true worship". Together, these express the core of a fundamental teaching about the inseparability of belief and worship and their role in drawing the church together with Christ. All Slavic churches use the title Pravoslavie (Cyrillic: Православие), meaning "correctness of glorification", to denote what is in English Orthodoxy, while the Georgians use the title Martlmadidebeli.
The term "Eastern Church" (the geographic east in the East–West Schism) has been used to distinguish it from western Christendom (the geographic West, which at first came to designate the Catholic communion, later also the various Protestant and Anglican branches). "Eastern" is used to indicate that the highest concentrations of the Eastern Orthodox Church presence remain in the eastern part of the Christian world, although it is growing worldwide. Orthodox Christians throughout the world use various ethnic or national jurisdictional titles, or more inclusively, the title "Eastern Orthodox", "Orthodox Catholic", or simply "Orthodox".
What unites Orthodox Christians is the catholic faith as carried through holy tradition. That faith is expressed most fundamentally in scripture and worship, and the latter most essentially through baptism and in the Divine Liturgy.
The lines of even this test can blur, however, when differences that arise are not due to doctrine, but to recognition of jurisdiction. As the Eastern Orthodox Church has spread into the west and over the world, the church as a whole has yet to sort out all the inter-jurisdictional issues that have arisen in the expansion, leaving some areas of doubt about what is proper church governance. Moreover, as in the ancient church persecutions, the aftermath of persecutions of Christians in communist nations has complicated some issues of governance that have yet to be completely resolved.
All members of the Eastern Orthodox Church profess the same faith, regardless of race or nationality, jurisdiction or local custom, or century of birth. Holy tradition encompasses the understandings and means by which that unity of faith is transmitted across boundaries of time, geography, and culture. It is a continuity that exists only inasmuch as it lives within Christians themselves. It is not static, nor an observation of rules, but rather a sharing of observations that spring both from within and also in keeping with others, even others who lived lives long past. The church proclaims the Holy Spirit maintains the unity and consistency of holy tradition to preserve the integrity of the faith within the church, as given in the scriptural promises.
Orthodoxy asserts that its shared beliefs, and its theology, exist within holy tradition and cannot be separated from it, and that their meaning is not expressed in mere words alone; that doctrine cannot be understood unless it is prayed; and that it must also be lived in order to be prayed, that without action, the prayer is idle, empty, and in vain, and therefore the theology of demons.
The Eastern Orthodox Church considers itself to be both orthodox and catholic. The doctrine of the Catholicity of the Church, as derived from the Nicene Creed, is essential to Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology. The term Catholicity of the Church (Greek Καθολικότης τῆς Ἐκκλησίας) is used in its original sense, as a designation for the universality of the Christian Church, centred around Christ. Therefore, the Eastern Orthodox notion of catholicity is not centred around any singular see, unlike the Catholic Church which has one earthly centre.
Due to the influence of the Catholic Church in the west, where the English language itself developed, the words "catholic" and "catholicity" are sometimes used to refer to that church specifically. However, the more prominent dictionary sense given for general use is still the one shared by other languages, implying breadth and universality, reflecting comprehensive scope. In a Christian context, the Christian Church, as identified with the original church founded by Christ and his apostles, is said to be catholic (or universal) in regard to its union with Christ in faith.
Just as Christ is indivisible, so are union with him and faith in him, whereby the Christian Church is "universal", unseparated, and comprehensive, including all who share that faith. Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware has called that "simple Christianity". That is the sense of early and patristic usage wherein the church usually refers to itself as the "Catholic Church", whose faith is the "Orthodox faith". It is also the sense within the phrase "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church", found in the Nicene Creed, and referred to in Orthodox worship, e.g. in the litany of the catechumens in the Divine Liturgy.
With the mutual excommunications of the East–West Schism in 1054, the churches in Rome and Constantinople each viewed the other as having departed from the true church, leaving a smaller but still-catholic church in place. Each retained the "Catholic" part of its title, the "Roman Catholic Church" (or Catholic Church) on the one hand, and the "Orthodox Catholic Church" on the other, each of which was defined in terms of inter-communion with either Rome or Constantinople. While the Eastern Orthodox Church recognises what it shares in common with other churches, including the Catholic Church, it sees catholicity in terms of complete union in communion and faith, with the Church throughout all time, and the sharing remains incomplete when not shared fully.
Paul and the Apostles travelled extensively throughout the Roman Empire, including Asia Minor, establishing churches in major communities, with the first churches appearing in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, then in Antioch, Ethiopia, Egypt, Rome, Alexandria, Athens, Thessalonica, Illyricum, and Byzantium, which centuries later would become prominent as the New Rome. Christianity encountered considerable resistance in the Roman Empire, mostly because its adherents refused to comply with the demands of the Roman state—often even when their lives were threatened—by offering sacrifices to the pagan gods. Despite persecution, skepticism, and initial social stigma, the Christian Church spread, particularly following the conversion of Emperor Constantine I in AD 312.
By the fourth century, Christianity was present in numerous regions well beyond the Levant. A number of influential schools of thought had arisen, particularly the Alexandrian and Antiochian philosophical approaches. Other groups, such as the Arians, had also managed to gain influence. However, their positions caused theological conflicts within the church, thus prompting the Emperor Constantine to call for a great ecumenical synod in order to define the church's position against the growing, often widely diverging, philosophical and theological interpretations of Christianity. He made it possible for this council to meet not only by providing a location, but by offering to pay for the transportation of all the existing bishops of the church. Most modern Christian churches regard this synod, commonly called the First Council of Nicaea or more generally the First Ecumenical Council, as of major importance.
Several doctrinal disputes from the fourth century onwards led to the calling of ecumenical councils. In the Orthodox Church, an ecumenical council is the supreme authority that can be invoked to resolve contested issues of the faith. As such, these councils have been held to resolve the most important theological matters that came to be disputed within the Christian Church. Many lesser disagreements were resolved through local councils in the areas where they arose, before they grew significant enough to require an ecumenical council.
There are seven councils authoritatively recognised as ecumenical by the Eastern Orthodox Church:
There are also two other councils which are considered ecumenical by some Eastern Orthodox:
In addition to these councils, there have been a number of other significant councils meant to further define the Eastern Orthodox position. They are the Synods of Constantinople, in 1484, 1583, 1755, 1819, and 1872, the Synod of Iași in 1642, and the Pan-Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem in 1672. Another council convened in June 2016 to discuss many modern phenomena, other Christian confessions, Eastern Orthodoxy's relation with other religions and fasting disciplines.
Constantinople is generally considered to be the centre and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilisation". From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. Eastern Christian culture reached its golden age during the high point of the Byzantine Empire and continued to flourish in Ukraine and Russia, after the fall of Constantinople. Numerous autocephalous churches were established in Europe: Greece, Georgia, Ukraine, as well as in Russia and Asia.
In the 530s the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) was built in Constantinople under Emperor Justinian I. Beginning with subsequent Byzantine architecture, Hagia Sophia became the paradigmatic Orthodox church form and its architectural style was emulated by Ottoman mosques a thousand years later. Being the episcopal see of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, it remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. Hagia Sophia has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world", and architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilisation, and it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture".
There are the "Nestorian" churches resulted from the reaction of the Council of Ephesus (431), which are the earliest surviving Eastern Christian churches that keep the faith of only the first two ecumenical councils, i.e., the First Council of Nicaea (325) and the First Council of Constantinople (381) as legitimate. "Nestorian" is an outsider's term for a tradition that predated the influence of Nestorius, the origin of which might lie in certain sections of the School of Antioch or via Nestorius' teachers Theodore of Mopsuestia or Diodore of Tarsus. The modern incarnation of the "Nestorian Church" is commonly referred to as "the Assyrian Church" or fully as the Assyrian Church of the East.
The church in Egypt (Patriarchate of Alexandria) split into two groups following the Council of Chalcedon (451), over a dispute about the relation between the divine and human natures of Jesus. Eventually this led to each group anathematising the other. Those that remained in communion with the other patriarchs (by accepting the Council of Chalcedon) are known today as the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, where the adjective "Greek" refers to their ties to the Greek-speaking culture of the Byzantine Empire.
Those who disagreed with the findings of the Council of Chalcedon were the majority in Egypt. Today they are known as the Coptic Orthodox Church, having maintained a separate patriarchate. The Coptic Orthodox Church is currently the largest Christian church in Egypt and in the whole Middle East. There was also a similar, albeit smaller scale, split in Syria (Patriarchate of Antioch), which resulted in the separation of the Syriac Orthodox Church from the Byzantine Patriarchate of Antioch.
Those who disagreed with the Council of Chalcedon are sometimes called "Oriental Orthodox" to distinguish them from the "Eastern Orthodox", who accepted the Council of Chalcedon. Oriental Orthodox are also sometimes referred to as "non-Chalcedonians", or "anti-Chalcedonians". The Oriental Orthodox Church denies that it is monophysite and prefers the term "miaphysite", to denote the "united" nature of Jesus (two natures united into one) consistent with Cyril's theology: "The term union ... signifies the concurrence in one reality of those things which are understood to be united" and "the Word who is ineffably united with it in a manner beyond all description" (Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ). This is also defined in the Coptic liturgy, where it is mentioned "He made it [his humanity] one with his divinity without mingling, without confusion and without alteration", and "His divinity parted not from his humanity for a single moment nor a twinkling of an eye." They do not accept the teachings of Eutyches, or Eutychianism. Both the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches formally believe themselves to be the continuation of the true church.
In the ninth and tenth centuries, Christianity made great inroads into pagan Europe, including Bulgaria (864) and later Kievan Rus' (988). This work was made possible by Cyril and Methodius of Thessaloniki, two brothers chosen by Byzantine emperor Michael III to fulfil the request of Rastislav of Moravia for teachers who could minister to the Moravians in their own language. Cyril and Methodius began translating the divine liturgy, other liturgical texts, and the Gospels along with some other scriptural texts into local languages; with time, as these translations were copied by speakers of other dialects, the hybrid literary language Church Slavonic was created. Originally sent to convert the Slavs of Great Moravia, Cyril and Methodius were forced to compete with Frankish missionaries from the Roman diocese; their disciples were driven out of Great Moravia in AD 886 and emigrated to Bulgaria.
After the Christianisation of Bulgaria in 864, the disciples of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria, the most important being Clement of Ohrid and Naum of Preslav, were of great importance to the Orthodox faith in the First Bulgarian Empire. In a short time they managed to prepare and instruct the future Bulgarian clergy into the biblical texts and in AD 870 the Fourth Council of Constantinople granted the Bulgarians the oldest organised autocephalous Slavic Orthodox Church, which shortly thereafter became Patriarchate. The success of the conversion of the Bulgarians facilitated the conversion of the East Slavs. A major event in this effort was the development of the Cyrillic script in Bulgaria, at the Preslav Literary School in the ninth century; this script, along with the liturgical Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian, was declared official in Bulgaria in 893.
The work of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples had a major impact on the Serbs as well. They accepted Christianity collectively along familial and tribal lines, a gradual process that occurred between the seventh and ninth centuries. In commemoration of their baptisms, each Serbian family or tribe began to celebrate an exclusively Serbian custom called Slava (patron saint) in a special way to honour the saint on whose day they received the sacrament of baptism. It is the most solemn day of the year for all Serbs of the Orthodox faith and has played a role of vital importance in the history of the Serbian people. Slava remains a celebration of the conversion of the Serbian people, which the church blessed and proclaimed a church institution.
The missionaries to the East and South Slavs had great success in part because they used the people's native language rather than Greek, the predominant language of the Byzantine Empire, or Latin, as the Roman priests did. Perhaps the greatest legacy of their efforts is the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the largest of the Orthodox churches.
In the 11th century, what was recognised as the Great Schism took place between Rome and Constantinople, which led to separation between the Church of the West, the Catholic Church, and the Eastern Byzantine churches, now the Orthodox. There were doctrinal issues like the filioque clause and the authority of the Roman Pope involved in the split, but these were greatly exacerbated by political factors of both Church and state, and by cultural and linguistic differences between Latins and Greeks. Regarding papal supremacy, the Eastern half grew disillusioned with the Pope's centralisation of power, as well as his blatant attempts of excluding the Eastern half in regard to papal approvals. It had previously been the case that the emperor would have a say when a new Pope was elected, but towards the high Middle Ages, the Christians in Rome were slowly consolidating power and removing Byzantine influence. However, even before this exclusionary tendency from the West, well before 1054, the Eastern and Western halves of the Church were in perpetual conflict, particularly during the periods of Eastern iconoclasm and the Photian schism.
The final breach is often considered to have arisen after the capture and sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204; the final break with Rome occurred circa 1450. The sacking of Church of Holy Wisdom and establishment of the Latin Empire as a seeming attempt to supplant the Orthodox Byzantine Empire in 1204 is viewed with some rancour to the present day. In 2004, Pope John Paul II extended a formal apology for the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, which had also been strongly condemned by the Pope at the time, Innocent III; the apology was formally accepted by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. However, many items stolen during this time, such as holy relics and riches, are still held in various European cities, particularly Venice.
Reunion was attempted twice, at the 1274 Second Council of Lyon and the 1439 Council of Florence. The Council of Florence briefly reestablished communion between East and West, which lasted until after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In each case, however, the councils were rejected by the Orthodox people as a whole, and the union of Florence also became very politically difficult after Constantinople came under Ottoman rule. However, in the time since, several local Orthodox Christian churches have renewed union with Rome, known as the Eastern Catholic Churches. Recent decades have seen a renewal of ecumenical spirit and dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
The Byzantine Empire never fully recovered from the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Over the next two centuries, it entered a precipitous decline in both territory and influence. In 1453, a much-diminished Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire, ending what was once the most powerful state in the Orthodox Christian world, if not in all Christendom. By this time Egypt, another major centre of Eastern Christianity, had been under Muslim control for some seven centuries; most Eastern Orthodox communities across southeastern Europe gradually came under Ottoman rule by the 16th century.
Under the Ottomans, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired substantial power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the Rûm, an Ottoman administrative unit meaning "Roman", which encompassed all Orthodox subjects of the Empire regardless of ethnicity. While legally subordinate to Muslims and subject to various restrictions, the Orthodox community was generally tolerated and left to govern its own internal affairs, both religiously and legally. Until the empire's dissolution in the early 20th century, Orthodox Christians would remain the largest non-Muslim minority, and at times among the wealthiest and most politically influential.
During the period 1914–1923 in Asia Minor (Anatolia) the Greek Genocide took place by the Ottomans as a result of the Greeks invading Turkey and the ensuing Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). During the Greek Genocide, many Orthodox Christians were persecuted and killed. The culmination of the martyrdom was the Asia Minor Catastrophe with the killing of a large number of Orthodox. Among them, 347 clergymen of the Smyrna region and Metropolitan of Smyrna Chrysostomos were tortured and martyred. The period 1923–1924 was followed by the obligatory population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
By the time most Orthodox communities came under Muslim rule in the mid 15th century, Orthodoxy was very strong in Russia, which had maintained close cultural and political ties with the Byzantine Empire; roughly two decades after the fall of Constantinople, Ivan III of Russia married Sophia Palaiologina, a niece of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI, and styled himself Tsar ("Caesar") or imperator. In 1547, his grandson Ivan IV, a devout Orthodox Christian, cemented the title as "Tsar of All Rus", establishing Russia's first centralised state with divinely appointed rulers. In 1589, the Patriarchate of Constantinople granted autocephalous status to Moscow, the capital of what was now the largest Orthodox Christian polity; the city thereafter referred to itself as the Third Rome —the cultural and religious heir of Constantinople.
Until 1666, when Patriarch Nikon was deposed by the tsar, the Russian Orthodox Church had been independent of the State. In 1721, the first Russian Emperor, Peter I, abolished completely the patriarchate and effectively made the church a department of the government, ruled by a most holy synod composed of senior bishops and lay bureaucrats appointed by the Emperor himself. Over time, Imperial Russia would style itself a protector and patron of all Orthodox Christians, especially those within the Ottoman Empire.
For nearly 200 years, until the Bolsheviks' October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Orthodox Church remained, in effect, a governmental agency and an instrument of tsarist rule. It was used to varying degrees in imperial campaigns of Russification, and was even allowed to levy taxes on peasants. The church's close ties with the state came to a head under Nicholas I (1825–1855), who explicitly made Orthodoxy a core doctrine of imperial unity and legitimacy. The Orthodox faith became further tied to Russian identity and nationalism, while the church was further subordinated to the interests of the state. Consequently, Russian Orthodox Church, along with the imperial regime to which it belonged, came to be presented as an enemy of the people by the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries.
After the October Revolution of 1917, part of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church fled abroad to escape Bolshevik persecutions, founding an independent church in exile, which reunified with its Russian counterpart in 2007. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers along with execution included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.
After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. However, in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. It is estimated that 50,000 clergy had been executed between the revolution and the end of the Khrushchev era. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active.
Albania was the only state to have declared itself officially fully atheist. In some other Communist states such as Romania, the Romanian Orthodox Church as an organisation enjoyed relative freedom and even prospered, albeit under strict secret police control. That, however, did not rule out demolishing churches and monasteries as part of broader systematisation (urban planning), and state persecution of individual believers. As an example of the latter, Romania stands out as a country which ran a specialised institution where many Orthodox (along with people of other faiths) were subjected to psychological punishment or torture and mind control experimentation in order to force them give up their religious convictions. However, this was only supported by one faction within the regime, and lasted only three years. The Communist authorities closed down the prison in 1952, and punished many of those responsible for abuses (twenty of them were sentenced to death).
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent Fall of Communist governments across the Orthodox world, there has been marked growth in Christian Orthodoxy, particularly in Russia. According to the Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, between 1991 and 2008, the share of Russian adults identifying as Orthodox Christian rose from 31 per cent to 72 per cent, based on analysis of three waves of data (1991, 1998 and 2008) from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a collaborative effort involving social scientists in about 50 countries.
Pew research conducted in 2017 found a doubling in the global Orthodox population since the early 20th century, with the greatest resurgence in Russia. In the former Soviet Union—where the largest Orthodox communities live—self-identified Orthodox Christians generally report low levels of observance and piety: In Russia, only 6% of Orthodox Christian adults reported attending church at least weekly, 15% say religion is "very important" in their lives, and 18% say they pray daily; other former Soviet republics display similarly low levels of religious observance.
Since 1923, the Orthodox Church of Estonia separated from the Russian Orthodox Church due to the imprisonment of Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, and the church in the Republic of Estonia falling out of communication with the Russian Church. They petitioned to be placed under direct control of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, operating as an autonomous church. In 1944 the Soviet Union annexed Estonia and outlawed the Orthodox Church of Estonia, forcefully bringing their churches back under the control of the Moscow Patriarch. However, the church's Primate, Metropolitan Aleksander, fled to Sweden with 21 clergymen and 8,000 followers and established a synod there operating there throughout the Cold War.
In 1993, the synod of the Orthodox Church of Estonia in Exile was re-registered and on 20 February 1996, Bartholomew I of Constantinople restored the church's position as subordinate to Constantinople, not Moscow. Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, who had been born in Estonia, rejected this loss of territory, and severed ties with Patriarch Bartholomew on February 23, removing his name from the diptychs. The two sides would then negotiate in Zurich, and a settlement was reached on 16 May 1996. In it, the ethnically Estonian population of Estonia would be under the jurisdiction of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, while the ethnically Russian population of Estonia would be under the jurisdiction of the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. After signing the document the Russian Church restored communion with the Orthodox Church.
Since the Baptism of Rus' in 867 the Orthodox church in Ukraine was led by the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' who was subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and was largely governed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since the territory was conquered in the Galicia–Volhynia Wars, ending in 1392. Poland-Lithuania lost the territory to Russia as part of the peace deal of the Great Northern War in 1654. In 1686 Dionysius IV of Constantinople transferred the territory to the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'. In 1924, Orthodox churches in Ukraine besides the Metropolitan of Kyiv were placed under the jurisdiction of the Polish Orthodox Church by the Ecumenical Patriarch as an autonomous church, however, the Russian Church never agreed to nor recognised this transfer, mostly due to Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and most of the Russian Church's leaders being imprisoned by Soviet officials. The Soviet Union, initially, had a policy of repression against the Orthodox Church, regardless of its denomination. However, after the start of the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin transformed the Russian Church into a propaganda tool to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. Following Soviet victory in the war, various autonomous and Independent Orthodox churches around eastern Europe were forcefully integrated or reintegrated into the Russian Church, including the church in Ukraine. Many of the church's leaders at this time were installed and closely monitored by the NKVD to ensure the church's support for the Soviet Union.
This situation led to the rise of rival, anti-Russian and anti-Soviet churches within Ukraine, including the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), founded in 1917 which declared itself the restored autonomous church that existed prior to 1686 but had been eradicated within Soviet Ukraine by the 1930s. The church was largely supported by Ukrainian émigrés and diaspora, and was restored as a legally recognised church by the Ukrainian government in 1991. In 1992, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) came into existence, being founded by members of the Russian Church defrocked for insubordination, alongside support with the Ukrainian émigré community. The church submitted a request for Ukrainian autocephaly at its founding synod in Kyiv in 1992. These churches were competing with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP), the Russian Church in Ukraine.
On 11 October 2018, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople revoked the Russian Church's letter of issue, allowing them to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv, re-established a stauropegion in Kyiv, and lifted the Russian Church's excommunication of members of the UAOC and the UOC-KP. In response, on 15 October, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church severed all ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and barred all members of the Russian Church from receiving communion or sacraments from any churches with ties to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. On 15 December 2018, the UAOC and UOC-KP voted to merge in the Unification council of the Eastern Orthodox churches of Ukraine, forming the restored Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with Epiphanius I of Ukraine, of the UOC-KP, becoming the first primate of the unified church. On 5 January 2019, Bartholomew I signed the official tomos that granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
In addition to severing ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Russian Church has also severed communion with Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens primate of the Church of Greece, Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria, and Archbishop Chrysostomos II of Cyprus. In response to the severing of ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe (AROCWE), voted to dissolve itself, although the vote failed, it resulted in a split in AROCWE, with several churches leaving to form the "Vicariate of Russian Tradition of the Metropolis of France", while John (Renneteau) [ru], head of the AROCWE, personally joined the Russian Church. Additionally, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UOC-MP severed all ties with the Russian Church.
The Eastern Orthodox Church is a fellowship of autocephalous (Greek for self-headed) churches, with the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople recognised as having primus inter pares status. The patriarch of Constantinople has the honour of primacy, but his title is only first among equals and has no real authority over churches other than the Constantinopolitan and set out prerogatives interpreted by the ecumenical patriarch, though at times the office of the ecumenical patriarch has been accused of Constantinopolitan or Eastern papism.
The Eastern Orthodox Church considers Jesus Christ to be the head of the church and the church to be his body. It is believed that authority and the grace of God is directly passed down to Orthodox bishops and clergy through the laying on of hands—a practice started by the apostles, and that this unbroken historical and physical link is an essential element of the true church (Acts 8:17, 1 Tim 4:14, Heb 6:2). The Eastern Orthodox assert that apostolic succession requires apostolic faith, and bishops without apostolic faith, who are in heresy, forfeit their claim to apostolic succession. Orthodox churches differentiate themselves from other Christian churches by practising "ritual and liturgy...rich in mystery and symbolism", similar to their views on the sacraments.
The Eastern Orthodox communion is organised into several regional churches, which are either autocephalous ("self-headed") or lower-ranking autonomous (the Greek term for "self-governing") church bodies unified in theology and worship. These include the fourteen autocephalous churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Georgia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, Greece, Poland, Romania, Albania, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which were officially invited to the Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016; the Orthodox Church in America formed in 1970; the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine created in 2019; and the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archbishopric, granted autocephaly by Serbian Orthodox Church in 2022; as well as a number of autonomous churches. Each church has a ruling bishop and a holy synod to administer its jurisdiction and to lead the Eastern Orthodox Church in the preservation and teaching of the apostolic and patristic traditions and church practices.
Each bishop has a territory (see) over which he governs. His main duty is to make sure the traditions and practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church are preserved. Bishops are equal in authority and cannot interfere in the jurisdiction of another bishop. Administratively, these bishops and their territories are organised into various autocephalous groups or synods of bishops who gather together at least twice a year to discuss the state of affairs within their respective sees. While bishops and their autocephalous synods have the ability to administer guidance in individual cases, their actions do not usually set precedents that affect the entire Eastern Orthodox Church. Bishops are almost always chosen from the monastic ranks and must remain unmarried.
The ecumenical councils followed a democratic form, with each bishop having one vote. Though present and allowed to speak before the council, members of the Imperial Roman/Byzantine court, abbots, priests, deacons, monks and laymen were not allowed to vote. The primary goal of these great synods was to verify and confirm the fundamental beliefs of the Great Christian Church as truth, and to remove as heresy any false teachings that would threaten the Christian Church. The pope of Rome at that time held the position of primus inter pares ("first among equals") and, while he was not present at any of the councils, he continued to hold this title until the East–West Schism of 1054.
Other councils have helped to define the Eastern Orthodox position, specifically the Quinisext Council, the Synods of Constantinople, 879–880, 1341, 1347, 1351, 1583, 1819, and 1872, the Synod of Iași, 1642, and the Pan-Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem, 1672; the Pan-Orthodox Council, held in Greece in 2016, was the only such Eastern Orthodox council in modern times.
According to Eastern Orthodox teaching the position of "first among equals" gives no additional power or authority to the bishop that holds it, but rather that this person sits as organisational head of a council of equals (like a president).
One of the decisions made by the First Council of Constantinople (the second ecumenical council, meeting in 381) and supported by later such councils was that the Patriarch of Constantinople should be given equal honour to the Pope of Rome since Constantinople was considered to be the "New Rome". According to the third canon of the second ecumenical council: "Because [Constantinople] is new Rome, the bishop of Constantinople is to enjoy the privileges of honor after the bishop of Rome".
The 28th canon of the fourth ecumenical council clarified this point by stating: "For the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of Old Rome because it was the royal city. And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious Bishops (i.e. the second ecumenical council in 381) actuated by the same consideration, gave equal privileges to the most holy throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is."
Because of the schism, the Eastern Orthodox no longer recognise the primacy of the pope of Rome. The patriarch of Constantinople therefore, like the Pope before him, now enjoys the title of "first among equals".
The most reliable estimates currently available number Eastern Orthodox adherents at around 220 million worldwide, making Eastern Orthodoxy the second largest Christian communion in the world after the Catholic Church.
According to the 2015 Yearbook of International Religious Demography, as of 2010, the Eastern Orthodox population was 4% of the global population, declining from 7.1% in 1910. The study also found a decrease in proportional terms, with Eastern Orthodox Christians making up 12.2% of the world's total Christian population in 2015 compared to 20.4% a century earlier. A 2017 report by the Pew Research Center reached similar figures, noting that Eastern Orthodoxy has seen slower growth and less geographic spread than Catholicism and Protestantism, which were driven by colonialism and missionary activity across the world.
Over two-thirds of all Eastern Orthodox members are concentrated in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia, with significant minorities in Central Asia and the Levant. However, Eastern Orthodoxy has become more globalised over the last century, seeing greater growth in Western Europe, the Americas, and parts of Africa; churches are present in the major cities of most countries. Adherents constitute the largest single religious community in Russia—which is home to roughly half the world's Eastern Orthodox Christians—and are the majority in Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, North Macedonia, Cyprus, and Montenegro; communities also dominate the disputed territories of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. Significant Eastern Orthodox minorities exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Albania, Syria, and many other countries.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the fastest growing religion in certain Western countries, primarily through labour migration from Eastern Europe, and to a lesser degree conversion. Ireland saw a doubling of its Eastern Orthodox population between 2006 and 2011. Spain and Germany have the largest communities in Western Europe, at roughly 1.5 million each, followed by Italy with around 900,000 and France with between 500,000 and 700,000.
In the Americas, four countries have over 100,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians: Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States; all but the latter had fewer than 20,000 at the turn of the 20th century. The U.S. has seen its community more than quadruple since 1910, from 460,000 to 1.8 million as of 2017; consequently, the number of Eastern Orthodox parishes has been growing, with a 16% increase between 2000 and 2010.
Turkey, which for centuries once had one of the largest Eastern Orthodox communities, saw its overall Christian population fall from roughly one-fifth in 1914 to 2.5% in 1927. This was predominantly due to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which saw most Christian territories become independent nations. The remaining Christian population was reduced further by large-scale genocides against the Armenian, Greek, Assyrian communities; subsequent population exchanges between Greece and Turkey and Bulgaria and Turkey; and associated emigration of Christians to foreign countries (mostly in Europe and the Americas). Today, only 0.2% of Turkey's population represent either Jews or various Christian denominations (320,000).
Eastern Orthodox Christians believe in the Trinity, three distinct, divine persons (hypostases), without overlap or modality among them, who each have one divine essence (ousia, Greek: οὐσία)—uncreated, immaterial, and eternal. These three persons are typically distinguished by their relation to each other. The Father is eternal and not begotten and does not proceed from any, the Son is eternal and begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is eternal and proceeds from the Father. Orthodox doctrine regarding the Trinity is summarised in the Nicene Creed.
Eastern Orthodox Christians believe in a monotheistic conception of God (God is only one), which is both transcendent (wholly independent of, and removed from, the material universe) and immanent (involved in the material universe). In discussing God's relationship to his creation, Eastern Orthodox theology distinguishes between God's eternal essence, which is totally transcendent, and his uncreated energies, which is how he reaches humanity. The God who is transcendent and the God who touches mankind are one and the same. That is, these energies are not something that proceed from God or that God produces, but rather they are God himself: distinct, yet inseparable from God's inner being. This view is often called Palamism.
In understanding the Trinity as "one God in three persons", "three persons" is not to be emphasised more than "one God", and vice versa. While the three persons are distinct, they are united in one divine essence, and their oneness is expressed in community and action so completely that they cannot be considered separately. For example, their salvation of mankind is an activity engaged in common: "Christ became man by the good will of the Father and by the cooperation of the Holy Spirit. Christ sends the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit forms Christ in our hearts, and thus God the Father is glorified." Their "communion of essence" is "indivisible". Trinitarian terminology—essence, hypostasis, etc.—are used "philosophically", "to answer the ideas of the heretics", and "to place the terms where they separate error and truth." The words do what they can do, but the nature of the Trinity in its fullness is believed to remain beyond man's comprehension and expression, a holy mystery that can only be experienced.
When Eastern Orthodox Christians refer to fallen nature they are not saying that human nature has become evil in itself. Human nature is still formed in the image of God; humans are still God's creation, and God has never created anything evil, but fallen nature remains open to evil intents and actions. It is sometimes said among Eastern Orthodox that humans are "inclined to sin"; that is, people find some sinful things attractive. It is the nature of temptation to make sinful things seem the more attractive, and it is the fallen nature of humans that seeks or succumbs to the attraction. Orthodox Christians reject the Augustinian position that the descendants of Adam and Eve are actually guilty of the original sin of their ancestors.
Since the fall of man, then, it has been mankind's dilemma that no human can restore his nature to union with God's grace; it was necessary for God to effect another change in human nature. Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that Christ Jesus was both God and Man absolutely and completely, having two natures indivisibly: eternally begotten of the Father in his divinity, he was born in his humanity of a woman, Mary, by her consent, through descent of the Holy Spirit. He lived on earth, in time and history, as a man. As a man he also died, and went to the place of the dead, which is Hades. But being God, neither death nor Hades could contain him, and he rose to life again, in his humanity, by the power of the Holy Spirit, thus destroying the power of Hades and of death itself.
Through Christ's destruction of Hades' power to hold humanity hostage, he made the path to salvation effective for all the righteous who had died from the beginning of time—saving many, including Adam and Eve, who are remembered in the church as saints.
The Eastern Orthodox Church understands the death and resurrection of Jesus to be real historical events, as described in the gospels of the New Testament.
Church teaching is that Eastern Orthodox Christians, through baptism, enter a new life of salvation through repentance whose purpose is to share in the life of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Eastern Orthodox Christian life is a spiritual pilgrimage in which each person, through the imitation of Christ and hesychasm, cultivates the practice of unceasing prayer. Each life occurs within the life of the church as a member of the body of Christ. It is then through the fire of God's love in the action of the Holy Spirit that each member becomes more holy, more wholly unified with Christ, starting in this life and continuing in the next. The church teaches that everyone, being born in God's image, is called to theosis, fulfilment of the image in likeness to God. God the creator, having divinity by nature, offers each person participation in divinity by cooperatively accepting His gift of grace.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, in understanding itself to be the Body of Christ, and similarly in understanding the Christian life to lead to the unification in Christ of all members of his body, views the church as embracing all Christ's members, those now living on earth, and also all those through the ages who have passed on to the heavenly life. "In general," Eastern Orthodox Christianity sees the Church "as a purely mystical body, the understanding of which cannot be attained through the development of a rational or natural theology."
The church includes the Christian saints from all times, and also judges, prophets and righteous Jews of the first covenant, Adam and Eve, even the angels and heavenly hosts. In Eastern Orthodox services, the earthly members together with the heavenly members worship God as one community in Christ, in a union that transcends time and space and joins heaven to earth. This unity of the church is sometimes called the communion of the saints.
The Order of Saint Benedict is an affiliation of monastics of the Eastern Orthodox Church who strive to live according to the Rule of St Benedict. The equivalent monastic order in the Catholic Church is known as the Order of Saint Benedict, abbreviated as OSB.
Within the United States, the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America has at least one Benedictine monastery.
Several Benedictine monastic houses, sketes and hermitages fit within the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia, all of which are stavropegial directly under the Metropolitan. An oblate programme exists for Orthodox laity Saint Benedict Russian Orthodox Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
The Eastern Orthodox Church believes death and the separation of body and soul to be unnatural—a result of the Fall of Man. They also hold that the congregation of the church comprises both the living and the dead. All persons currently in heaven are considered to be saints, whether their names are known or not. There are, however, those saints of distinction whom God has revealed as particularly good examples. When a saint is revealed and ultimately recognised by a large portion of the church a service of official recognition (glorification) is celebrated.
This does not "make" the person a saint; it merely recognises the fact and announces it to the rest of the church. A day is prescribed for the saint's celebration, hymns composed and icons created. Numerous saints are celebrated on each day of the year. They are venerated (shown great respect and love) but not worshipped, for worship is due God alone (this view is also held by the Oriental Orthodox and Catholic churches). In showing the saints this love and requesting their prayers, the Eastern Orthodox manifest their belief that the saints thus assist in the process of salvation for others.
Pre-eminent among the saints is the Virgin Mary (commonly referred to as Theotokos or Bogoroditsa: "Mother of God"). In Eastern Orthodox theology, the Mother of God is the fulfilment of the Old Testament archetypes revealed in the Ark of the Covenant (because she carried the New Covenant in the person of Christ) and the burning bush that appeared before Moses (symbolising the Mother of God's carrying of God without being consumed).
The Eastern Orthodox believe that Christ, from the moment of his conception, was both fully God and fully human. Mary is thus called the Theotokos or Bogoroditsa as an affirmation of the divinity of the one to whom she gave birth. It is also believed that her virginity was not compromised in conceiving God-incarnate, that she was not harmed and that she remained forever a virgin. Scriptural references to "brothers" of Christ are interpreted as kin, given that the word "brother" was used in multiple ways, as was the term "father". Due to her unique place in salvation history, Mary is honoured above all other saints and especially venerated for the great work that God accomplished through her.
The Eastern Orthodox Church regards the bodies of all saints as holy, made such by participation in the holy mysteries, especially the communion of Christ's holy body and blood, and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within the church. Indeed, that persons and physical things can be made holy is a cornerstone of the doctrine of the Incarnation, made manifest also directly by God in Old Testament times through his dwelling in the Ark of the Covenant. Thus, physical items connected with saints are also regarded as holy, through their participation in the earthly works of those saints. According to church teaching and tradition, God himself bears witness to this holiness of saints' relics through the many miracles connected with them that have been reported throughout history since biblical times, often including healing from disease and injury.
Orthodox Christians believe that when a person dies the soul is temporarily separated from the body. Though it may linger for a short period on Earth, it is ultimately escorted either to paradise (Abraham's bosom) or the darkness of Hades, following the Temporary Judgment. Orthodox do not accept the doctrine of Purgatory, which is held by Catholicism. The soul's experience of either of these states is only a "foretaste"—being experienced only by the soul—until the Final Judgment, when the soul and body will be reunited.
The Eastern Orthodox believe that the state of the soul in Hades can be affected by the love and prayers of the righteous up until the Last Judgment. For this reason the Church offers a special prayer for the dead on the third day, ninth day, fortieth day, and the one-year anniversary after the death of an Orthodox Christian. There are also several days throughout the year that are set aside for general commemoration of the departed, sometimes including nonbelievers. These days usually fall on a Saturday, since it was on a Saturday that Christ lay in the Tomb.
The Eastern Orthodox believe that after the Final Judgment:
The official Bible of the Eastern Orthodox Church contains the Septuagint text of the Old Testament, with the Book of Daniel given in the translation by Theodotion. The Patriarchal Text is used for the New Testament. Orthodox Christians hold that the Bible is a verbal icon of Christ, as proclaimed by the 7th ecumenical council. They refer to the Bible as holy scripture, meaning writings containing the foundational truths of the Christian faith as revealed by Christ and the Holy Spirit to its divinely inspired human authors. Holy scripture forms the primary and authoritative written witness of holy tradition and is essential as the basis for all Orthodox teaching and belief.
Once established as holy scripture, there has never been any question that the Eastern Orthodox Church holds the full list of books to be venerable and beneficial for reading and study, even though it informally holds some books in higher esteem than others, the four gospels highest of all. Of the subgroups significant enough to be named, the "Anagignoskomena" (ἀναγιγνωσκόμενα, "things that are read") comprises ten of the Old Testament books rejected in the Protestant canon, but deemed by the Eastern Orthodox worthy to be read in worship services, even though they carry a lesser esteem than the 39 books of the Hebrew canon. The lowest tier contains the remaining books not accepted by either Protestants or Catholics, among them, Psalm 151. Though it is a psalm, and is in the book of psalms, it is not classified as being within the Psalter (the first 150 psalms).
In a very strict sense, it is not entirely orthodox to call the holy scripture the "Word of God". That is a title the Eastern Orthodox Church reserves for Christ, as supported in the scriptures themselves, most explicitly in the first chapter of the gospel of John. God's Word is not hollow, like human words. "God said, 'let there be light'; and there was light."
The Eastern Orthodox Church does not subscribe to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. The church has defined what Scripture is; it also interprets what its meaning is. Christ promised: "When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth".
Scriptures are understood to contain historical fact, poetry, idiom, metaphor, simile, moral fable, parable, prophecy and wisdom literature, and each bears its own consideration in its interpretation. While divinely inspired, the text still consists of words in human languages, arranged in humanly recognisable forms. The Eastern Orthodox Church does not oppose honest critical and historical study of the Bible.
Lesser cycles also run in tandem with the annual ones. A weekly cycle of days prescribes a specific focus for each day in addition to others that may be observed.
Each day of the Weekly Cycle is dedicated to certain special memorials. Sunday is dedicated to Christ's Resurrection; Monday honours the holy bodiless powers (angels, archangels, etc.); Tuesday is dedicated to the prophets and especially the greatest of the prophets, John the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord; Wednesday is consecrated to the Cross and recalls Judas' betrayal; Thursday honours the holy apostles and hierarchs, especially Nicholas, Bishop of Myra in Lycia; Friday is also consecrated to the Cross and recalls the day of the Crucifixion; Saturday is dedicated to All Saints, especially the Mother of God, and to the memory of all those who have departed this life in the hope of resurrection and eternal life.
The church has developed eight modes or tones (see Octoechos) within which a chant may be set, depending on the time of year, feast day, or other considerations of the Typikon. There are numerous versions and styles that are traditional and acceptable and these vary a great deal between cultures.
The Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York City's Upper East Side is the largest Orthodox Christian church in the Western Hemisphere.
Locality is also expressed in regional terms of churchly jurisdiction, which is often also drawn along national lines. Many Orthodox churches adopt a national title (e.g. Albanian Orthodox, Bulgarian Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, etc.) and this title can identify which language is used in services, which bishops preside, and which of the typica is followed by specific congregations. In the Middle East, Orthodox Christians are usually referred to as Rum ("Roman") Orthodox, because of their historical connection with the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
Those things which in the West are often termed sacraments or sacramentals are known among the Eastern Orthodox as the "sacred mysteries".
While the Catholic Church numbers seven sacraments, and many Protestant groups list two (baptism and the Eucharist) or even none, the Eastern Orthodox do not limit the number. However, for the sake of convenience, catechisms will often speak of the seven great mysteries. Among these are Holy Communion (the most direct connection), baptism, Chrismation, confession, unction, matrimony, and ordination. But the term also properly applies to other sacred actions such as monastic tonsure or the blessing of holy water, and involves fasting, almsgiving, or an act as simple as lighting a candle, burning incense, praying or asking God's blessing on food.
Baptism is the mystery which transforms the old and sinful person into a new and pure one; the old life, the sins, any mistakes made are gone and a clean slate is given. Through baptism a person is united to the Body of Christ by becoming a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. During the service, water is blessed. The catechumen is fully immersed in the water three times in the name of the Trinity. This is considered to be a death of the "old man" by participation in the crucifixion and burial of Christ, and a rebirth into new life in Christ by participation in his resurrection.
Properly, the mystery of baptism is administered by bishops and priests; however, in emergencies any Eastern Orthodox Christian can baptise.
Chrismation (sometimes called confirmation) is the mystery by which a baptised person is granted the gift of the Holy Spirit through anointing with Holy Chrism. It is normally given immediately after baptism as part of the same service, but is also used to receive lapsed members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. As baptism is a person's participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, so Chrismation is a person's participation in the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
A baptised and chrismated Eastern Orthodox Christian is a full member of the church and may receive the Eucharist regardless of age.
The creation of Chrism may be accomplished by any bishop at any time, but usually is done only once a year, often when a synod of bishops convenes for its annual meeting. Some autocephalous churches get their chrism from others. Anointing with it substitutes for the laying-on of hands described in the New Testament, even when an instrument such as a brush is used.
Communion is given only to baptised and chrismated Eastern Orthodox Christians who have prepared by fasting, prayer and confession. The priest will administer the gifts with a spoon, called a "cochlear", directly into the recipient's mouth from the chalice. From baptism young infants and children are carried to the chalice to receive holy communion.
From the Orthodox perspective, marriage is one of the holy mysteries or sacraments. As well as in many other Christian traditions, for example in Catholicism, it serves to unite a woman and a man in eternal union and love before God, with the purpose of following Christ and his Gospel and raising up a faithful, holy family through their holy union. The church understands marriage to be the union of one man and one woman, and certain Orthodox leaders have spoken out strongly in opposition to the civil institution of same-sex marriage.
Jesus said that "when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mk 12:25). For the Orthodox Christian this passage should not be understood to imply that Christian marriage will not remain a reality in the Kingdom, but points to the fact that relations will not be "fleshy", but "spiritual". Love between wife and husband, as an icon of relationship between Christ and church, is eternal.
The church does recognise that there are rare occasions when it is better that couples do separate, but there is no official recognition of civil divorces. For the Eastern Orthodox, to say that marriage is indissoluble means that it should not be broken, the violation of such a union, perceived as holy, being an offence resulting from either adultery or the prolonged absence of one of the partners. Thus, permitting remarriage is an act of compassion of the church towards sinful man.
Widowed priests and deacons may not remarry and it is common for such members of the clergy to retire to a monastery (see clerical celibacy). This is also true of widowed wives of clergy, who do not remarry and become nuns when their children are grown. Only men are allowed to receive holy orders, although deaconesses had both liturgical and pastoral functions within the church.
In 2016, the Patriarchate of Alexandria decided to reintroduce the order of deaconess. In February 2017, Patriarch Theodoros II consecrated five women to be deaconesses within the Patriarchate of Alexandria.
In 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, published an encyclical "addressed 'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations". This gesture was instrumental in the foundation of the World Council of Churches (WCC); as such, almost all Eastern Orthodox churches are members of the WCC and "Orthodox ecclesiastics and theologians serve on its committees". Kallistos Ware, a British metropolitan bishop of the Orthodox Church, has stated that ecumenism "is important for Orthodoxy: it has helped to force the various Orthodox churches out of their comparative isolation, making them meet one another and enter into a living contact with non-Orthodox Christians."
Hilarion Alfeyev, then the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and head of external relations for the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, stated that Orthodox and Evangelical Protestant Christians share the same positions on "such issues as abortion, the family, and marriage" and desire "vigorous grassroots engagement" between the two Christian communions on such issues.
In that regard, the differences between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions have not been improved in any relevant way. Dogmatic and liturgical polarities have been significant, even and especially in recent times. A pertinent point of contention between the monarchically papal, administratively centralised Catholic Church and the decentralised confederation of Orthodox churches is the theological significance of the Virgin Mary. During his visit to Georgia in October 2016, Pope Francis was snubbed by most Orthodox Christians as he led mass before a practically empty Mikheil Meskhi Stadium in Tbilisi.
The Oriental Orthodox Churches are not in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church, despite their similar names. Slow dialogue towards restoring communion between the two churches began in the mid-20th century, and, notably, in the 19th century, when the Greek Patriarch in Egypt had to absent himself from the country for a long period of time; he left his church under the guidance of the Coptic Pope Cyril IV of Alexandria.
In 2019, the Primate of the OCU Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Epiphanius stated that "theoretically" the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church could in the future unite into a united church around the Kyiv throne. In 2019, the Primate of the UGCC, Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia Sviatoslav, stated that every effort should be made to restore the original unity of the Kyivan Church in its Orthodox and Catholic branches, saying that the restoration of Eucharistic communion between Rome and Constantinople is not a utopia.
Notwithstanding certain overtures by both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders, the majority of Orthodox Christians, as well as Catholics, are not in favour of communion between their churches, with only a median of 35 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively, claiming support.
According to Bat Ye'or, Christians under Islamic rule were denied equality of rights since they were forced to pay the jizya poll tax.
In 2007, Metropolitan Alfeyev expressed the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Islam and Christianity in Russia, as the two religions have never had religious wars in Russia.
The various autocephalous and autonomous synods of the Eastern Orthodox Church are distinct in terms of administration and local culture, but for the most part exist in full communion with one another. In addition, some schismatic churches not in any communion exist, with all three groups identifying as Eastern Orthodox.
Another group of non-mainstream Eastern Orthodox Christians are referred True Orthodoxy or Old Calendarists; they are those who, without authority from their parent churches, have continued to use the old Julian calendar, and split from their parent church.
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) has united in 2007 with the Moscow Patriarchate; these two churches had separated from each other in the 1920s due to the subjection of the latter to the hostile Soviet regime.
Another group called the Old Believers, separated in 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church rite reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow.
The Eastern Orthodox Church is a communion of 15 autocephalous—that is, administratively completely independent—regional churches, plus the Orthodox Church in America and two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. The Orthodox Church in America is recognised as autocephalous only by the Russian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Polish and Czech-Slovak churches. In December 2018, representatives of two unrecognised Ukrainian Orthodox churches, along with two metropolitans of the recognised, but self-declared autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, proclaimed the formation of the unified Orthodox Church of Ukraine. On 5 January 2019, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine received its tomos of autocephaly (decree which defines the conditions of a church's independence) from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and thus received a place in the diptych.
Each church has defined geographical boundaries of its jurisdiction and is ruled by its council of bishops or synod presided by a senior bishop–its primate (or first hierarch). The primate may carry the honorary title of patriarch, metropolitan (in the Slavic tradition) or archbishop (in the Greek tradition).
Each regional church consists of constituent eparchies (or dioceses) ruled by a bishop. Some churches have given an eparchy or group of eparchies varying degrees of autonomy (self-government). Such autonomous churches maintain varying levels of dependence on their mother church, usually defined in a tomos or other document of autonomy.
Below is a list of the 15 autocephalous Orthodox churches forming the main body of Orthodox Christianity, all of which are titled equal to each other, but the Ecumenical Patriarchate is titled the first among equals. Based on the definitions, the list is in the order of precedence and alphabetical order where necessary, with some of their constituent autonomous churches and exarchates listed as well. The liturgical title of the primate is in italics.
Within the main body of Eastern Orthodoxy there are unresolved internal issues as to the autonomous or autocephalous status or legitimacy of the following Orthodox churches, particularly between those stemming from the Russian Orthodox or Constantinopolitan churches:
True Orthodoxy has been separated from the mainstream communion over issues of ecumenism and calendar reform since the 1920s. The movement rejects the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Moscow Patriarchate, and all churches which are in communion with them, accusing them of heresy and placing themselves under bishops who do the same thing. They adhere to the use of the Julian calendar, claiming that the calendar reform in the 1920s is in contradiction with the ecumenical councils. There is no official communion of True Orthodox; and they often are local groups and are limited to a specific bishop or locality.
Old Believers are groups which do not accept the liturgical reforms which were carried out within the Russian Orthodox Church by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow in the 17th century. Although all of the groups of Old Believers emerged as a result of opposition to the Nikonian reforms, they do not constitute a single monolithic body. Despite their emphasis on invariable adherence to the pre-Nikonian traditions, the Old Believers feature a great diversity of groups which profess different interpretations of church tradition and they are often not in communion with each other (some groups even practise re-baptism before admitting a member of another group into their midst).
Churches with irregular or unresolved canonical status are entities that have carried out episcopal consecrations outside of the norms of canon law or whose bishops have been excommunicated by one of the 14 autocephalous churches. These include nationalist and other schismatic bodies such as the Abkhazian Orthodox Church. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church, or officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptised members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via local synods. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the head of the Catholic Church (the pope). Nevertheless, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognised by them as primus inter pares (\"first among equals\"), a title formerly given to the patriarch of Rome. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Western Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern and Southeastern Europe.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Eastern Orthodox theology is based on the Scriptures and holy tradition, which incorporates the dogmatic decrees of the seven ecumenical councils, and the teaching of the Church Fathers. The church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, and that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles. It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, as passed down by holy tradition. Its patriarchates, descending from the pentarchy, and other autocephalous and autonomous churches, reflect a variety of hierarchical organisation. It recognises seven major sacraments, of which the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in synaxis. The church teaches that through consecration invoked by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the God-bearer and honoured in devotions.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch—except for some breaks of communion such as the Photian schism or the Acacian schism—shared communion with the Church of Rome until the East–West Schism in 1054. The 1054 schism was the culmination of mounting theological, political, and cultural disputes, particularly over the authority of the pope, between those churches. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the various Oriental Orthodox Churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, all separating primarily over differences in Christology.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church is the primary religious denomination in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Belarus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, North Macedonia, Cyprus, and Montenegro, is also dominant and widespread in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and maintains a distinguished presence in Germany, Spain, the United States, and Uzbekistan. Although originating in Western Asia the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians now live in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, and Siberia. Roughly half of Eastern Orthodox Christians live in the post-Soviet states, mostly in Russia. The communities in the former Byzantine regions of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean are among the oldest Orthodox communities from the Middle East, which are decreasing due to forced migration driven by increased religious persecution. Eastern Orthodox communities outside Western Asia, Asia Minor, Caucasia and Eastern Europe, including those in North America, Western Europe, and Australia, have been formed through diaspora, conversions, and missionary activity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church is defined as the Eastern Christians which recognise the seven ecumenical councils and usually are in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Patriarchate of Alexandria, the Patriarchate of Antioch, and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The Eastern Orthodox churches \"are defined positively by their adherence to the dogmatic definitions of the seven [ecumenical] councils, by the strong sense of not being a sect or a denomination but simply continuing the Christian church, and, despite their varied origins, by adherence to the Byzantine rite\". Those churches are negatively defined by their rejection of papal immediate and universal supremacy.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The seven ecumenical councils recognised by the Eastern Orthodox churches are: Nicaea I, Constantinople I, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople II, Constantinople III, and Nicaea II. Those churches consider the Quinisext Council \"shar[es] the ecumenical authority of Constantinople III. \"By an agreement that appears to be in place in the [Eastern] Orthodox world, possibly the council held in 879 to vindicate the Patriarch Photius will at some future date be recognized as the eighth [ecumenical] council\" by the Eastern Orthodox Church.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Western Rite Orthodoxy exists both outside and inside Eastern Orthodoxy. Within Eastern Orthodoxy, it is practised by a vicariate of the Antiochian Orthodox church.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In keeping with the church's teaching on universality and with the Nicene Creed, Eastern Orthodox authorities such as Raphael of Brooklyn have insisted that the full name of the church has always included the term \"Catholic\", as in \"Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Church\".",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The official name of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the \"Orthodox Catholic Church\". It is the name by which the church refers to itself and which is issued in its liturgical or canonical texts. Eastern Orthodox theologians refer to the church as Catholic. This name and longer variants containing \"Catholic\" are also recognised and referenced in other books and publications by secular or non-Eastern Orthodox writers. The catechism of Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow published in the 19th century is titled: The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church (Russian: Пространный христианский катехизис православныя, кафолическия восточныя Церкви).",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "From ancient times through the first millennium, Greek was the most prevalent shared language in the demographic regions where the Byzantine Empire flourished, and Greek, being the language in which the New Testament was written, was the primary liturgical language of the church. For this reason, the eastern churches were sometimes identified as \"Greek\" (in contrast to the \"Roman\" or \"Latin\" church, which used a Latin translation of the Bible), even before the Great Schism of 1054. After 1054, \"Greek Orthodox\" or \"Greek Catholic\" marked a church as being in communion with Constantinople, much as \"Catholic\" did for communion with the Catholic Church.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In Hungarian, the church is still commonly called \"Eastern Greek\" (Hungarian: Görögkeleti). This identification with Greek, however, became increasingly confusing with time. Missionaries brought Eastern Orthodoxy to many regions without ethnic Greeks, where the Greek language was not spoken. In addition, struggles between Rome and Constantinople to control parts of Southeastern Europe resulted in the conversion of some churches to the Catholic Church, which then also used \"Greek Catholic\" to indicate their continued use of the Byzantine rites. Today, only a minority of Eastern Orthodox adherents use Greek as the language of worship.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "\"Eastern\", then, indicates the geographical element in the church's origin and development, while \"Orthodox\" indicates the faith, as well as communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. There are additional Christian churches in the east that are in communion with neither the Catholic Church nor the Eastern Orthodox Church, who tend to be distinguished by the category named \"Oriental Orthodox\". While the Eastern Orthodox Church continues officially to call itself \"Catholic\", for reasons of universality, the common title of \"Eastern Orthodox Church\" avoids casual confusion with the Catholic Church.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The first known use of the phrase \"the catholic Church\" (he katholike ekklesia) occurred in a letter written about AD 110 from one Greek church to another (Ignatius of Antioch to the Smyrnaeans). The letter states: \"Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church.\" Thus, almost from the beginning, Christians referred to the Christian Church as the \"one, holy, catholic (from the Greek καθολική, 'according to the whole, universal') and apostolic Church\". The Eastern Orthodox Church claims that it is today the continuation and preservation of that same early church.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A number of other Christian churches also make a similar claim: the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, the Assyrian Church, and the Oriental Orthodox. In the Eastern Orthodox view, the Assyrians and Orientals left the Orthodox Church in the years following the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) and the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), respectively, in their refusal to accept those councils' Christological definitions. Similarly, the churches in Rome and Constantinople separated in an event known as the East–West Schism, traditionally dated to the year 1054, although it was more a gradual process than a sudden break.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "To all these churches, the claim to catholicity (universality, oneness with the ancient Church) is important for multiple doctrinal reasons that have more bearing internally in each church than in their relation to the others, now separated in faith. The meaning of holding to a faith that is true is the primary reason why anyone's statement of which church split off from which other has any significance at all; the issues go as deep as the schisms. The depth of this meaning in the Eastern Orthodox Church is registered first in its use of the word \"Orthodox\" itself, a union of Greek orthos (\"straight\", \"correct\", \"true\", \"right\") and doxa (\"common belief\", from the ancient verb δοκέω-δοκῶ which is translated \"to believe\", \"to think\", \"to consider\", \"to imagine\", \"to assume\").",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The dual meanings of doxa, with \"glory\" or \"glorification\" (of God by the church and of the church by God), especially in worship, yield the pair \"correct belief\" and \"true worship\". Together, these express the core of a fundamental teaching about the inseparability of belief and worship and their role in drawing the church together with Christ. All Slavic churches use the title Pravoslavie (Cyrillic: Православие), meaning \"correctness of glorification\", to denote what is in English Orthodoxy, while the Georgians use the title Martlmadidebeli.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The term \"Eastern Church\" (the geographic east in the East–West Schism) has been used to distinguish it from western Christendom (the geographic West, which at first came to designate the Catholic communion, later also the various Protestant and Anglican branches). \"Eastern\" is used to indicate that the highest concentrations of the Eastern Orthodox Church presence remain in the eastern part of the Christian world, although it is growing worldwide. Orthodox Christians throughout the world use various ethnic or national jurisdictional titles, or more inclusively, the title \"Eastern Orthodox\", \"Orthodox Catholic\", or simply \"Orthodox\".",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "What unites Orthodox Christians is the catholic faith as carried through holy tradition. That faith is expressed most fundamentally in scripture and worship, and the latter most essentially through baptism and in the Divine Liturgy.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The lines of even this test can blur, however, when differences that arise are not due to doctrine, but to recognition of jurisdiction. As the Eastern Orthodox Church has spread into the west and over the world, the church as a whole has yet to sort out all the inter-jurisdictional issues that have arisen in the expansion, leaving some areas of doubt about what is proper church governance. Moreover, as in the ancient church persecutions, the aftermath of persecutions of Christians in communist nations has complicated some issues of governance that have yet to be completely resolved.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "All members of the Eastern Orthodox Church profess the same faith, regardless of race or nationality, jurisdiction or local custom, or century of birth. Holy tradition encompasses the understandings and means by which that unity of faith is transmitted across boundaries of time, geography, and culture. It is a continuity that exists only inasmuch as it lives within Christians themselves. It is not static, nor an observation of rules, but rather a sharing of observations that spring both from within and also in keeping with others, even others who lived lives long past. The church proclaims the Holy Spirit maintains the unity and consistency of holy tradition to preserve the integrity of the faith within the church, as given in the scriptural promises.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Orthodoxy asserts that its shared beliefs, and its theology, exist within holy tradition and cannot be separated from it, and that their meaning is not expressed in mere words alone; that doctrine cannot be understood unless it is prayed; and that it must also be lived in order to be prayed, that without action, the prayer is idle, empty, and in vain, and therefore the theology of demons.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church considers itself to be both orthodox and catholic. The doctrine of the Catholicity of the Church, as derived from the Nicene Creed, is essential to Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology. The term Catholicity of the Church (Greek Καθολικότης τῆς Ἐκκλησίας) is used in its original sense, as a designation for the universality of the Christian Church, centred around Christ. Therefore, the Eastern Orthodox notion of catholicity is not centred around any singular see, unlike the Catholic Church which has one earthly centre.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Due to the influence of the Catholic Church in the west, where the English language itself developed, the words \"catholic\" and \"catholicity\" are sometimes used to refer to that church specifically. However, the more prominent dictionary sense given for general use is still the one shared by other languages, implying breadth and universality, reflecting comprehensive scope. In a Christian context, the Christian Church, as identified with the original church founded by Christ and his apostles, is said to be catholic (or universal) in regard to its union with Christ in faith.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Just as Christ is indivisible, so are union with him and faith in him, whereby the Christian Church is \"universal\", unseparated, and comprehensive, including all who share that faith. Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware has called that \"simple Christianity\". That is the sense of early and patristic usage wherein the church usually refers to itself as the \"Catholic Church\", whose faith is the \"Orthodox faith\". It is also the sense within the phrase \"one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church\", found in the Nicene Creed, and referred to in Orthodox worship, e.g. in the litany of the catechumens in the Divine Liturgy.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "With the mutual excommunications of the East–West Schism in 1054, the churches in Rome and Constantinople each viewed the other as having departed from the true church, leaving a smaller but still-catholic church in place. Each retained the \"Catholic\" part of its title, the \"Roman Catholic Church\" (or Catholic Church) on the one hand, and the \"Orthodox Catholic Church\" on the other, each of which was defined in terms of inter-communion with either Rome or Constantinople. While the Eastern Orthodox Church recognises what it shares in common with other churches, including the Catholic Church, it sees catholicity in terms of complete union in communion and faith, with the Church throughout all time, and the sharing remains incomplete when not shared fully.",
"title": "Name and characteristics"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Paul and the Apostles travelled extensively throughout the Roman Empire, including Asia Minor, establishing churches in major communities, with the first churches appearing in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, then in Antioch, Ethiopia, Egypt, Rome, Alexandria, Athens, Thessalonica, Illyricum, and Byzantium, which centuries later would become prominent as the New Rome. Christianity encountered considerable resistance in the Roman Empire, mostly because its adherents refused to comply with the demands of the Roman state—often even when their lives were threatened—by offering sacrifices to the pagan gods. Despite persecution, skepticism, and initial social stigma, the Christian Church spread, particularly following the conversion of Emperor Constantine I in AD 312.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "By the fourth century, Christianity was present in numerous regions well beyond the Levant. A number of influential schools of thought had arisen, particularly the Alexandrian and Antiochian philosophical approaches. Other groups, such as the Arians, had also managed to gain influence. However, their positions caused theological conflicts within the church, thus prompting the Emperor Constantine to call for a great ecumenical synod in order to define the church's position against the growing, often widely diverging, philosophical and theological interpretations of Christianity. He made it possible for this council to meet not only by providing a location, but by offering to pay for the transportation of all the existing bishops of the church. Most modern Christian churches regard this synod, commonly called the First Council of Nicaea or more generally the First Ecumenical Council, as of major importance.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Several doctrinal disputes from the fourth century onwards led to the calling of ecumenical councils. In the Orthodox Church, an ecumenical council is the supreme authority that can be invoked to resolve contested issues of the faith. As such, these councils have been held to resolve the most important theological matters that came to be disputed within the Christian Church. Many lesser disagreements were resolved through local councils in the areas where they arose, before they grew significant enough to require an ecumenical council.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "There are seven councils authoritatively recognised as ecumenical by the Eastern Orthodox Church:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "There are also two other councils which are considered ecumenical by some Eastern Orthodox:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In addition to these councils, there have been a number of other significant councils meant to further define the Eastern Orthodox position. They are the Synods of Constantinople, in 1484, 1583, 1755, 1819, and 1872, the Synod of Iași in 1642, and the Pan-Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem in 1672. Another council convened in June 2016 to discuss many modern phenomena, other Christian confessions, Eastern Orthodoxy's relation with other religions and fasting disciplines.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Constantinople is generally considered to be the centre and the \"cradle of Orthodox Christian civilisation\". From the mid-5th century to the early 13th century, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. Eastern Christian culture reached its golden age during the high point of the Byzantine Empire and continued to flourish in Ukraine and Russia, after the fall of Constantinople. Numerous autocephalous churches were established in Europe: Greece, Georgia, Ukraine, as well as in Russia and Asia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the 530s the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) was built in Constantinople under Emperor Justinian I. Beginning with subsequent Byzantine architecture, Hagia Sophia became the paradigmatic Orthodox church form and its architectural style was emulated by Ottoman mosques a thousand years later. Being the episcopal see of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, it remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. Hagia Sophia has been described as \"holding a unique position in the Christian world\", and architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilisation, and it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have \"changed the history of architecture\".",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "There are the \"Nestorian\" churches resulted from the reaction of the Council of Ephesus (431), which are the earliest surviving Eastern Christian churches that keep the faith of only the first two ecumenical councils, i.e., the First Council of Nicaea (325) and the First Council of Constantinople (381) as legitimate. \"Nestorian\" is an outsider's term for a tradition that predated the influence of Nestorius, the origin of which might lie in certain sections of the School of Antioch or via Nestorius' teachers Theodore of Mopsuestia or Diodore of Tarsus. The modern incarnation of the \"Nestorian Church\" is commonly referred to as \"the Assyrian Church\" or fully as the Assyrian Church of the East.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The church in Egypt (Patriarchate of Alexandria) split into two groups following the Council of Chalcedon (451), over a dispute about the relation between the divine and human natures of Jesus. Eventually this led to each group anathematising the other. Those that remained in communion with the other patriarchs (by accepting the Council of Chalcedon) are known today as the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria, where the adjective \"Greek\" refers to their ties to the Greek-speaking culture of the Byzantine Empire.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Those who disagreed with the findings of the Council of Chalcedon were the majority in Egypt. Today they are known as the Coptic Orthodox Church, having maintained a separate patriarchate. The Coptic Orthodox Church is currently the largest Christian church in Egypt and in the whole Middle East. There was also a similar, albeit smaller scale, split in Syria (Patriarchate of Antioch), which resulted in the separation of the Syriac Orthodox Church from the Byzantine Patriarchate of Antioch.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Those who disagreed with the Council of Chalcedon are sometimes called \"Oriental Orthodox\" to distinguish them from the \"Eastern Orthodox\", who accepted the Council of Chalcedon. Oriental Orthodox are also sometimes referred to as \"non-Chalcedonians\", or \"anti-Chalcedonians\". The Oriental Orthodox Church denies that it is monophysite and prefers the term \"miaphysite\", to denote the \"united\" nature of Jesus (two natures united into one) consistent with Cyril's theology: \"The term union ... signifies the concurrence in one reality of those things which are understood to be united\" and \"the Word who is ineffably united with it in a manner beyond all description\" (Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ). This is also defined in the Coptic liturgy, where it is mentioned \"He made it [his humanity] one with his divinity without mingling, without confusion and without alteration\", and \"His divinity parted not from his humanity for a single moment nor a twinkling of an eye.\" They do not accept the teachings of Eutyches, or Eutychianism. Both the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches formally believe themselves to be the continuation of the true church.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "In the ninth and tenth centuries, Christianity made great inroads into pagan Europe, including Bulgaria (864) and later Kievan Rus' (988). This work was made possible by Cyril and Methodius of Thessaloniki, two brothers chosen by Byzantine emperor Michael III to fulfil the request of Rastislav of Moravia for teachers who could minister to the Moravians in their own language. Cyril and Methodius began translating the divine liturgy, other liturgical texts, and the Gospels along with some other scriptural texts into local languages; with time, as these translations were copied by speakers of other dialects, the hybrid literary language Church Slavonic was created. Originally sent to convert the Slavs of Great Moravia, Cyril and Methodius were forced to compete with Frankish missionaries from the Roman diocese; their disciples were driven out of Great Moravia in AD 886 and emigrated to Bulgaria.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "After the Christianisation of Bulgaria in 864, the disciples of Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria, the most important being Clement of Ohrid and Naum of Preslav, were of great importance to the Orthodox faith in the First Bulgarian Empire. In a short time they managed to prepare and instruct the future Bulgarian clergy into the biblical texts and in AD 870 the Fourth Council of Constantinople granted the Bulgarians the oldest organised autocephalous Slavic Orthodox Church, which shortly thereafter became Patriarchate. The success of the conversion of the Bulgarians facilitated the conversion of the East Slavs. A major event in this effort was the development of the Cyrillic script in Bulgaria, at the Preslav Literary School in the ninth century; this script, along with the liturgical Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian, was declared official in Bulgaria in 893.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The work of Cyril and Methodius and their disciples had a major impact on the Serbs as well. They accepted Christianity collectively along familial and tribal lines, a gradual process that occurred between the seventh and ninth centuries. In commemoration of their baptisms, each Serbian family or tribe began to celebrate an exclusively Serbian custom called Slava (patron saint) in a special way to honour the saint on whose day they received the sacrament of baptism. It is the most solemn day of the year for all Serbs of the Orthodox faith and has played a role of vital importance in the history of the Serbian people. Slava remains a celebration of the conversion of the Serbian people, which the church blessed and proclaimed a church institution.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The missionaries to the East and South Slavs had great success in part because they used the people's native language rather than Greek, the predominant language of the Byzantine Empire, or Latin, as the Roman priests did. Perhaps the greatest legacy of their efforts is the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the largest of the Orthodox churches.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "In the 11th century, what was recognised as the Great Schism took place between Rome and Constantinople, which led to separation between the Church of the West, the Catholic Church, and the Eastern Byzantine churches, now the Orthodox. There were doctrinal issues like the filioque clause and the authority of the Roman Pope involved in the split, but these were greatly exacerbated by political factors of both Church and state, and by cultural and linguistic differences between Latins and Greeks. Regarding papal supremacy, the Eastern half grew disillusioned with the Pope's centralisation of power, as well as his blatant attempts of excluding the Eastern half in regard to papal approvals. It had previously been the case that the emperor would have a say when a new Pope was elected, but towards the high Middle Ages, the Christians in Rome were slowly consolidating power and removing Byzantine influence. However, even before this exclusionary tendency from the West, well before 1054, the Eastern and Western halves of the Church were in perpetual conflict, particularly during the periods of Eastern iconoclasm and the Photian schism.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The final breach is often considered to have arisen after the capture and sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204; the final break with Rome occurred circa 1450. The sacking of Church of Holy Wisdom and establishment of the Latin Empire as a seeming attempt to supplant the Orthodox Byzantine Empire in 1204 is viewed with some rancour to the present day. In 2004, Pope John Paul II extended a formal apology for the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, which had also been strongly condemned by the Pope at the time, Innocent III; the apology was formally accepted by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. However, many items stolen during this time, such as holy relics and riches, are still held in various European cities, particularly Venice.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Reunion was attempted twice, at the 1274 Second Council of Lyon and the 1439 Council of Florence. The Council of Florence briefly reestablished communion between East and West, which lasted until after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In each case, however, the councils were rejected by the Orthodox people as a whole, and the union of Florence also became very politically difficult after Constantinople came under Ottoman rule. However, in the time since, several local Orthodox Christian churches have renewed union with Rome, known as the Eastern Catholic Churches. Recent decades have seen a renewal of ecumenical spirit and dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "The Byzantine Empire never fully recovered from the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Over the next two centuries, it entered a precipitous decline in both territory and influence. In 1453, a much-diminished Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire, ending what was once the most powerful state in the Orthodox Christian world, if not in all Christendom. By this time Egypt, another major centre of Eastern Christianity, had been under Muslim control for some seven centuries; most Eastern Orthodox communities across southeastern Europe gradually came under Ottoman rule by the 16th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "Under the Ottomans, the Greek Orthodox Church acquired substantial power as an autonomous millet. The ecumenical patriarch was the religious and administrative ruler of the Rûm, an Ottoman administrative unit meaning \"Roman\", which encompassed all Orthodox subjects of the Empire regardless of ethnicity. While legally subordinate to Muslims and subject to various restrictions, the Orthodox community was generally tolerated and left to govern its own internal affairs, both religiously and legally. Until the empire's dissolution in the early 20th century, Orthodox Christians would remain the largest non-Muslim minority, and at times among the wealthiest and most politically influential.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "During the period 1914–1923 in Asia Minor (Anatolia) the Greek Genocide took place by the Ottomans as a result of the Greeks invading Turkey and the ensuing Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). During the Greek Genocide, many Orthodox Christians were persecuted and killed. The culmination of the martyrdom was the Asia Minor Catastrophe with the killing of a large number of Orthodox. Among them, 347 clergymen of the Smyrna region and Metropolitan of Smyrna Chrysostomos were tortured and martyred. The period 1923–1924 was followed by the obligatory population exchange between Greece and Turkey.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "By the time most Orthodox communities came under Muslim rule in the mid 15th century, Orthodoxy was very strong in Russia, which had maintained close cultural and political ties with the Byzantine Empire; roughly two decades after the fall of Constantinople, Ivan III of Russia married Sophia Palaiologina, a niece of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI, and styled himself Tsar (\"Caesar\") or imperator. In 1547, his grandson Ivan IV, a devout Orthodox Christian, cemented the title as \"Tsar of All Rus\", establishing Russia's first centralised state with divinely appointed rulers. In 1589, the Patriarchate of Constantinople granted autocephalous status to Moscow, the capital of what was now the largest Orthodox Christian polity; the city thereafter referred to itself as the Third Rome —the cultural and religious heir of Constantinople.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "Until 1666, when Patriarch Nikon was deposed by the tsar, the Russian Orthodox Church had been independent of the State. In 1721, the first Russian Emperor, Peter I, abolished completely the patriarchate and effectively made the church a department of the government, ruled by a most holy synod composed of senior bishops and lay bureaucrats appointed by the Emperor himself. Over time, Imperial Russia would style itself a protector and patron of all Orthodox Christians, especially those within the Ottoman Empire.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "For nearly 200 years, until the Bolsheviks' October Revolution of 1917, the Russian Orthodox Church remained, in effect, a governmental agency and an instrument of tsarist rule. It was used to varying degrees in imperial campaigns of Russification, and was even allowed to levy taxes on peasants. The church's close ties with the state came to a head under Nicholas I (1825–1855), who explicitly made Orthodoxy a core doctrine of imperial unity and legitimacy. The Orthodox faith became further tied to Russian identity and nationalism, while the church was further subordinated to the interests of the state. Consequently, Russian Orthodox Church, along with the imperial regime to which it belonged, came to be presented as an enemy of the people by the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "After the October Revolution of 1917, part of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church fled abroad to escape Bolshevik persecutions, founding an independent church in exile, which reunified with its Russian counterpart in 2007. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers along with execution included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. However, in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. It is estimated that 50,000 clergy had been executed between the revolution and the end of the Khrushchev era. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Albania was the only state to have declared itself officially fully atheist. In some other Communist states such as Romania, the Romanian Orthodox Church as an organisation enjoyed relative freedom and even prospered, albeit under strict secret police control. That, however, did not rule out demolishing churches and monasteries as part of broader systematisation (urban planning), and state persecution of individual believers. As an example of the latter, Romania stands out as a country which ran a specialised institution where many Orthodox (along with people of other faiths) were subjected to psychological punishment or torture and mind control experimentation in order to force them give up their religious convictions. However, this was only supported by one faction within the regime, and lasted only three years. The Communist authorities closed down the prison in 1952, and punished many of those responsible for abuses (twenty of them were sentenced to death).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent Fall of Communist governments across the Orthodox world, there has been marked growth in Christian Orthodoxy, particularly in Russia. According to the Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, between 1991 and 2008, the share of Russian adults identifying as Orthodox Christian rose from 31 per cent to 72 per cent, based on analysis of three waves of data (1991, 1998 and 2008) from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a collaborative effort involving social scientists in about 50 countries.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Pew research conducted in 2017 found a doubling in the global Orthodox population since the early 20th century, with the greatest resurgence in Russia. In the former Soviet Union—where the largest Orthodox communities live—self-identified Orthodox Christians generally report low levels of observance and piety: In Russia, only 6% of Orthodox Christian adults reported attending church at least weekly, 15% say religion is \"very important\" in their lives, and 18% say they pray daily; other former Soviet republics display similarly low levels of religious observance.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Since 1923, the Orthodox Church of Estonia separated from the Russian Orthodox Church due to the imprisonment of Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow, and the church in the Republic of Estonia falling out of communication with the Russian Church. They petitioned to be placed under direct control of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, operating as an autonomous church. In 1944 the Soviet Union annexed Estonia and outlawed the Orthodox Church of Estonia, forcefully bringing their churches back under the control of the Moscow Patriarch. However, the church's Primate, Metropolitan Aleksander, fled to Sweden with 21 clergymen and 8,000 followers and established a synod there operating there throughout the Cold War.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "In 1993, the synod of the Orthodox Church of Estonia in Exile was re-registered and on 20 February 1996, Bartholomew I of Constantinople restored the church's position as subordinate to Constantinople, not Moscow. Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, who had been born in Estonia, rejected this loss of territory, and severed ties with Patriarch Bartholomew on February 23, removing his name from the diptychs. The two sides would then negotiate in Zurich, and a settlement was reached on 16 May 1996. In it, the ethnically Estonian population of Estonia would be under the jurisdiction of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church, while the ethnically Russian population of Estonia would be under the jurisdiction of the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. After signing the document the Russian Church restored communion with the Orthodox Church.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Since the Baptism of Rus' in 867 the Orthodox church in Ukraine was led by the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' who was subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and was largely governed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth since the territory was conquered in the Galicia–Volhynia Wars, ending in 1392. Poland-Lithuania lost the territory to Russia as part of the peace deal of the Great Northern War in 1654. In 1686 Dionysius IV of Constantinople transferred the territory to the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'. In 1924, Orthodox churches in Ukraine besides the Metropolitan of Kyiv were placed under the jurisdiction of the Polish Orthodox Church by the Ecumenical Patriarch as an autonomous church, however, the Russian Church never agreed to nor recognised this transfer, mostly due to Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and most of the Russian Church's leaders being imprisoned by Soviet officials. The Soviet Union, initially, had a policy of repression against the Orthodox Church, regardless of its denomination. However, after the start of the Nazi Invasion of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin transformed the Russian Church into a propaganda tool to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. Following Soviet victory in the war, various autonomous and Independent Orthodox churches around eastern Europe were forcefully integrated or reintegrated into the Russian Church, including the church in Ukraine. Many of the church's leaders at this time were installed and closely monitored by the NKVD to ensure the church's support for the Soviet Union.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "This situation led to the rise of rival, anti-Russian and anti-Soviet churches within Ukraine, including the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), founded in 1917 which declared itself the restored autonomous church that existed prior to 1686 but had been eradicated within Soviet Ukraine by the 1930s. The church was largely supported by Ukrainian émigrés and diaspora, and was restored as a legally recognised church by the Ukrainian government in 1991. In 1992, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) came into existence, being founded by members of the Russian Church defrocked for insubordination, alongside support with the Ukrainian émigré community. The church submitted a request for Ukrainian autocephaly at its founding synod in Kyiv in 1992. These churches were competing with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC-MP), the Russian Church in Ukraine.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "On 11 October 2018, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople revoked the Russian Church's letter of issue, allowing them to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv, re-established a stauropegion in Kyiv, and lifted the Russian Church's excommunication of members of the UAOC and the UOC-KP. In response, on 15 October, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church severed all ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and barred all members of the Russian Church from receiving communion or sacraments from any churches with ties to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. On 15 December 2018, the UAOC and UOC-KP voted to merge in the Unification council of the Eastern Orthodox churches of Ukraine, forming the restored Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with Epiphanius I of Ukraine, of the UOC-KP, becoming the first primate of the unified church. On 5 January 2019, Bartholomew I signed the official tomos that granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "In addition to severing ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Russian Church has also severed communion with Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens primate of the Church of Greece, Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria, and Archbishop Chrysostomos II of Cyprus. In response to the severing of ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe (AROCWE), voted to dissolve itself, although the vote failed, it resulted in a split in AROCWE, with several churches leaving to form the \"Vicariate of Russian Tradition of the Metropolis of France\", while John (Renneteau) [ru], head of the AROCWE, personally joined the Russian Church. Additionally, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UOC-MP severed all ties with the Russian Church.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church is a fellowship of autocephalous (Greek for self-headed) churches, with the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople recognised as having primus inter pares status. The patriarch of Constantinople has the honour of primacy, but his title is only first among equals and has no real authority over churches other than the Constantinopolitan and set out prerogatives interpreted by the ecumenical patriarch, though at times the office of the ecumenical patriarch has been accused of Constantinopolitan or Eastern papism.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church considers Jesus Christ to be the head of the church and the church to be his body. It is believed that authority and the grace of God is directly passed down to Orthodox bishops and clergy through the laying on of hands—a practice started by the apostles, and that this unbroken historical and physical link is an essential element of the true church (Acts 8:17, 1 Tim 4:14, Heb 6:2). The Eastern Orthodox assert that apostolic succession requires apostolic faith, and bishops without apostolic faith, who are in heresy, forfeit their claim to apostolic succession. Orthodox churches differentiate themselves from other Christian churches by practising \"ritual and liturgy...rich in mystery and symbolism\", similar to their views on the sacraments.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox communion is organised into several regional churches, which are either autocephalous (\"self-headed\") or lower-ranking autonomous (the Greek term for \"self-governing\") church bodies unified in theology and worship. These include the fourteen autocephalous churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Georgia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia, Greece, Poland, Romania, Albania, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which were officially invited to the Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016; the Orthodox Church in America formed in 1970; the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine created in 2019; and the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Ohrid Archbishopric, granted autocephaly by Serbian Orthodox Church in 2022; as well as a number of autonomous churches. Each church has a ruling bishop and a holy synod to administer its jurisdiction and to lead the Eastern Orthodox Church in the preservation and teaching of the apostolic and patristic traditions and church practices.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Each bishop has a territory (see) over which he governs. His main duty is to make sure the traditions and practices of the Eastern Orthodox Church are preserved. Bishops are equal in authority and cannot interfere in the jurisdiction of another bishop. Administratively, these bishops and their territories are organised into various autocephalous groups or synods of bishops who gather together at least twice a year to discuss the state of affairs within their respective sees. While bishops and their autocephalous synods have the ability to administer guidance in individual cases, their actions do not usually set precedents that affect the entire Eastern Orthodox Church. Bishops are almost always chosen from the monastic ranks and must remain unmarried.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "The ecumenical councils followed a democratic form, with each bishop having one vote. Though present and allowed to speak before the council, members of the Imperial Roman/Byzantine court, abbots, priests, deacons, monks and laymen were not allowed to vote. The primary goal of these great synods was to verify and confirm the fundamental beliefs of the Great Christian Church as truth, and to remove as heresy any false teachings that would threaten the Christian Church. The pope of Rome at that time held the position of primus inter pares (\"first among equals\") and, while he was not present at any of the councils, he continued to hold this title until the East–West Schism of 1054.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Other councils have helped to define the Eastern Orthodox position, specifically the Quinisext Council, the Synods of Constantinople, 879–880, 1341, 1347, 1351, 1583, 1819, and 1872, the Synod of Iași, 1642, and the Pan-Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem, 1672; the Pan-Orthodox Council, held in Greece in 2016, was the only such Eastern Orthodox council in modern times.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "According to Eastern Orthodox teaching the position of \"first among equals\" gives no additional power or authority to the bishop that holds it, but rather that this person sits as organisational head of a council of equals (like a president).",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "One of the decisions made by the First Council of Constantinople (the second ecumenical council, meeting in 381) and supported by later such councils was that the Patriarch of Constantinople should be given equal honour to the Pope of Rome since Constantinople was considered to be the \"New Rome\". According to the third canon of the second ecumenical council: \"Because [Constantinople] is new Rome, the bishop of Constantinople is to enjoy the privileges of honor after the bishop of Rome\".",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "The 28th canon of the fourth ecumenical council clarified this point by stating: \"For the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of Old Rome because it was the royal city. And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious Bishops (i.e. the second ecumenical council in 381) actuated by the same consideration, gave equal privileges to the most holy throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is.\"",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Because of the schism, the Eastern Orthodox no longer recognise the primacy of the pope of Rome. The patriarch of Constantinople therefore, like the Pope before him, now enjoys the title of \"first among equals\".",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The most reliable estimates currently available number Eastern Orthodox adherents at around 220 million worldwide, making Eastern Orthodoxy the second largest Christian communion in the world after the Catholic Church.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "According to the 2015 Yearbook of International Religious Demography, as of 2010, the Eastern Orthodox population was 4% of the global population, declining from 7.1% in 1910. The study also found a decrease in proportional terms, with Eastern Orthodox Christians making up 12.2% of the world's total Christian population in 2015 compared to 20.4% a century earlier. A 2017 report by the Pew Research Center reached similar figures, noting that Eastern Orthodoxy has seen slower growth and less geographic spread than Catholicism and Protestantism, which were driven by colonialism and missionary activity across the world.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "Over two-thirds of all Eastern Orthodox members are concentrated in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia, with significant minorities in Central Asia and the Levant. However, Eastern Orthodoxy has become more globalised over the last century, seeing greater growth in Western Europe, the Americas, and parts of Africa; churches are present in the major cities of most countries. Adherents constitute the largest single religious community in Russia—which is home to roughly half the world's Eastern Orthodox Christians—and are the majority in Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, North Macedonia, Cyprus, and Montenegro; communities also dominate the disputed territories of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria. Significant Eastern Orthodox minorities exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Albania, Syria, and many other countries.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the fastest growing religion in certain Western countries, primarily through labour migration from Eastern Europe, and to a lesser degree conversion. Ireland saw a doubling of its Eastern Orthodox population between 2006 and 2011. Spain and Germany have the largest communities in Western Europe, at roughly 1.5 million each, followed by Italy with around 900,000 and France with between 500,000 and 700,000.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "In the Americas, four countries have over 100,000 Eastern Orthodox Christians: Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States; all but the latter had fewer than 20,000 at the turn of the 20th century. The U.S. has seen its community more than quadruple since 1910, from 460,000 to 1.8 million as of 2017; consequently, the number of Eastern Orthodox parishes has been growing, with a 16% increase between 2000 and 2010.",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "Turkey, which for centuries once had one of the largest Eastern Orthodox communities, saw its overall Christian population fall from roughly one-fifth in 1914 to 2.5% in 1927. This was predominantly due to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which saw most Christian territories become independent nations. The remaining Christian population was reduced further by large-scale genocides against the Armenian, Greek, Assyrian communities; subsequent population exchanges between Greece and Turkey and Bulgaria and Turkey; and associated emigration of Christians to foreign countries (mostly in Europe and the Americas). Today, only 0.2% of Turkey's population represent either Jews or various Christian denominations (320,000).",
"title": "Organisation and leadership"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "Eastern Orthodox Christians believe in the Trinity, three distinct, divine persons (hypostases), without overlap or modality among them, who each have one divine essence (ousia, Greek: οὐσία)—uncreated, immaterial, and eternal. These three persons are typically distinguished by their relation to each other. The Father is eternal and not begotten and does not proceed from any, the Son is eternal and begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is eternal and proceeds from the Father. Orthodox doctrine regarding the Trinity is summarised in the Nicene Creed.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Eastern Orthodox Christians believe in a monotheistic conception of God (God is only one), which is both transcendent (wholly independent of, and removed from, the material universe) and immanent (involved in the material universe). In discussing God's relationship to his creation, Eastern Orthodox theology distinguishes between God's eternal essence, which is totally transcendent, and his uncreated energies, which is how he reaches humanity. The God who is transcendent and the God who touches mankind are one and the same. That is, these energies are not something that proceed from God or that God produces, but rather they are God himself: distinct, yet inseparable from God's inner being. This view is often called Palamism.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "In understanding the Trinity as \"one God in three persons\", \"three persons\" is not to be emphasised more than \"one God\", and vice versa. While the three persons are distinct, they are united in one divine essence, and their oneness is expressed in community and action so completely that they cannot be considered separately. For example, their salvation of mankind is an activity engaged in common: \"Christ became man by the good will of the Father and by the cooperation of the Holy Spirit. Christ sends the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit forms Christ in our hearts, and thus God the Father is glorified.\" Their \"communion of essence\" is \"indivisible\". Trinitarian terminology—essence, hypostasis, etc.—are used \"philosophically\", \"to answer the ideas of the heretics\", and \"to place the terms where they separate error and truth.\" The words do what they can do, but the nature of the Trinity in its fullness is believed to remain beyond man's comprehension and expression, a holy mystery that can only be experienced.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "When Eastern Orthodox Christians refer to fallen nature they are not saying that human nature has become evil in itself. Human nature is still formed in the image of God; humans are still God's creation, and God has never created anything evil, but fallen nature remains open to evil intents and actions. It is sometimes said among Eastern Orthodox that humans are \"inclined to sin\"; that is, people find some sinful things attractive. It is the nature of temptation to make sinful things seem the more attractive, and it is the fallen nature of humans that seeks or succumbs to the attraction. Orthodox Christians reject the Augustinian position that the descendants of Adam and Eve are actually guilty of the original sin of their ancestors.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "Since the fall of man, then, it has been mankind's dilemma that no human can restore his nature to union with God's grace; it was necessary for God to effect another change in human nature. Eastern Orthodox Christians believe that Christ Jesus was both God and Man absolutely and completely, having two natures indivisibly: eternally begotten of the Father in his divinity, he was born in his humanity of a woman, Mary, by her consent, through descent of the Holy Spirit. He lived on earth, in time and history, as a man. As a man he also died, and went to the place of the dead, which is Hades. But being God, neither death nor Hades could contain him, and he rose to life again, in his humanity, by the power of the Holy Spirit, thus destroying the power of Hades and of death itself.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "Through Christ's destruction of Hades' power to hold humanity hostage, he made the path to salvation effective for all the righteous who had died from the beginning of time—saving many, including Adam and Eve, who are remembered in the church as saints.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church understands the death and resurrection of Jesus to be real historical events, as described in the gospels of the New Testament.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "Church teaching is that Eastern Orthodox Christians, through baptism, enter a new life of salvation through repentance whose purpose is to share in the life of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Eastern Orthodox Christian life is a spiritual pilgrimage in which each person, through the imitation of Christ and hesychasm, cultivates the practice of unceasing prayer. Each life occurs within the life of the church as a member of the body of Christ. It is then through the fire of God's love in the action of the Holy Spirit that each member becomes more holy, more wholly unified with Christ, starting in this life and continuing in the next. The church teaches that everyone, being born in God's image, is called to theosis, fulfilment of the image in likeness to God. God the creator, having divinity by nature, offers each person participation in divinity by cooperatively accepting His gift of grace.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church, in understanding itself to be the Body of Christ, and similarly in understanding the Christian life to lead to the unification in Christ of all members of his body, views the church as embracing all Christ's members, those now living on earth, and also all those through the ages who have passed on to the heavenly life. \"In general,\" Eastern Orthodox Christianity sees the Church \"as a purely mystical body, the understanding of which cannot be attained through the development of a rational or natural theology.\"",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "The church includes the Christian saints from all times, and also judges, prophets and righteous Jews of the first covenant, Adam and Eve, even the angels and heavenly hosts. In Eastern Orthodox services, the earthly members together with the heavenly members worship God as one community in Christ, in a union that transcends time and space and joins heaven to earth. This unity of the church is sometimes called the communion of the saints.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The Order of Saint Benedict is an affiliation of monastics of the Eastern Orthodox Church who strive to live according to the Rule of St Benedict. The equivalent monastic order in the Catholic Church is known as the Order of Saint Benedict, abbreviated as OSB.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Within the United States, the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America has at least one Benedictine monastery.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Several Benedictine monastic houses, sketes and hermitages fit within the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia, all of which are stavropegial directly under the Metropolitan. An oblate programme exists for Orthodox laity Saint Benedict Russian Orthodox Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church believes death and the separation of body and soul to be unnatural—a result of the Fall of Man. They also hold that the congregation of the church comprises both the living and the dead. All persons currently in heaven are considered to be saints, whether their names are known or not. There are, however, those saints of distinction whom God has revealed as particularly good examples. When a saint is revealed and ultimately recognised by a large portion of the church a service of official recognition (glorification) is celebrated.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "This does not \"make\" the person a saint; it merely recognises the fact and announces it to the rest of the church. A day is prescribed for the saint's celebration, hymns composed and icons created. Numerous saints are celebrated on each day of the year. They are venerated (shown great respect and love) but not worshipped, for worship is due God alone (this view is also held by the Oriental Orthodox and Catholic churches). In showing the saints this love and requesting their prayers, the Eastern Orthodox manifest their belief that the saints thus assist in the process of salvation for others.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "Pre-eminent among the saints is the Virgin Mary (commonly referred to as Theotokos or Bogoroditsa: \"Mother of God\"). In Eastern Orthodox theology, the Mother of God is the fulfilment of the Old Testament archetypes revealed in the Ark of the Covenant (because she carried the New Covenant in the person of Christ) and the burning bush that appeared before Moses (symbolising the Mother of God's carrying of God without being consumed).",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox believe that Christ, from the moment of his conception, was both fully God and fully human. Mary is thus called the Theotokos or Bogoroditsa as an affirmation of the divinity of the one to whom she gave birth. It is also believed that her virginity was not compromised in conceiving God-incarnate, that she was not harmed and that she remained forever a virgin. Scriptural references to \"brothers\" of Christ are interpreted as kin, given that the word \"brother\" was used in multiple ways, as was the term \"father\". Due to her unique place in salvation history, Mary is honoured above all other saints and especially venerated for the great work that God accomplished through her.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church regards the bodies of all saints as holy, made such by participation in the holy mysteries, especially the communion of Christ's holy body and blood, and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within the church. Indeed, that persons and physical things can be made holy is a cornerstone of the doctrine of the Incarnation, made manifest also directly by God in Old Testament times through his dwelling in the Ark of the Covenant. Thus, physical items connected with saints are also regarded as holy, through their participation in the earthly works of those saints. According to church teaching and tradition, God himself bears witness to this holiness of saints' relics through the many miracles connected with them that have been reported throughout history since biblical times, often including healing from disease and injury.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "Orthodox Christians believe that when a person dies the soul is temporarily separated from the body. Though it may linger for a short period on Earth, it is ultimately escorted either to paradise (Abraham's bosom) or the darkness of Hades, following the Temporary Judgment. Orthodox do not accept the doctrine of Purgatory, which is held by Catholicism. The soul's experience of either of these states is only a \"foretaste\"—being experienced only by the soul—until the Final Judgment, when the soul and body will be reunited.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox believe that the state of the soul in Hades can be affected by the love and prayers of the righteous up until the Last Judgment. For this reason the Church offers a special prayer for the dead on the third day, ninth day, fortieth day, and the one-year anniversary after the death of an Orthodox Christian. There are also several days throughout the year that are set aside for general commemoration of the departed, sometimes including nonbelievers. These days usually fall on a Saturday, since it was on a Saturday that Christ lay in the Tomb.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox believe that after the Final Judgment:",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "The official Bible of the Eastern Orthodox Church contains the Septuagint text of the Old Testament, with the Book of Daniel given in the translation by Theodotion. The Patriarchal Text is used for the New Testament. Orthodox Christians hold that the Bible is a verbal icon of Christ, as proclaimed by the 7th ecumenical council. They refer to the Bible as holy scripture, meaning writings containing the foundational truths of the Christian faith as revealed by Christ and the Holy Spirit to its divinely inspired human authors. Holy scripture forms the primary and authoritative written witness of holy tradition and is essential as the basis for all Orthodox teaching and belief.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "Once established as holy scripture, there has never been any question that the Eastern Orthodox Church holds the full list of books to be venerable and beneficial for reading and study, even though it informally holds some books in higher esteem than others, the four gospels highest of all. Of the subgroups significant enough to be named, the \"Anagignoskomena\" (ἀναγιγνωσκόμενα, \"things that are read\") comprises ten of the Old Testament books rejected in the Protestant canon, but deemed by the Eastern Orthodox worthy to be read in worship services, even though they carry a lesser esteem than the 39 books of the Hebrew canon. The lowest tier contains the remaining books not accepted by either Protestants or Catholics, among them, Psalm 151. Though it is a psalm, and is in the book of psalms, it is not classified as being within the Psalter (the first 150 psalms).",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "In a very strict sense, it is not entirely orthodox to call the holy scripture the \"Word of God\". That is a title the Eastern Orthodox Church reserves for Christ, as supported in the scriptures themselves, most explicitly in the first chapter of the gospel of John. God's Word is not hollow, like human words. \"God said, 'let there be light'; and there was light.\"",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church does not subscribe to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. The church has defined what Scripture is; it also interprets what its meaning is. Christ promised: \"When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth\".",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "Scriptures are understood to contain historical fact, poetry, idiom, metaphor, simile, moral fable, parable, prophecy and wisdom literature, and each bears its own consideration in its interpretation. While divinely inspired, the text still consists of words in human languages, arranged in humanly recognisable forms. The Eastern Orthodox Church does not oppose honest critical and historical study of the Bible.",
"title": "Theology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Lesser cycles also run in tandem with the annual ones. A weekly cycle of days prescribes a specific focus for each day in addition to others that may be observed.",
"title": "Liturgy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Each day of the Weekly Cycle is dedicated to certain special memorials. Sunday is dedicated to Christ's Resurrection; Monday honours the holy bodiless powers (angels, archangels, etc.); Tuesday is dedicated to the prophets and especially the greatest of the prophets, John the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord; Wednesday is consecrated to the Cross and recalls Judas' betrayal; Thursday honours the holy apostles and hierarchs, especially Nicholas, Bishop of Myra in Lycia; Friday is also consecrated to the Cross and recalls the day of the Crucifixion; Saturday is dedicated to All Saints, especially the Mother of God, and to the memory of all those who have departed this life in the hope of resurrection and eternal life.",
"title": "Liturgy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "The church has developed eight modes or tones (see Octoechos) within which a chant may be set, depending on the time of year, feast day, or other considerations of the Typikon. There are numerous versions and styles that are traditional and acceptable and these vary a great deal between cultures.",
"title": "Liturgy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "The Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity on New York City's Upper East Side is the largest Orthodox Christian church in the Western Hemisphere.",
"title": "Traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 108,
"text": "Locality is also expressed in regional terms of churchly jurisdiction, which is often also drawn along national lines. Many Orthodox churches adopt a national title (e.g. Albanian Orthodox, Bulgarian Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, etc.) and this title can identify which language is used in services, which bishops preside, and which of the typica is followed by specific congregations. In the Middle East, Orthodox Christians are usually referred to as Rum (\"Roman\") Orthodox, because of their historical connection with the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.",
"title": "Traditions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 109,
"text": "Those things which in the West are often termed sacraments or sacramentals are known among the Eastern Orthodox as the \"sacred mysteries\".",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 110,
"text": "While the Catholic Church numbers seven sacraments, and many Protestant groups list two (baptism and the Eucharist) or even none, the Eastern Orthodox do not limit the number. However, for the sake of convenience, catechisms will often speak of the seven great mysteries. Among these are Holy Communion (the most direct connection), baptism, Chrismation, confession, unction, matrimony, and ordination. But the term also properly applies to other sacred actions such as monastic tonsure or the blessing of holy water, and involves fasting, almsgiving, or an act as simple as lighting a candle, burning incense, praying or asking God's blessing on food.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 111,
"text": "Baptism is the mystery which transforms the old and sinful person into a new and pure one; the old life, the sins, any mistakes made are gone and a clean slate is given. Through baptism a person is united to the Body of Christ by becoming a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. During the service, water is blessed. The catechumen is fully immersed in the water three times in the name of the Trinity. This is considered to be a death of the \"old man\" by participation in the crucifixion and burial of Christ, and a rebirth into new life in Christ by participation in his resurrection.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 112,
"text": "Properly, the mystery of baptism is administered by bishops and priests; however, in emergencies any Eastern Orthodox Christian can baptise.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 113,
"text": "Chrismation (sometimes called confirmation) is the mystery by which a baptised person is granted the gift of the Holy Spirit through anointing with Holy Chrism. It is normally given immediately after baptism as part of the same service, but is also used to receive lapsed members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. As baptism is a person's participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, so Chrismation is a person's participation in the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 114,
"text": "A baptised and chrismated Eastern Orthodox Christian is a full member of the church and may receive the Eucharist regardless of age.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 115,
"text": "The creation of Chrism may be accomplished by any bishop at any time, but usually is done only once a year, often when a synod of bishops convenes for its annual meeting. Some autocephalous churches get their chrism from others. Anointing with it substitutes for the laying-on of hands described in the New Testament, even when an instrument such as a brush is used.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 116,
"text": "Communion is given only to baptised and chrismated Eastern Orthodox Christians who have prepared by fasting, prayer and confession. The priest will administer the gifts with a spoon, called a \"cochlear\", directly into the recipient's mouth from the chalice. From baptism young infants and children are carried to the chalice to receive holy communion.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 117,
"text": "From the Orthodox perspective, marriage is one of the holy mysteries or sacraments. As well as in many other Christian traditions, for example in Catholicism, it serves to unite a woman and a man in eternal union and love before God, with the purpose of following Christ and his Gospel and raising up a faithful, holy family through their holy union. The church understands marriage to be the union of one man and one woman, and certain Orthodox leaders have spoken out strongly in opposition to the civil institution of same-sex marriage.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 118,
"text": "Jesus said that \"when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven\" (Mk 12:25). For the Orthodox Christian this passage should not be understood to imply that Christian marriage will not remain a reality in the Kingdom, but points to the fact that relations will not be \"fleshy\", but \"spiritual\". Love between wife and husband, as an icon of relationship between Christ and church, is eternal.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 119,
"text": "The church does recognise that there are rare occasions when it is better that couples do separate, but there is no official recognition of civil divorces. For the Eastern Orthodox, to say that marriage is indissoluble means that it should not be broken, the violation of such a union, perceived as holy, being an offence resulting from either adultery or the prolonged absence of one of the partners. Thus, permitting remarriage is an act of compassion of the church towards sinful man.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 120,
"text": "Widowed priests and deacons may not remarry and it is common for such members of the clergy to retire to a monastery (see clerical celibacy). This is also true of widowed wives of clergy, who do not remarry and become nuns when their children are grown. Only men are allowed to receive holy orders, although deaconesses had both liturgical and pastoral functions within the church.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 121,
"text": "In 2016, the Patriarchate of Alexandria decided to reintroduce the order of deaconess. In February 2017, Patriarch Theodoros II consecrated five women to be deaconesses within the Patriarchate of Alexandria.",
"title": "Holy mysteries (sacraments)"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 122,
"text": "In 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, published an encyclical \"addressed 'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations\". This gesture was instrumental in the foundation of the World Council of Churches (WCC); as such, almost all Eastern Orthodox churches are members of the WCC and \"Orthodox ecclesiastics and theologians serve on its committees\". Kallistos Ware, a British metropolitan bishop of the Orthodox Church, has stated that ecumenism \"is important for Orthodoxy: it has helped to force the various Orthodox churches out of their comparative isolation, making them meet one another and enter into a living contact with non-Orthodox Christians.\"",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 123,
"text": "Hilarion Alfeyev, then the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and head of external relations for the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, stated that Orthodox and Evangelical Protestant Christians share the same positions on \"such issues as abortion, the family, and marriage\" and desire \"vigorous grassroots engagement\" between the two Christian communions on such issues.",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 124,
"text": "In that regard, the differences between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions have not been improved in any relevant way. Dogmatic and liturgical polarities have been significant, even and especially in recent times. A pertinent point of contention between the monarchically papal, administratively centralised Catholic Church and the decentralised confederation of Orthodox churches is the theological significance of the Virgin Mary. During his visit to Georgia in October 2016, Pope Francis was snubbed by most Orthodox Christians as he led mass before a practically empty Mikheil Meskhi Stadium in Tbilisi.",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 125,
"text": "The Oriental Orthodox Churches are not in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church, despite their similar names. Slow dialogue towards restoring communion between the two churches began in the mid-20th century, and, notably, in the 19th century, when the Greek Patriarch in Egypt had to absent himself from the country for a long period of time; he left his church under the guidance of the Coptic Pope Cyril IV of Alexandria.",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 126,
"text": "In 2019, the Primate of the OCU Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine Epiphanius stated that \"theoretically\" the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church could in the future unite into a united church around the Kyiv throne. In 2019, the Primate of the UGCC, Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia Sviatoslav, stated that every effort should be made to restore the original unity of the Kyivan Church in its Orthodox and Catholic branches, saying that the restoration of Eucharistic communion between Rome and Constantinople is not a utopia.",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 127,
"text": "Notwithstanding certain overtures by both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox leaders, the majority of Orthodox Christians, as well as Catholics, are not in favour of communion between their churches, with only a median of 35 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively, claiming support.",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 128,
"text": "According to Bat Ye'or, Christians under Islamic rule were denied equality of rights since they were forced to pay the jizya poll tax.",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 129,
"text": "In 2007, Metropolitan Alfeyev expressed the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Islam and Christianity in Russia, as the two religions have never had religious wars in Russia.",
"title": "Interfaith relations"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 130,
"text": "The various autocephalous and autonomous synods of the Eastern Orthodox Church are distinct in terms of administration and local culture, but for the most part exist in full communion with one another. In addition, some schismatic churches not in any communion exist, with all three groups identifying as Eastern Orthodox.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 131,
"text": "Another group of non-mainstream Eastern Orthodox Christians are referred True Orthodoxy or Old Calendarists; they are those who, without authority from their parent churches, have continued to use the old Julian calendar, and split from their parent church.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 132,
"text": "The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) has united in 2007 with the Moscow Patriarchate; these two churches had separated from each other in the 1920s due to the subjection of the latter to the hostile Soviet regime.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 133,
"text": "Another group called the Old Believers, separated in 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church rite reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 134,
"text": "The Eastern Orthodox Church is a communion of 15 autocephalous—that is, administratively completely independent—regional churches, plus the Orthodox Church in America and two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. The Orthodox Church in America is recognised as autocephalous only by the Russian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Polish and Czech-Slovak churches. In December 2018, representatives of two unrecognised Ukrainian Orthodox churches, along with two metropolitans of the recognised, but self-declared autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, proclaimed the formation of the unified Orthodox Church of Ukraine. On 5 January 2019, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine received its tomos of autocephaly (decree which defines the conditions of a church's independence) from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and thus received a place in the diptych.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 135,
"text": "Each church has defined geographical boundaries of its jurisdiction and is ruled by its council of bishops or synod presided by a senior bishop–its primate (or first hierarch). The primate may carry the honorary title of patriarch, metropolitan (in the Slavic tradition) or archbishop (in the Greek tradition).",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 136,
"text": "Each regional church consists of constituent eparchies (or dioceses) ruled by a bishop. Some churches have given an eparchy or group of eparchies varying degrees of autonomy (self-government). Such autonomous churches maintain varying levels of dependence on their mother church, usually defined in a tomos or other document of autonomy.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 137,
"text": "Below is a list of the 15 autocephalous Orthodox churches forming the main body of Orthodox Christianity, all of which are titled equal to each other, but the Ecumenical Patriarchate is titled the first among equals. Based on the definitions, the list is in the order of precedence and alphabetical order where necessary, with some of their constituent autonomous churches and exarchates listed as well. The liturgical title of the primate is in italics.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 138,
"text": "Within the main body of Eastern Orthodoxy there are unresolved internal issues as to the autonomous or autocephalous status or legitimacy of the following Orthodox churches, particularly between those stemming from the Russian Orthodox or Constantinopolitan churches:",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 139,
"text": "True Orthodoxy has been separated from the mainstream communion over issues of ecumenism and calendar reform since the 1920s. The movement rejects the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Moscow Patriarchate, and all churches which are in communion with them, accusing them of heresy and placing themselves under bishops who do the same thing. They adhere to the use of the Julian calendar, claiming that the calendar reform in the 1920s is in contradiction with the ecumenical councils. There is no official communion of True Orthodox; and they often are local groups and are limited to a specific bishop or locality.",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 140,
"text": "Old Believers are groups which do not accept the liturgical reforms which were carried out within the Russian Orthodox Church by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow in the 17th century. Although all of the groups of Old Believers emerged as a result of opposition to the Nikonian reforms, they do not constitute a single monolithic body. Despite their emphasis on invariable adherence to the pre-Nikonian traditions, the Old Believers feature a great diversity of groups which profess different interpretations of church tradition and they are often not in communion with each other (some groups even practise re-baptism before admitting a member of another group into their midst).",
"title": "Constituencies"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 141,
"text": "Churches with irregular or unresolved canonical status are entities that have carried out episcopal consecrations outside of the norms of canon law or whose bishops have been excommunicated by one of the 14 autocephalous churches. These include nationalist and other schismatic bodies such as the Abkhazian Orthodox Church.",
"title": "Constituencies"
}
]
| The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church, or officially the Orthodox Catholic Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptised members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via local synods. The church has no central doctrinal or governmental authority analogous to the head of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is recognised by them as primus inter pares, a title formerly given to the patriarch of Rome. As one of the oldest surviving religious institutions in the world, the Eastern Orthodox Church has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Western Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Eastern Orthodox theology is based on the Scriptures and holy tradition, which incorporates the dogmatic decrees of the seven ecumenical councils, and the teaching of the Church Fathers. The church teaches that it is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church established by Jesus Christ in his Great Commission, and that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles. It maintains that it practises the original Christian faith, as passed down by holy tradition. Its patriarchates, descending from the pentarchy, and other autocephalous and autonomous churches, reflect a variety of hierarchical organisation. It recognises seven major sacraments, of which the Eucharist is the principal one, celebrated liturgically in synaxis. The church teaches that through consecration invoked by a priest, the sacrificial bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Virgin Mary is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the God-bearer and honoured in devotions. The Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch—except for some breaks of communion such as the Photian schism or the Acacian schism—shared communion with the Church of Rome until the East–West Schism in 1054. The 1054 schism was the culmination of mounting theological, political, and cultural disputes, particularly over the authority of the pope, between those churches. Before the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, the Church of the East also shared in this communion, as did the various Oriental Orthodox Churches before the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, all separating primarily over differences in Christology. The Eastern Orthodox Church is the primary religious denomination in Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Belarus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, North Macedonia, Cyprus, and Montenegro, is also dominant and widespread in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and maintains a distinguished presence in Germany, Spain, the United States, and Uzbekistan. Although originating in Western Asia the majority of Eastern Orthodox Christians now live in Southeastern and Eastern Europe, and Siberia. Roughly half of Eastern Orthodox Christians live in the post-Soviet states, mostly in Russia. The communities in the former Byzantine regions of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean are among the oldest Orthodox communities from the Middle East, which are decreasing due to forced migration driven by increased religious persecution. Eastern Orthodox communities outside Western Asia, Asia Minor, Caucasia and Eastern Europe, including those in North America, Western Europe, and Australia, have been formed through diaspora, conversions, and missionary activity. | 2001-12-03T12:47:41Z | 2023-12-27T15:10:59Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Orthodox_Church |
10,190 | Eusebius of Nicomedia | Eusebius of Nicomedia (/juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek: Εὐσέβιος; died 341) was an Arian priest who baptized Constantine the Great on his deathbed in 337. A fifth-century legend evolved that Pope Sylvester I was the one to baptize Constantine, but this is dismissed by scholars as a forgery 'to amend the historical memory of the Arian baptism that the emperor received at the end of his life, and instead to attribute an unequivocally orthodox baptism to him.' He was a bishop of Berytus (modern-day Beirut) in Phoenicia. He was later made the bishop of Nicomedia, where the Imperial court resided. He lived finally in Constantinople from 338 up to his death.
Distantly related to the imperial family of Constantine, he owed his progression from a less significant Levantine bishopric to the most important episcopal see to his influence at court, and the great power he wielded in the church was derived from that source. In fact, during his time in the imperial court, the Eastern court and the major positions in the Eastern Church were held by Arians or Arian sympathizers. With the exception of a short period of eclipse, he enjoyed the confidence both of Constantine and Constantius II. He also served as the tutor of the later Emperor Julian the Apostate; and it was he who might have baptized Constantine the Great on May 22, 337 owing to his familial relationship with the emperor. Also during his time in the imperial court, Arianism became more popular with the royal family. It can be logically surmised that Eusebius had a huge hand in the acceptance of Arianism in the Constantinian household. The Arian influence grew so strong during his tenure in the imperial court that it was not until the end of the Constantinian dynasty and the appointment of Theodosius I that Arianism lost its influence in the empire.
It was of particular interest that Eusebius was nearly persecuted because of his close relationship to the Emperor Licinius while serving as bishop of Nicomedia during Licinius' reign.
Like Arius, he was a pupil of Lucian of Antioch, and it is probable that he held the same views as Arius from the very beginning; he was also one of Arius' most fervent supporters who encouraged Arius. It was also because of this relationship that he was the first person whom Arius contacted after the latter was excommunicated from Alexandria by Alexander I of Alexandria in 321. Apparently, Arius and Eusebius were close enough and Eusebius powerful enough that Arius was able to put his theology down in writing. He afterward modified his ideas somewhat, or perhaps he only yielded to the pressure of circumstances; but he was, if not the teacher, at all events the leader and organizer of the Arian council.
At the First Council of Nicaea in 325, he signed the Confession, but only after a long and desperate opposition in which he was said to "subscribe with hand only, not heart" according to ancient sources. It was a huge blow to the Arian party since it was surmised that the participants in the First Council of Nicaea were evenly split between non-Arians and Arians. His defense of Arius angered the emperor, and a few months after the council he was sent into exile due to his continual contacts with Arius and his followers. After the lapse of three years, he succeeded in regaining the imperial favor by convincing Constantine that Arius and his views do not conflict with the proclaimed Nicene Creed. After his return in 329, he brought the whole machinery of the state government into action in order to impose his views upon the Church.
In complement to his theological interests, Eusebius was a skilled politician. Upon his return, he regained the lost ground resulting from the First Council of Nicaea, established alliances with other groups such as the Melitians and expelled many opponents.
He was described by modern historians as an "ambitious intriguer" and a "consummate political player". He was also described by ancient sources as a high-handed person who was also aggressive in his dealings; he also used his allies to spy on his opponents.
He was able to dislodge and exile three key opponents who espoused the First Council of Nicaea: Eustathius of Antioch in 330, Athanasius of Alexandria in 335 and Marcellus of Ancyra in 336. This was no small feat since Athanasius was regarded as a "man of God" by Constantine, and both Eustathius and Athanasius held top positions in the church.
Another major feat was his appointment as the Patriarch of Constantinople by expelling Paul I of Constantinople; Paul would eventually return as Patriarch after Eusebius's death.
Even outside the empire, Eusebius had great influence. He brought Ulfilas into the Arian priesthood and sent the latter to convert the heathen Goths.
Eusebius baptised Constantine the Great in his villa in Nicomedia, on May 22, 337 just before the death of the Emperor.
He died at the height of his power in the year 341.
He was so influential that even after his death, Constantius II heeded his and Eudoxus of Constantinople's advice to attempt to convert the Roman Empire to Arianism by creating Arian Councils and official Arian Doctrines.
It was because of Eusebius that "On the whole, Constantine and his successors made life pretty miserable for Church leaders committed to the Nicene decision and its Trinitarian formula."
Eusebius of Nicomedia is not to be confused with his contemporary Eusebius of Caesarea, the author of well-known early books of Church History.
Synod of Gangra
Correspondence of Eusebius of Nicomedia:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. (1914). New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eusebius of Nicomedia (/juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek: Εὐσέβιος; died 341) was an Arian priest who baptized Constantine the Great on his deathbed in 337. A fifth-century legend evolved that Pope Sylvester I was the one to baptize Constantine, but this is dismissed by scholars as a forgery 'to amend the historical memory of the Arian baptism that the emperor received at the end of his life, and instead to attribute an unequivocally orthodox baptism to him.' He was a bishop of Berytus (modern-day Beirut) in Phoenicia. He was later made the bishop of Nicomedia, where the Imperial court resided. He lived finally in Constantinople from 338 up to his death.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Distantly related to the imperial family of Constantine, he owed his progression from a less significant Levantine bishopric to the most important episcopal see to his influence at court, and the great power he wielded in the church was derived from that source. In fact, during his time in the imperial court, the Eastern court and the major positions in the Eastern Church were held by Arians or Arian sympathizers. With the exception of a short period of eclipse, he enjoyed the confidence both of Constantine and Constantius II. He also served as the tutor of the later Emperor Julian the Apostate; and it was he who might have baptized Constantine the Great on May 22, 337 owing to his familial relationship with the emperor. Also during his time in the imperial court, Arianism became more popular with the royal family. It can be logically surmised that Eusebius had a huge hand in the acceptance of Arianism in the Constantinian household. The Arian influence grew so strong during his tenure in the imperial court that it was not until the end of the Constantinian dynasty and the appointment of Theodosius I that Arianism lost its influence in the empire.",
"title": "Influence in the Imperial family and the Imperial court"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "It was of particular interest that Eusebius was nearly persecuted because of his close relationship to the Emperor Licinius while serving as bishop of Nicomedia during Licinius' reign.",
"title": "Influence in the Imperial family and the Imperial court"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Like Arius, he was a pupil of Lucian of Antioch, and it is probable that he held the same views as Arius from the very beginning; he was also one of Arius' most fervent supporters who encouraged Arius. It was also because of this relationship that he was the first person whom Arius contacted after the latter was excommunicated from Alexandria by Alexander I of Alexandria in 321. Apparently, Arius and Eusebius were close enough and Eusebius powerful enough that Arius was able to put his theology down in writing. He afterward modified his ideas somewhat, or perhaps he only yielded to the pressure of circumstances; but he was, if not the teacher, at all events the leader and organizer of the Arian council.",
"title": "Relationship with Arius"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "At the First Council of Nicaea in 325, he signed the Confession, but only after a long and desperate opposition in which he was said to \"subscribe with hand only, not heart\" according to ancient sources. It was a huge blow to the Arian party since it was surmised that the participants in the First Council of Nicaea were evenly split between non-Arians and Arians. His defense of Arius angered the emperor, and a few months after the council he was sent into exile due to his continual contacts with Arius and his followers. After the lapse of three years, he succeeded in regaining the imperial favor by convincing Constantine that Arius and his views do not conflict with the proclaimed Nicene Creed. After his return in 329, he brought the whole machinery of the state government into action in order to impose his views upon the Church.",
"title": "Relationship with Arius"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In complement to his theological interests, Eusebius was a skilled politician. Upon his return, he regained the lost ground resulting from the First Council of Nicaea, established alliances with other groups such as the Melitians and expelled many opponents.",
"title": "Political and religious career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "He was described by modern historians as an \"ambitious intriguer\" and a \"consummate political player\". He was also described by ancient sources as a high-handed person who was also aggressive in his dealings; he also used his allies to spy on his opponents.",
"title": "Political and religious career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "He was able to dislodge and exile three key opponents who espoused the First Council of Nicaea: Eustathius of Antioch in 330, Athanasius of Alexandria in 335 and Marcellus of Ancyra in 336. This was no small feat since Athanasius was regarded as a \"man of God\" by Constantine, and both Eustathius and Athanasius held top positions in the church.",
"title": "Political and religious career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Another major feat was his appointment as the Patriarch of Constantinople by expelling Paul I of Constantinople; Paul would eventually return as Patriarch after Eusebius's death.",
"title": "Political and religious career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Even outside the empire, Eusebius had great influence. He brought Ulfilas into the Arian priesthood and sent the latter to convert the heathen Goths.",
"title": "Political and religious career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Eusebius baptised Constantine the Great in his villa in Nicomedia, on May 22, 337 just before the death of the Emperor.",
"title": "Political and religious career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "He died at the height of his power in the year 341.",
"title": "Death and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "He was so influential that even after his death, Constantius II heeded his and Eudoxus of Constantinople's advice to attempt to convert the Roman Empire to Arianism by creating Arian Councils and official Arian Doctrines.",
"title": "Death and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "It was because of Eusebius that \"On the whole, Constantine and his successors made life pretty miserable for Church leaders committed to the Nicene decision and its Trinitarian formula.\"",
"title": "Death and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Eusebius of Nicomedia is not to be confused with his contemporary Eusebius of Caesarea, the author of well-known early books of Church History.",
"title": "Death and aftermath"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Synod of Gangra",
"title": "See also"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Correspondence of Eusebius of Nicomedia:",
"title": "External links"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jackson, Samuel Macauley, ed. (1914). New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (third ed.). London and New York: Funk and Wagnalls. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Eusebius of Nicomedia was an Arian priest who baptized Constantine the Great on his deathbed in 337. A fifth-century legend evolved that Pope Sylvester I was the one to baptize Constantine, but this is dismissed by scholars as a forgery 'to amend the historical memory of the Arian baptism that the emperor received at the end of his life, and instead to attribute an unequivocally orthodox baptism to him.' He was a bishop of Berytus in Phoenicia. He was later made the bishop of Nicomedia, where the Imperial court resided. He lived finally in Constantinople from 338 up to his death. | 2001-12-03T21:37:18Z | 2023-12-15T02:16:10Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusebius_of_Nicomedia |
10,191 | Edo | Edo (Japanese: 江戸, lit. '"bay-entrance" or "estuary"'), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.
Edo, formerly a jōkamachi (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the de facto capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world under the Tokugawa.
After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Meiji government renamed Edo as Tokyo (東京, "Eastern Capital") and relocated the Emperor from the historic capital of Kyoto to the city. The era of Tokugawa rule in Japan from 1603 to 1868 is known as the Edo period.
Before the 10th century, there is no mention of Edo in historical records, but for a few settlements in the area. Edo first appears in the Azuma Kagami chronicles, that name for the area being probably used since the second half of the Heian period. Its development started in late 11th century with a branch of the Kanmu-Taira clan (桓武平氏) called the Chichibu clan (秩父氏), coming from the banks of the then-Iruma River, present day upstream of Arakawa river. A descendant of the head of the Chichibu clan settled in the area and took the name Edo Shigetsugu (江戸重継), likely based on the name used for the place, and founded the Edo clan. Shigetsugu built a fortified residence, probably around the tip of the Musashino terrace, which would become the Edo castle. Shigetsugu's son, Edo Shigenaga (江戸重長), took the Taira's side against Minamoto no Yoritomo in 1180 but eventually surrendered to Minamoto and became a gokenin for the Kamakura shogunate. At the fall of the shogunate in the 14th century, the Edo clan took the side of the Southern court, and its influence declined during the Muromachi period.
In 1456, a vassal of the Ōgigayatsu branch of the Uesugi clan, started to build a castle on the former fortified residence of the Edo clan and took the name Ōta Dōkan. Dōkan lived in this castle until his assassination in 1486. Under Dōkan, with good water connections to Kamakura, Odawara and other parts of Kanto and the country, Edo expanded in a jokamachi, with the castle bordering a cove opening into Edo Bay (current Hibiya Park) and the town developing along the Hirakawa River that was flowing into the cove, as well as the stretch of land on the eastern side of the cove (roughly where current Tokyo Station is) called Edomaeto (江戸前島). Some priests and scholars fleeing Kyoto after the Ōnin War came to Edo during that period.
After the death of Dōkan, the castle became one of strongholds of the Uesugi clan, which fell to the Later Hōjō clan at the battle of Takanawahara in 1524, during the expansion of their rule over the Kantō area. When the Hōjō clan was finally defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590, the Kanto area was given to rule to Toyotomi's senior officer Tokugawa Ieyasu, who took his residence in Edo.
Tokugawa Ieyasu emerged as the paramount warlord of the Sengoku period following his victory at the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600. He formally founded the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and established his headquarters at Edo Castle. Edo became the center of political power and de facto capital of Japan, although the historic capital of Kyoto remained the de jure capital as the seat of the emperor. Edo transformed from a fishing village in Musashi Province in 1457 into the largest metropolis in the world with an estimated population of 1,000,000 by 1721.
Edo was repeatedly and regularly devastated by fires, the Great fire of Meireki in 1657 being the most disastrous, with an estimated 100,000 victims and a vast portion of the city completely burnt. At the time, the population of Edo was around 300,000, and the impact of the fire was tremendous. The fire destroyed the central keep of Edo Castle, which was never rebuilt, and it influenced the urban planning afterwards to make the city more resilient with many empty areas to break spreading fires and wider streets. Reconstruction efforts expanded the city east of the Sumida River, and some daimyō residences were relocated to give more space to the city, especially in the direct vicinity of the shogun's residence, giving birth to a large green space beside the castle, present-day Fukiage gardens of the Imperial Palace. During the Edo period, there were about 100 major fires mostly begun by accident and often quickly escalating and spreading through neighborhoods of wooden nagaya which were heated with charcoal fires.
In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown in the Meiji Restoration by supporters of Emperor Meiji and his Imperial Court in Kyoto, ending Edo's status as the de facto capital of Japan. However, the new Meiji government soon renamed Edo to Tōkyō (東京, "Eastern Capital") and the city became the formal capital of Japan when the emperor moved his residence to the city.
Very quickly after its inception, the shogunate undertook major works in Edo that drastically changed the topography of the area, notably under the Tenka-Bushin (天下普請) nationwide program of major civil works involving the now pacified daimyō workforce. The Hibiya cove facing the castle was soon filled after the arrival of Ieyasu, the Hirakawa river was diverted, and several protective moats and logistical canals were dug (including the Kanda river), to limit the risks of flooding. Landfill works on the bay began, with several areas reclaimed during the duration of the shogunate (notably the Tsukiji area). East of the city and of the Sumida River, a massive network of canals was dug.
Fresh water was a major issue, as direct wells would provide brackish water because of the location of the city over an estuary. The few fresh water ponds of the city were put to use, and a network of canals and underground wooden pipes bringing freshwater from the western side of the city and the Tama River was built. Some of this infrastructure was used until the 20th century.
The city was laid out as a castle town around Edo Castle, which was positioned at the tip of the Musashino terrace. The area in the immediate proximity of the castle consisted of samurai and daimyō residences, whose families lived in Edo as part of the sankin-kōtai system; the daimyō made journeys in alternating years to Edo and used the residences for their entourages. The location of each residence was carefully attributed depending on their position as tozama, shinpan or fudai. It was this extensive organization of the city for the samurai class which defined the character of Edo, particularly in contrast to the two major cities of Kyoto and Osaka, neither of which were ruled by a daimyō or had a significant samurai population. Kyoto's character was defined by the Imperial Court, the court nobles, its Buddhist temples and its history; Osaka was the country's commercial center, dominated by the chōnin or the merchant class. On the contrary, the samurai and daimyō residences occupied up to 70% of the area of Edo. On the east and northeast sides of the castle lived the Shomin (庶民, "regular people") including the chōnin in a much more densely populated area than the samurai class area, organized in a series of gated communities called machi (町, "town" or "village"). This area, Shitamachi (下町, "lower town" or "lower towns"), was the center of urban and merchant culture. Shomin also lived along the main roads leading in and out of the city. The Sumida River, then called the Great River (大川, Ōkawa), ran on the eastern side of the city. The shogunate's official rice-storage warehouses and other official buildings were located here.
The Nihonbashi bridge (日本橋, lit. "bridge of Japan") marked the center of the city's commercial center and the starting point of the gokaidō (thus making it the de facto "center of the country"). Fishermen, craftsmen and other producers and retailers operated here. Shippers managed ships known as tarubune to and from Osaka and other cities, bringing goods into the city or transferring them from sea routes to river barges or land routes.
The northeastern corner of the city was considered dangerous in the traditional onmyōdō cosmology and was protected from evil by a number of temples including Sensō-ji and Kan'ei-ji, one of the two tutelary Bodaiji temples of the Tokugawa. A path and a canal, a short distance north of Sensō-ji, extended west from the Sumida riverbank leading along the northern edge of the city to the Yoshiwara pleasure district. Previously located near Ningyōchō, the district was rebuilt in this more remote location after the great fire of Meireki. Danzaemon, the hereditary position head of eta, or outcasts, who performed "unclean" works in the city resided nearby.
Temples and shrines occupied roughly 15% of the surface of the city, equivalent to the living areas of the townspeople, with however an average of one-tenth of its population. Temples and shrines were spread out over the city. Besides the large concentration in the northeast side to protect the city, the second Bodaiji of the Tokugawa, Zōjō-ji occupied a large area south of the castle.
The samurai and daimyōs residential estates varied dramatically in size depending on their status. Some daimyōs could have several of those residences in Edo. The upper residence (上屋敷, kami-yashiki), was the main residence while the lord was in Edo and was used for official duties. It was not necessarily the largest of his residences, but the most convenient to commute to the castle. The upper residence also acted as the representative embassy of the domain in Edo, connecting the shogunate and the clan. The shogunate did not exercise its investigative powers inside the precincts of the residential estate of the upper residence, which could also act as a refuge. The estate of the upper residence was attributed by the shogunate according to the status of the clan and its relation with the Shogun. The middle residence (中屋敷, naka-yashiki), a bit further from the castle, could house the heir of the lord, his servants from his fief when he was in Edo for the sankin-kotai alternate residency, or be a hiding residence if needed. The lower residence (下屋敷, shimo-yashiki), if there was any, was on the outskirts of town, more of a pleasure retreat with gardens. The lower residence could also be used as a retreat for the lord if a fire had devastated the city. Some of the powerful daimyōs residences occupied vast grounds of several dozens of hectares. Maintenance and operations of those residential estates could be extremely expensive. Samurai in service of a specific clan would normally live in the residence of their lord.
The hatamoto samurais, in direct service of the Shogun, would have their own residences, usually located behind the castle on the Western side in the Banchō area.
In a strict sense of the word, chōnin were only the townspeople who owned their residence, which was actually a minority. The shonin population mainly lived in semi-collective housings called nagaya (長屋, litt. "Long house"), multi-rooms wooden dwellings, organized in enclosed machi (町, "town" or "village"), with communal facilities, such as wells connected to the city's fresh water distribution system, garbage collection area and communal bathrooms. A typical machi was of rectangular shape and could have a population of several hundred.
The machi had curfew for the night with closing and guarded gates called kidomon (木戸門) opening on the main street (表通り, omote-dori) in the machi. Two floor buildings and larger shops, reserved to the higher-ranking members of the society, were facing the main street. A machi would typically follow a grid pattern and smaller streets, Shinmichi (新道), were opening on the main street, also with (sometimes) two-floor buildings, shop on the first floor, living quarter on the second floor, for the more well-off residents. Very narrow streets accessible through small gates called roji (路地), would enter deeper inside the machi, where single floor nagayas, the uranagayas (裏長屋, litt. "backstreet long houses") were located. Rentals and smaller rooms for lower ranked shonin were located in those back housings.
Edo was nicknamed the City of 808 machi (江戸八百八町, Edo happyaku hacchō), depicting the large number and diversity of those communities, but the actual number was closer to 1,700 by the 18th century.
Edo's municipal government was under the responsibility of the rōjū, the senior officials which oversaw the entire bakufu – the government of the Tokugawa shogunate. The administrative definition of Edo was called Gofunai (御府内, litt. "where the government is").
The Kanjō-bugyō (finance commissioners) were responsible for the financial matters of the shogunate, whereas the Jisha-Bugyō handled matters related to shrines and temples. The Machi-bugyō (町奉行) were samurai (at the very beginning of the shogunate daimyōs, later hatamoto) officials appointed to keep the order in the city, with the word designating both the heading magistrate, the magistrature and its organization. They were in charge of Edo's day-to-day administration, combining the role of police, judge and fire brigade. There were two offices, the South Machi-Bugyō and the North Machi-Bugyō, which had the same geographical jurisdiction in spite of their name but rotated roles on a monthly basis. Despite their extensive responsibilities, the teams of the Machi-Bugyō were rather small, with 2 offices of 125 people each. The Machi-Bugyō did not have jurisdiction over the samurai residential areas, which remained under the shogunate direct rule. The geographical jurisdiction of the Machi-Bugyō did not exactly coincide with the Gofunai, creating some complexity on the handling on the matters of the city. The Machi-bugyō oversaw the numerous Machi where shonin lived through representatives called Machidoshiyori (町年寄). Each Machi had a Machi leader called Nanushi (名主), who reported to a Machidoshiyori (町年寄) who himself was in charge of several Machis. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Edo (Japanese: 江戸, lit. '\"bay-entrance\" or \"estuary\"'), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Edo, formerly a jōkamachi (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the de facto capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world under the Tokugawa.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Meiji government renamed Edo as Tokyo (東京, \"Eastern Capital\") and relocated the Emperor from the historic capital of Kyoto to the city. The era of Tokugawa rule in Japan from 1603 to 1868 is known as the Edo period.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Before the 10th century, there is no mention of Edo in historical records, but for a few settlements in the area. Edo first appears in the Azuma Kagami chronicles, that name for the area being probably used since the second half of the Heian period. Its development started in late 11th century with a branch of the Kanmu-Taira clan (桓武平氏) called the Chichibu clan (秩父氏), coming from the banks of the then-Iruma River, present day upstream of Arakawa river. A descendant of the head of the Chichibu clan settled in the area and took the name Edo Shigetsugu (江戸重継), likely based on the name used for the place, and founded the Edo clan. Shigetsugu built a fortified residence, probably around the tip of the Musashino terrace, which would become the Edo castle. Shigetsugu's son, Edo Shigenaga (江戸重長), took the Taira's side against Minamoto no Yoritomo in 1180 but eventually surrendered to Minamoto and became a gokenin for the Kamakura shogunate. At the fall of the shogunate in the 14th century, the Edo clan took the side of the Southern court, and its influence declined during the Muromachi period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1456, a vassal of the Ōgigayatsu branch of the Uesugi clan, started to build a castle on the former fortified residence of the Edo clan and took the name Ōta Dōkan. Dōkan lived in this castle until his assassination in 1486. Under Dōkan, with good water connections to Kamakura, Odawara and other parts of Kanto and the country, Edo expanded in a jokamachi, with the castle bordering a cove opening into Edo Bay (current Hibiya Park) and the town developing along the Hirakawa River that was flowing into the cove, as well as the stretch of land on the eastern side of the cove (roughly where current Tokyo Station is) called Edomaeto (江戸前島). Some priests and scholars fleeing Kyoto after the Ōnin War came to Edo during that period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "After the death of Dōkan, the castle became one of strongholds of the Uesugi clan, which fell to the Later Hōjō clan at the battle of Takanawahara in 1524, during the expansion of their rule over the Kantō area. When the Hōjō clan was finally defeated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1590, the Kanto area was given to rule to Toyotomi's senior officer Tokugawa Ieyasu, who took his residence in Edo.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Tokugawa Ieyasu emerged as the paramount warlord of the Sengoku period following his victory at the Battle of Sekigahara in October 1600. He formally founded the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and established his headquarters at Edo Castle. Edo became the center of political power and de facto capital of Japan, although the historic capital of Kyoto remained the de jure capital as the seat of the emperor. Edo transformed from a fishing village in Musashi Province in 1457 into the largest metropolis in the world with an estimated population of 1,000,000 by 1721.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Edo was repeatedly and regularly devastated by fires, the Great fire of Meireki in 1657 being the most disastrous, with an estimated 100,000 victims and a vast portion of the city completely burnt. At the time, the population of Edo was around 300,000, and the impact of the fire was tremendous. The fire destroyed the central keep of Edo Castle, which was never rebuilt, and it influenced the urban planning afterwards to make the city more resilient with many empty areas to break spreading fires and wider streets. Reconstruction efforts expanded the city east of the Sumida River, and some daimyō residences were relocated to give more space to the city, especially in the direct vicinity of the shogun's residence, giving birth to a large green space beside the castle, present-day Fukiage gardens of the Imperial Palace. During the Edo period, there were about 100 major fires mostly begun by accident and often quickly escalating and spreading through neighborhoods of wooden nagaya which were heated with charcoal fires.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown in the Meiji Restoration by supporters of Emperor Meiji and his Imperial Court in Kyoto, ending Edo's status as the de facto capital of Japan. However, the new Meiji government soon renamed Edo to Tōkyō (東京, \"Eastern Capital\") and the city became the formal capital of Japan when the emperor moved his residence to the city.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Very quickly after its inception, the shogunate undertook major works in Edo that drastically changed the topography of the area, notably under the Tenka-Bushin (天下普請) nationwide program of major civil works involving the now pacified daimyō workforce. The Hibiya cove facing the castle was soon filled after the arrival of Ieyasu, the Hirakawa river was diverted, and several protective moats and logistical canals were dug (including the Kanda river), to limit the risks of flooding. Landfill works on the bay began, with several areas reclaimed during the duration of the shogunate (notably the Tsukiji area). East of the city and of the Sumida River, a massive network of canals was dug.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Fresh water was a major issue, as direct wells would provide brackish water because of the location of the city over an estuary. The few fresh water ponds of the city were put to use, and a network of canals and underground wooden pipes bringing freshwater from the western side of the city and the Tama River was built. Some of this infrastructure was used until the 20th century.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The city was laid out as a castle town around Edo Castle, which was positioned at the tip of the Musashino terrace. The area in the immediate proximity of the castle consisted of samurai and daimyō residences, whose families lived in Edo as part of the sankin-kōtai system; the daimyō made journeys in alternating years to Edo and used the residences for their entourages. The location of each residence was carefully attributed depending on their position as tozama, shinpan or fudai. It was this extensive organization of the city for the samurai class which defined the character of Edo, particularly in contrast to the two major cities of Kyoto and Osaka, neither of which were ruled by a daimyō or had a significant samurai population. Kyoto's character was defined by the Imperial Court, the court nobles, its Buddhist temples and its history; Osaka was the country's commercial center, dominated by the chōnin or the merchant class. On the contrary, the samurai and daimyō residences occupied up to 70% of the area of Edo. On the east and northeast sides of the castle lived the Shomin (庶民, \"regular people\") including the chōnin in a much more densely populated area than the samurai class area, organized in a series of gated communities called machi (町, \"town\" or \"village\"). This area, Shitamachi (下町, \"lower town\" or \"lower towns\"), was the center of urban and merchant culture. Shomin also lived along the main roads leading in and out of the city. The Sumida River, then called the Great River (大川, Ōkawa), ran on the eastern side of the city. The shogunate's official rice-storage warehouses and other official buildings were located here.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Nihonbashi bridge (日本橋, lit. \"bridge of Japan\") marked the center of the city's commercial center and the starting point of the gokaidō (thus making it the de facto \"center of the country\"). Fishermen, craftsmen and other producers and retailers operated here. Shippers managed ships known as tarubune to and from Osaka and other cities, bringing goods into the city or transferring them from sea routes to river barges or land routes.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The northeastern corner of the city was considered dangerous in the traditional onmyōdō cosmology and was protected from evil by a number of temples including Sensō-ji and Kan'ei-ji, one of the two tutelary Bodaiji temples of the Tokugawa. A path and a canal, a short distance north of Sensō-ji, extended west from the Sumida riverbank leading along the northern edge of the city to the Yoshiwara pleasure district. Previously located near Ningyōchō, the district was rebuilt in this more remote location after the great fire of Meireki. Danzaemon, the hereditary position head of eta, or outcasts, who performed \"unclean\" works in the city resided nearby.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Temples and shrines occupied roughly 15% of the surface of the city, equivalent to the living areas of the townspeople, with however an average of one-tenth of its population. Temples and shrines were spread out over the city. Besides the large concentration in the northeast side to protect the city, the second Bodaiji of the Tokugawa, Zōjō-ji occupied a large area south of the castle.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The samurai and daimyōs residential estates varied dramatically in size depending on their status. Some daimyōs could have several of those residences in Edo. The upper residence (上屋敷, kami-yashiki), was the main residence while the lord was in Edo and was used for official duties. It was not necessarily the largest of his residences, but the most convenient to commute to the castle. The upper residence also acted as the representative embassy of the domain in Edo, connecting the shogunate and the clan. The shogunate did not exercise its investigative powers inside the precincts of the residential estate of the upper residence, which could also act as a refuge. The estate of the upper residence was attributed by the shogunate according to the status of the clan and its relation with the Shogun. The middle residence (中屋敷, naka-yashiki), a bit further from the castle, could house the heir of the lord, his servants from his fief when he was in Edo for the sankin-kotai alternate residency, or be a hiding residence if needed. The lower residence (下屋敷, shimo-yashiki), if there was any, was on the outskirts of town, more of a pleasure retreat with gardens. The lower residence could also be used as a retreat for the lord if a fire had devastated the city. Some of the powerful daimyōs residences occupied vast grounds of several dozens of hectares. Maintenance and operations of those residential estates could be extremely expensive. Samurai in service of a specific clan would normally live in the residence of their lord.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The hatamoto samurais, in direct service of the Shogun, would have their own residences, usually located behind the castle on the Western side in the Banchō area.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In a strict sense of the word, chōnin were only the townspeople who owned their residence, which was actually a minority. The shonin population mainly lived in semi-collective housings called nagaya (長屋, litt. \"Long house\"), multi-rooms wooden dwellings, organized in enclosed machi (町, \"town\" or \"village\"), with communal facilities, such as wells connected to the city's fresh water distribution system, garbage collection area and communal bathrooms. A typical machi was of rectangular shape and could have a population of several hundred.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The machi had curfew for the night with closing and guarded gates called kidomon (木戸門) opening on the main street (表通り, omote-dori) in the machi. Two floor buildings and larger shops, reserved to the higher-ranking members of the society, were facing the main street. A machi would typically follow a grid pattern and smaller streets, Shinmichi (新道), were opening on the main street, also with (sometimes) two-floor buildings, shop on the first floor, living quarter on the second floor, for the more well-off residents. Very narrow streets accessible through small gates called roji (路地), would enter deeper inside the machi, where single floor nagayas, the uranagayas (裏長屋, litt. \"backstreet long houses\") were located. Rentals and smaller rooms for lower ranked shonin were located in those back housings.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Edo was nicknamed the City of 808 machi (江戸八百八町, Edo happyaku hacchō), depicting the large number and diversity of those communities, but the actual number was closer to 1,700 by the 18th century.",
"title": "Urbanism"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Edo's municipal government was under the responsibility of the rōjū, the senior officials which oversaw the entire bakufu – the government of the Tokugawa shogunate. The administrative definition of Edo was called Gofunai (御府内, litt. \"where the government is\").",
"title": "Government and administration"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The Kanjō-bugyō (finance commissioners) were responsible for the financial matters of the shogunate, whereas the Jisha-Bugyō handled matters related to shrines and temples. The Machi-bugyō (町奉行) were samurai (at the very beginning of the shogunate daimyōs, later hatamoto) officials appointed to keep the order in the city, with the word designating both the heading magistrate, the magistrature and its organization. They were in charge of Edo's day-to-day administration, combining the role of police, judge and fire brigade. There were two offices, the South Machi-Bugyō and the North Machi-Bugyō, which had the same geographical jurisdiction in spite of their name but rotated roles on a monthly basis. Despite their extensive responsibilities, the teams of the Machi-Bugyō were rather small, with 2 offices of 125 people each. The Machi-Bugyō did not have jurisdiction over the samurai residential areas, which remained under the shogunate direct rule. The geographical jurisdiction of the Machi-Bugyō did not exactly coincide with the Gofunai, creating some complexity on the handling on the matters of the city. The Machi-bugyō oversaw the numerous Machi where shonin lived through representatives called Machidoshiyori (町年寄). Each Machi had a Machi leader called Nanushi (名主), who reported to a Machidoshiyori (町年寄) who himself was in charge of several Machis.",
"title": "Government and administration"
}
]
| Edo, also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a jōkamachi centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the de facto capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world under the Tokugawa. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Meiji government renamed Edo as Tokyo and relocated the Emperor from the historic capital of Kyoto to the city. The era of Tokugawa rule in Japan from 1603 to 1868 is known as the Edo period. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-12-08T04:12:30Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo |
10,192 | Explosive | An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances.
The potential energy stored in an explosive material may, for example, be
Explosive materials may be categorized by the speed at which they expand. Materials that detonate (the front of the chemical reaction moves faster through the material than the speed of sound) are said to be "high explosives" and materials that deflagrate are said to be "low explosives". Explosives may also be categorized by their sensitivity. Sensitive materials that can be initiated by a relatively small amount of heat or pressure are primary explosives and materials that are relatively insensitive are secondary or tertiary explosives.
A wide variety of chemicals can explode; a smaller number are manufactured specifically for the purpose of being used as explosives. The remainder are too dangerous, sensitive, toxic, expensive, unstable, or prone to decomposition or degradation over short time spans.
In contrast, some materials are merely combustible or flammable if they burn without exploding.
The distinction, however, is not razor-sharp. Certain materials—dusts, powders, gases, or volatile organic liquids—may be simply combustible or flammable under ordinary conditions, but become explosive in specific situations or forms, such as dispersed airborne clouds, or confinement or sudden release.
Early thermal weapons, such as Greek fire, have existed since ancient times. At its roots, the history of chemical explosives lies in the history of gunpowder. During the Tang dynasty in the 9th century, Taoist Chinese alchemists were eagerly trying to find the elixir of immortality. In the process, they stumbled upon the explosive invention of black powder made from coal, saltpeter, and sulfur in 1044. Gunpowder was the first form of chemical explosives and by 1161, the Chinese were using explosives for the first time in warfare. The Chinese would incorporate explosives fired from bamboo or bronze tubes known as bamboo firecrackers. The Chinese also inserted live rats inside the bamboo firecrackers; when fired toward the enemy, the flaming rats created great psychological ramifications—scaring enemy soldiers away and causing cavalry units to go wild.
The first useful explosive stronger than black powder was nitroglycerin, developed in 1847. Since nitroglycerin is a liquid and highly unstable, it was replaced by nitrocellulose, trinitrotoluene (TNT) in 1863, smokeless powder, dynamite in 1867 and gelignite (the latter two being sophisticated stabilized preparations of nitroglycerin rather than chemical alternatives, both invented by Alfred Nobel). World War I saw the adoption of TNT in artillery shells. World War II saw extensive use of new explosives (see List of explosives used during World War II).
In turn, these have largely been replaced by more powerful explosives such as C-4 and PETN. However, C-4 and PETN react with metal and catch fire easily, yet unlike TNT, C-4 and PETN are waterproof and malleable.
The largest commercial application of explosives is mining. Whether the mine is on the surface or is buried underground, the detonation or deflagration of either a high or low explosive in a confined space can be used to liberate a fairly specific sub-volume of a brittle material (rock) in a much larger volume of the same or similar material. The mining industry tends to use nitrate-based explosives such as emulsions of fuel oil and ammonium nitrate solutions, mixtures of ammonium nitrate prills (fertilizer pellets) and fuel oil (ANFO) and gelatinous suspensions or slurries of ammonium nitrate and combustible fuels.
In Materials Science and Engineering, explosives are used in cladding (explosion welding). A thin plate of some material is placed atop a thick layer of a different material, both layers typically of metal. Atop the thin layer is placed an explosive. At one end of the layer of explosive, the explosion is initiated. The two metallic layers are forced together at high speed and with great force. The explosion spreads from the initiation site throughout the explosive. Ideally, this produces a metallurgical bond between the two layers.
As the length of time the shock wave spends at any point is small, we can see mixing of the two metals and their surface chemistries, through some fraction of the depth, and they tend to be mixed in some way. It is possible that some fraction of the surface material from either layer eventually gets ejected when the end of material is reached. Hence, the mass of the now "welded" bilayer, may be less than the sum of the masses of the two initial layers.
There are applications where a shock wave, and electrostatics, can result in high velocity projectiles.
An explosion is a type of spontaneous chemical reaction that, once initiated, is driven by both a large exothermic change (great release of heat) and a large positive entropy change (great quantities of gases are released) in going from reactants to products, thereby constituting a thermodynamically favorable process in addition to one that propagates very rapidly. Thus, explosives are substances that contain a large amount of energy stored in chemical bonds. The energetic stability of the gaseous products and hence their generation comes from the formation of strongly bonded species like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and (di)nitrogen, which contain strong double and triple bonds having bond strengths of nearly 1 MJ/mole. Consequently, most commercial explosives are organic compounds containing –NO2, –ONO2 and –NHNO2 groups that, when detonated, release gases like the aforementioned (e.g., nitroglycerin, TNT, HMX, PETN, nitrocellulose).
An explosive is classified as a low or high explosive according to its rate of combustion: low explosives burn rapidly (or deflagrate), while high explosives detonate. While these definitions are distinct, the problem of precisely measuring rapid decomposition makes practical classification of explosives difficult. The speed of sound at sea level (343 m/sec) is generally accepted as the distinction between low explosive and high explosive.
Traditional explosives mechanics is based on the shock-sensitive rapid oxidation of carbon and hydrogen to carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water in the form of steam. Nitrates typically provide the required oxygen to burn the carbon and hydrogen fuel. High explosives tend to have the oxygen, carbon and hydrogen contained in one organic molecule, and less sensitive explosives like ANFO are combinations of fuel (carbon and hydrogen fuel oil) and ammonium nitrate. A sensitizer such as powdered aluminum may be added to an explosive to increase the energy of the detonation. Once detonated, the nitrogen portion of the explosive formulation emerges as nitrogen gas and toxic nitric oxides.
The chemical decomposition of an explosive may take years, days, hours, or a fraction of a second. The slower processes of decomposition take place in storage and are of interest only from a stability standpoint. Of more interest are the other two rapid forms besides decomposition: deflagration and detonation.
In deflagration, decomposition of the explosive material is propagated by a flame front which moves slowly through the explosive material at speeds less than the speed of sound within the substance (which is usually higher than 340 m/s or 1240km/h in most liquid or solid materials) in contrast to detonation, which occurs at speeds greater than the speed of sound. Deflagration is a characteristic of low explosive material.
This term is used to describe an explosive phenomenon whereby the decomposition is propagated by a shock wave traversing the explosive material at speeds greater than the speed of sound within the substance. The shock front is capable of passing through the high explosive material at supersonic speeds, typically thousands of metres per second.
In addition to chemical explosives, there are a number of more exotic explosive materials, and exotic methods of causing explosions. Examples include nuclear explosives, and abruptly heating a substance to a plasma state with a high-intensity laser or electric arc.
Laser- and arc-heating are used in laser detonators, exploding-bridgewire detonators, and exploding foil initiators, where a shock wave and then detonation in conventional chemical explosive material is created by laser- or electric-arc heating. Laser and electric energy are not currently used in practice to generate most of the required energy, but only to initiate reactions.
To determine the suitability of an explosive substance for a particular use, its physical properties must first be known. The usefulness of an explosive can only be appreciated when the properties and the factors affecting them are fully understood. Some of the more important characteristics are listed below:
Sensitivity refers to the ease with which an explosive can be ignited or detonated, i.e., the amount and intensity of shock, friction, or heat that is required. When the term sensitivity is used, care must be taken to clarify what kind of sensitivity is under discussion. The relative sensitivity of a given explosive to impact may vary greatly from its sensitivity to friction or heat. Some of the test methods used to determine sensitivity relate to:
Specific explosives (usually but not always highly sensitive on one or more of the three above axes) may be idiosyncratically sensitive to such factors as pressure drop, acceleration, the presence of sharp edges or rough surfaces, incompatible materials, or even—in rare cases—nuclear or electromagnetic radiation. These factors present special hazards that may rule out any practical utility.
Sensitivity is an important consideration in selecting an explosive for a particular purpose. The explosive in an armor-piercing projectile must be relatively insensitive, or the shock of impact would cause it to detonate before it penetrated to the point desired. The explosive lenses around nuclear charges are also designed to be highly insensitive, to minimize the risk of accidental detonation.
The index of the capacity of an explosive to be initiated into detonation in a sustained manner. It is defined by the power of the detonator which is certain to prime the explosive to a sustained and continuous detonation. Reference is made to the Sellier-Bellot scale that consists of a series of 10 detonators, from n. 1 to n. 10, each of which corresponds to an increasing charge weight. In practice, most of the explosives on the market today are sensitive to an n. 8 detonator, where the charge corresponds to 2 grams of mercury fulminate.
The velocity with which the reaction process propagates in the mass of the explosive. Most commercial mining explosives have detonation velocities ranging from 1800 m/s to 8000 m/s. Today, velocity of detonation can be measured with accuracy. Together with density it is an important element influencing the yield of the energy transmitted for both atmospheric over-pressure and ground acceleration. By definition, a "low explosive", such as black powder, or smokeless gunpowder has a burn rate of 171–631 m/s. In contrast, a "high explosive", whether a primary, such as detonating cord, or a secondary, such as TNT or C-4 has a significantly higher burn rate about 6900–8092 m/s.
Stability is the ability of an explosive to be stored without deterioration.
The following factors affect the stability of an explosive:
The term power or performance as applied to an explosive refers to its ability to do work. In practice it is defined as the explosive's ability to accomplish what is intended in the way of energy delivery (i.e., fragment projection, air blast, high-velocity jet, underwater shock and bubble energy, etc.). Explosive power or performance is evaluated by a tailored series of tests to assess the material for its intended use. Of the tests listed below, cylinder expansion and air-blast tests are common to most testing programs, and the others support specific applications.
In addition to strength, explosives display a second characteristic, which is their shattering effect or brisance (from the French meaning to "break"), which is distinguished and separate from their total work capacity. This characteristic is of practical importance in determining the effectiveness of an explosion in fragmenting shells, bomb casings, grenades, and the like. The rapidity with which an explosive reaches its peak pressure (power) is a measure of its brisance. Brisance values are primarily employed in France and Russia.
The sand crush test is commonly employed to determine the relative brisance in comparison to TNT. No test is capable of directly comparing the explosive properties of two or more compounds; it is important to examine the data from several such tests (sand crush, trauzl, and so forth) in order to gauge relative brisance. True values for comparison require field experiments.
Density of loading refers to the mass of an explosive per unit volume. Several methods of loading are available, including pellet loading, cast loading, and press loading, the choice being determined by the characteristics of the explosive. Dependent upon the method employed, an average density of the loaded charge can be obtained that is within 80–99% of the theoretical maximum density of the explosive. High load density can reduce sensitivity by making the mass more resistant to internal friction. However, if density is increased to the extent that individual crystals are crushed, the explosive may become more sensitive. Increased load density also permits the use of more explosive, thereby increasing the power of the warhead. It is possible to compress an explosive beyond a point of sensitivity, known also as dead-pressing, in which the material is no longer capable of being reliably initiated, if at all.
Volatility is the readiness with which a substance vaporizes. Excessive volatility often results in the development of pressure within rounds of ammunition and separation of mixtures into their constituents. Volatility affects the chemical composition of the explosive such that a marked reduction in stability may occur, which results in an increase in the danger of handling.
The introduction of water into an explosive is highly undesirable since it reduces the sensitivity, strength, and velocity of detonation of the explosive. Hygroscopicity is a measure of a material's moisture-absorbing tendencies. Moisture affects explosives adversely by acting as an inert material that absorbs heat when vaporized, and by acting as a solvent medium that can cause undesired chemical reactions. Sensitivity, strength, and velocity of detonation are reduced by inert materials that reduce the continuity of the explosive mass. When the moisture content evaporates during detonation, cooling occurs, which reduces the temperature of reaction. Stability is also affected by the presence of moisture since moisture promotes decomposition of the explosive and, in addition, causes corrosion of the explosive's metal container.
Explosives considerably differ from one another as to their behavior in the presence of water. Gelatin dynamites containing nitroglycerine have a degree of water resistance. Explosives based on ammonium nitrate have little or no water resistance as ammonium nitrate is highly soluble in water and is hygroscopic.
Many explosives are toxic to some extent. Manufacturing inputs can also be organic compounds or hazardous materials that require special handling due to risks (such as carcinogens). The decomposition products, residual solids, or gases of some explosives can be toxic, whereas others are harmless, such as carbon dioxide and water.
Examples of harmful by-products are:
"Green explosives" seek to reduce environment and health impacts. An example of such is the lead-free primary explosive copper(I) 5-nitrotetrazolate, an alternative to lead azide. One variety of a green explosive is CDP explosives, whose synthesis does not involve any toxic ingredients, consumes carbon dioxide while detonating and does not release any nitric oxides into the atmosphere when used.
Explosive material may be incorporated in the explosive train of a device or system. An example is a pyrotechnic lead igniting a booster, which causes the main charge to detonate.
The most widely used explosives are condensed liquids or solids converted to gaseous products by explosive chemical reactions and the energy released by those reactions. The gaseous products of complete reaction are typically carbon dioxide, steam, and nitrogen. Gaseous volumes computed by the ideal gas law tend to be too large at high pressures characteristic of explosions. Ultimate volume expansion may be estimated at three orders of magnitude, or one liter per gram of explosive. Explosives with an oxygen deficit will generate soot or gases like carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which may react with surrounding materials such as atmospheric oxygen. Attempts to obtain more precise volume estimates must consider the possibility of such side reactions, condensation of steam, and aqueous solubility of gases like carbon dioxide.
By comparison, CDP detonation is based on the rapid reduction of carbon dioxide to carbon with the abundant release of energy. Rather than produce typical waste gases like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen and nitric oxides, CDP is different. Instead, the highly energetic reduction of carbon dioxide to carbon vaporizes and pressurizes excess dry ice at the wave front, which is the only gas released from the detonation. The velocity of detonation for CDP formulations can therefore be customized by adjusting the weight percentage of reducing agent and dry ice. CDP detonations produce a large amount of solid materials that can have great commercial value as an abrasive:
Example – CDP Detonation Reaction with Magnesium: XCO2 + 2Mg → 2MgO + C + (X-1)CO2
The products of detonation in this example are magnesium oxide, carbon in various phases including diamond, and vaporized excess carbon dioxide that was not consumed by the amount of magnesium in the explosive formulation.
Oxygen balance is an expression that is used to indicate the degree to which an explosive can be oxidized. If an explosive molecule contains just enough oxygen to convert all of its carbon to carbon dioxide, all of its hydrogen to water, and all of its metal to metal oxide with no excess, the molecule is said to have a zero oxygen balance. The molecule is said to have a positive oxygen balance if it contains more oxygen than is needed and a negative oxygen balance if it contains less oxygen than is needed. The sensitivity, strength, and brisance of an explosive are all somewhat dependent upon oxygen balance and tend to approach their maxima as oxygen balance approaches zero.
Oxygen balance applies to traditional explosives mechanics with the assumption that carbon is oxidized to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide during detonation. In what seems like a paradox to an explosives expert, Cold Detonation Physics uses carbon in its most highly oxidized state as the source of oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide. Oxygen balance, therefore, either does not apply to a CDP formulation or must be calculated without including the carbon in the carbon dioxide.
A chemical explosive may consist of either a chemically pure compound, such as nitroglycerin, or a mixture of a fuel and an oxidizer, such as black powder or grain dust and air.
Some chemical compounds are unstable in that, when shocked, they react, possibly to the point of detonation. Each molecule of the compound dissociates into two or more new molecules (generally gases) with the release of energy.
The above compositions may describe most of the explosive material, but a practical explosive will often include small percentages of other substances. For example, dynamite is a mixture of highly sensitive nitroglycerin with sawdust, powdered silica, or most commonly diatomaceous earth, which act as stabilizers. Plastics and polymers may be added to bind powders of explosive compounds; waxes may be incorporated to make them safer to handle; aluminium powder may be introduced to increase total energy and blast effects. Explosive compounds are also often "alloyed": HMX or RDX powders may be mixed (typically by melt-casting) with TNT to form Octol or Cyclotol.
An oxidizer is a pure substance (molecule) that in a chemical reaction can contribute some atoms of one or more oxidizing elements, in which the fuel component of the explosive burns. On the simplest level, the oxidizer may itself be an oxidizing element, such as gaseous or liquid oxygen.
The availability and cost of explosives are determined by the availability of the raw materials and the cost, complexity, and safety of the manufacturing operations.
A primary explosive is an explosive that is extremely sensitive to stimuli such as impact, friction, heat, static electricity, or electromagnetic radiation. Some primary explosives are also known as contact explosives. A relatively small amount of energy is required for initiation. As a very general rule, primary explosives are considered to be those compounds that are more sensitive than PETN. As a practical measure, primary explosives are sufficiently sensitive that they can be reliably initiated with a blow from a hammer; however, PETN can also usually be initiated in this manner, so this is only a very broad guideline. Additionally, several compounds, such as nitrogen triiodide, are so sensitive that they cannot even be handled without detonating. Nitrogen triiodide is so sensitive that it can be reliably detonated by exposure to alpha radiation; it is the only explosive for which this is true.
Primary explosives are often used in detonators or to trigger larger charges of less sensitive secondary explosives. Primary explosives are commonly used in blasting caps and percussion caps to translate a physical shock signal. In other situations, different signals such as electrical or physical shock, or, in the case of laser detonation systems, light, are used to initiate an action, i.e., an explosion. A small quantity, usually milligrams, is sufficient to initiate a larger charge of explosive that is usually safer to handle.
Examples of primary high explosives are:
A secondary explosive is less sensitive than a primary explosive and requires substantially more energy to be initiated. Because they are less sensitive, they are usable in a wider variety of applications and are safer to handle and store. Secondary explosives are used in larger quantities in an explosive train and are usually initiated by a smaller quantity of a primary explosive.
Examples of secondary explosives include TNT and RDX.
Tertiary explosives, also called blasting agents, are so insensitive to shock that they cannot be reliably detonated by practical quantities of primary explosive, and instead require an intermediate explosive booster of secondary explosive. These are often used for safety and the typically lower costs of material and handling. The largest consumers are large-scale mining and construction operations.
Most tertiaries include a fuel and an oxidizer. ANFO can be a tertiary explosive if its reaction rate is slow.
Low explosives (or low order explosives) are compounds wherein the rate of decomposition proceeds through the material at less than the speed of sound. The decomposition is propagated by a flame front (deflagration) which travels much more slowly through the explosive material than a shock wave of a high explosive. Under normal conditions, low explosives undergo deflagration at rates that vary from a few centimetres per second to approximately 0.4 kilometres per second (1,300 ft/s). It is possible for them to deflagrate very quickly, producing an effect similar to a detonation. This can happen under higher pressure (such as when gunpowder deflagrates inside the confined space of a bullet casing, accelerating the bullet to well beyond the speed of sound) or temperature.
A low explosive is usually a mixture of a combustible substance and an oxidant that decomposes rapidly (deflagration); however, they burn more slowly than a high explosive, which has an extremely fast burn rate.
Low explosives are normally employed as propellants. Included in this group are petroleum products such as propane and gasoline, gunpowder (including smokeless powder), and light pyrotechnics, such as flares and fireworks, but can replace high explosives in certain applications, including in gas pressure blasting.
High explosives (HE, or high order explosives) are explosive materials that detonate, meaning that the explosive shock front passes through the material at a supersonic speed. High explosives detonate with explosive velocity of about 3–9 kilometres per second (9,800–29,500 ft/s). For instance, TNT has a detonation (burn) rate of approximately 6.9 km/s (22,600 feet per second), detonating cord of 6.7 km/s (22,000 feet per second), and C-4 about 8.0 km/s (26,000 feet per second). They are normally employed in mining, demolition, and military applications. The term high explosive is in contrast with the term low explosive, which explodes (deflagrates) at a lower rate.
High explosives can be divided into two explosives classes differentiated by sensitivity: primary explosive and secondary explosive. Although tertiary explosives (such as ANFO at 3,200 m/s) can technically meet the explosive velocity definition, they are not considered high explosives in regulatory contexts.
Countless high-explosive compounds are chemically possible, but commercially and militarily important ones have included NG, TNT, TNP, TNX, RDX, HMX, PETN, TATP, TATB, and HNS.
Explosives are often characterized by the physical form that the explosives are produced or used in. These use forms are commonly categorized as:
Shipping labels and tags may include both United Nations and national markings.
United Nations markings include numbered Hazard Class and Division (HC/D) codes and alphabetic Compatibility Group codes. Though the two are related, they are separate and distinct. Any Compatibility Group designator can be assigned to any Hazard Class and Division. An example of this hybrid marking would be a consumer firework, which is labeled as 1.4G or 1.4S.
Examples of national markings would include United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) codes.
The UN GHS Hazard Class and Division (HC/D) is a numeric designator within a hazard class indicating the character, predominance of associated hazards, and potential for causing personnel casualties and property damage. It is an internationally accepted system that communicates using the minimum amount of markings the primary hazard associated with a substance.
Listed below are the Divisions for Class 1 (Explosives):
To see an entire UNO Table, browse Paragraphs 3-8 and 3-9 of NAVSEA OP 5, Vol. 1, Chapter 3.
Compatibility Group codes are used to indicate storage compatibility for HC/D Class 1 (explosive) materials. Letters are used to designate 13 compatibility groups as follows.
The legality of possessing or using explosives varies by jurisdiction. Various countries around the world have enacted explosives law and require licenses to manufacture, distribute, store, use, possess explosives or ingredients.
In the Netherlands, the civil and commercial use of explosives is covered under the Wet explosieven voor civiel gebruik (explosives for civil use Act), in accordance with EU directive nr. 93/15/EEG (Dutch). The illegal use of explosives is covered under the Wet Wapens en Munitie (Weapons and Munition Act) (Dutch).
The new Explosives Regulations 2014 (ER 2014) came into force on 1 October 2014 and defines "explosive" as:
"a) any explosive article or explosive substance which would —
(i) if packaged for transport, be classified in accordance with the United Nations Recommendations as falling within Class 1; or
(ii) be classified in accordance with the United Nations Recommendations as —
(aa) being unduly sensitive or so reactive as to be subject to spontaneous reaction and accordingly too dangerous to transport, and
(bb) falling within Class 1; or
(b) a desensitised explosive,
but it does not include an explosive substance produced as part of a manufacturing process which thereafter reprocesses it in order to produce a substance or preparation which is not an explosive substance"
"Anyone who wishes to acquire and or keep relevant explosives needs to contact their local police explosives liaison officer. All explosives are relevant explosives apart from those listed under Schedule 2 of Explosives Regulations 2014."
During World War I, numerous laws were created to regulate war related industries and increase security within the United States. In 1917, the 65th United States Congress created many laws, including the Espionage Act of 1917 and Explosives Act of 1917.
The Explosives Act of 1917 (session 1, chapter 83, 40 Stat. 385) was signed on 6 October 1917 and went into effect on 16 November 1917. The legal summary is "An Act to prohibit the manufacture, distribution, storage, use, and possession in time of war of explosives, providing regulations for the safe manufacture, distribution, storage, use, and possession of the same, and for other purposes". This was the first federal regulation of licensing explosives purchases. The act was deactivated after World War I ended.
After the United States entered World War II, the Explosives Act of 1917 was reactivated. In 1947, the act was deactivated by President Truman.
The Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (Pub. L. 91–452) transferred many explosives regulations to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) of the Department of Treasury. The bill became effective in 1971.
Currently, regulations are governed by Title 18 of the United States Code and Title 27 of the Code of Federal Regulations:
Many states restrict the possession, sale, and use of explosives.
Listed in Alphabetical Order: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The potential energy stored in an explosive material may, for example, be",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Explosive materials may be categorized by the speed at which they expand. Materials that detonate (the front of the chemical reaction moves faster through the material than the speed of sound) are said to be \"high explosives\" and materials that deflagrate are said to be \"low explosives\". Explosives may also be categorized by their sensitivity. Sensitive materials that can be initiated by a relatively small amount of heat or pressure are primary explosives and materials that are relatively insensitive are secondary or tertiary explosives.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "A wide variety of chemicals can explode; a smaller number are manufactured specifically for the purpose of being used as explosives. The remainder are too dangerous, sensitive, toxic, expensive, unstable, or prone to decomposition or degradation over short time spans.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In contrast, some materials are merely combustible or flammable if they burn without exploding.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The distinction, however, is not razor-sharp. Certain materials—dusts, powders, gases, or volatile organic liquids—may be simply combustible or flammable under ordinary conditions, but become explosive in specific situations or forms, such as dispersed airborne clouds, or confinement or sudden release.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Early thermal weapons, such as Greek fire, have existed since ancient times. At its roots, the history of chemical explosives lies in the history of gunpowder. During the Tang dynasty in the 9th century, Taoist Chinese alchemists were eagerly trying to find the elixir of immortality. In the process, they stumbled upon the explosive invention of black powder made from coal, saltpeter, and sulfur in 1044. Gunpowder was the first form of chemical explosives and by 1161, the Chinese were using explosives for the first time in warfare. The Chinese would incorporate explosives fired from bamboo or bronze tubes known as bamboo firecrackers. The Chinese also inserted live rats inside the bamboo firecrackers; when fired toward the enemy, the flaming rats created great psychological ramifications—scaring enemy soldiers away and causing cavalry units to go wild.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The first useful explosive stronger than black powder was nitroglycerin, developed in 1847. Since nitroglycerin is a liquid and highly unstable, it was replaced by nitrocellulose, trinitrotoluene (TNT) in 1863, smokeless powder, dynamite in 1867 and gelignite (the latter two being sophisticated stabilized preparations of nitroglycerin rather than chemical alternatives, both invented by Alfred Nobel). World War I saw the adoption of TNT in artillery shells. World War II saw extensive use of new explosives (see List of explosives used during World War II).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In turn, these have largely been replaced by more powerful explosives such as C-4 and PETN. However, C-4 and PETN react with metal and catch fire easily, yet unlike TNT, C-4 and PETN are waterproof and malleable.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "The largest commercial application of explosives is mining. Whether the mine is on the surface or is buried underground, the detonation or deflagration of either a high or low explosive in a confined space can be used to liberate a fairly specific sub-volume of a brittle material (rock) in a much larger volume of the same or similar material. The mining industry tends to use nitrate-based explosives such as emulsions of fuel oil and ammonium nitrate solutions, mixtures of ammonium nitrate prills (fertilizer pellets) and fuel oil (ANFO) and gelatinous suspensions or slurries of ammonium nitrate and combustible fuels.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In Materials Science and Engineering, explosives are used in cladding (explosion welding). A thin plate of some material is placed atop a thick layer of a different material, both layers typically of metal. Atop the thin layer is placed an explosive. At one end of the layer of explosive, the explosion is initiated. The two metallic layers are forced together at high speed and with great force. The explosion spreads from the initiation site throughout the explosive. Ideally, this produces a metallurgical bond between the two layers.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "As the length of time the shock wave spends at any point is small, we can see mixing of the two metals and their surface chemistries, through some fraction of the depth, and they tend to be mixed in some way. It is possible that some fraction of the surface material from either layer eventually gets ejected when the end of material is reached. Hence, the mass of the now \"welded\" bilayer, may be less than the sum of the masses of the two initial layers.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "There are applications where a shock wave, and electrostatics, can result in high velocity projectiles.",
"title": "Applications"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "An explosion is a type of spontaneous chemical reaction that, once initiated, is driven by both a large exothermic change (great release of heat) and a large positive entropy change (great quantities of gases are released) in going from reactants to products, thereby constituting a thermodynamically favorable process in addition to one that propagates very rapidly. Thus, explosives are substances that contain a large amount of energy stored in chemical bonds. The energetic stability of the gaseous products and hence their generation comes from the formation of strongly bonded species like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and (di)nitrogen, which contain strong double and triple bonds having bond strengths of nearly 1 MJ/mole. Consequently, most commercial explosives are organic compounds containing –NO2, –ONO2 and –NHNO2 groups that, when detonated, release gases like the aforementioned (e.g., nitroglycerin, TNT, HMX, PETN, nitrocellulose).",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "An explosive is classified as a low or high explosive according to its rate of combustion: low explosives burn rapidly (or deflagrate), while high explosives detonate. While these definitions are distinct, the problem of precisely measuring rapid decomposition makes practical classification of explosives difficult. The speed of sound at sea level (343 m/sec) is generally accepted as the distinction between low explosive and high explosive.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Traditional explosives mechanics is based on the shock-sensitive rapid oxidation of carbon and hydrogen to carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water in the form of steam. Nitrates typically provide the required oxygen to burn the carbon and hydrogen fuel. High explosives tend to have the oxygen, carbon and hydrogen contained in one organic molecule, and less sensitive explosives like ANFO are combinations of fuel (carbon and hydrogen fuel oil) and ammonium nitrate. A sensitizer such as powdered aluminum may be added to an explosive to increase the energy of the detonation. Once detonated, the nitrogen portion of the explosive formulation emerges as nitrogen gas and toxic nitric oxides.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The chemical decomposition of an explosive may take years, days, hours, or a fraction of a second. The slower processes of decomposition take place in storage and are of interest only from a stability standpoint. Of more interest are the other two rapid forms besides decomposition: deflagration and detonation.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "In deflagration, decomposition of the explosive material is propagated by a flame front which moves slowly through the explosive material at speeds less than the speed of sound within the substance (which is usually higher than 340 m/s or 1240km/h in most liquid or solid materials) in contrast to detonation, which occurs at speeds greater than the speed of sound. Deflagration is a characteristic of low explosive material.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "This term is used to describe an explosive phenomenon whereby the decomposition is propagated by a shock wave traversing the explosive material at speeds greater than the speed of sound within the substance. The shock front is capable of passing through the high explosive material at supersonic speeds, typically thousands of metres per second.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In addition to chemical explosives, there are a number of more exotic explosive materials, and exotic methods of causing explosions. Examples include nuclear explosives, and abruptly heating a substance to a plasma state with a high-intensity laser or electric arc.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Laser- and arc-heating are used in laser detonators, exploding-bridgewire detonators, and exploding foil initiators, where a shock wave and then detonation in conventional chemical explosive material is created by laser- or electric-arc heating. Laser and electric energy are not currently used in practice to generate most of the required energy, but only to initiate reactions.",
"title": "Types"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "To determine the suitability of an explosive substance for a particular use, its physical properties must first be known. The usefulness of an explosive can only be appreciated when the properties and the factors affecting them are fully understood. Some of the more important characteristics are listed below:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Sensitivity refers to the ease with which an explosive can be ignited or detonated, i.e., the amount and intensity of shock, friction, or heat that is required. When the term sensitivity is used, care must be taken to clarify what kind of sensitivity is under discussion. The relative sensitivity of a given explosive to impact may vary greatly from its sensitivity to friction or heat. Some of the test methods used to determine sensitivity relate to:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Specific explosives (usually but not always highly sensitive on one or more of the three above axes) may be idiosyncratically sensitive to such factors as pressure drop, acceleration, the presence of sharp edges or rough surfaces, incompatible materials, or even—in rare cases—nuclear or electromagnetic radiation. These factors present special hazards that may rule out any practical utility.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Sensitivity is an important consideration in selecting an explosive for a particular purpose. The explosive in an armor-piercing projectile must be relatively insensitive, or the shock of impact would cause it to detonate before it penetrated to the point desired. The explosive lenses around nuclear charges are also designed to be highly insensitive, to minimize the risk of accidental detonation.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "The index of the capacity of an explosive to be initiated into detonation in a sustained manner. It is defined by the power of the detonator which is certain to prime the explosive to a sustained and continuous detonation. Reference is made to the Sellier-Bellot scale that consists of a series of 10 detonators, from n. 1 to n. 10, each of which corresponds to an increasing charge weight. In practice, most of the explosives on the market today are sensitive to an n. 8 detonator, where the charge corresponds to 2 grams of mercury fulminate.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The velocity with which the reaction process propagates in the mass of the explosive. Most commercial mining explosives have detonation velocities ranging from 1800 m/s to 8000 m/s. Today, velocity of detonation can be measured with accuracy. Together with density it is an important element influencing the yield of the energy transmitted for both atmospheric over-pressure and ground acceleration. By definition, a \"low explosive\", such as black powder, or smokeless gunpowder has a burn rate of 171–631 m/s. In contrast, a \"high explosive\", whether a primary, such as detonating cord, or a secondary, such as TNT or C-4 has a significantly higher burn rate about 6900–8092 m/s.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Stability is the ability of an explosive to be stored without deterioration.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "The following factors affect the stability of an explosive:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "The term power or performance as applied to an explosive refers to its ability to do work. In practice it is defined as the explosive's ability to accomplish what is intended in the way of energy delivery (i.e., fragment projection, air blast, high-velocity jet, underwater shock and bubble energy, etc.). Explosive power or performance is evaluated by a tailored series of tests to assess the material for its intended use. Of the tests listed below, cylinder expansion and air-blast tests are common to most testing programs, and the others support specific applications.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In addition to strength, explosives display a second characteristic, which is their shattering effect or brisance (from the French meaning to \"break\"), which is distinguished and separate from their total work capacity. This characteristic is of practical importance in determining the effectiveness of an explosion in fragmenting shells, bomb casings, grenades, and the like. The rapidity with which an explosive reaches its peak pressure (power) is a measure of its brisance. Brisance values are primarily employed in France and Russia.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The sand crush test is commonly employed to determine the relative brisance in comparison to TNT. No test is capable of directly comparing the explosive properties of two or more compounds; it is important to examine the data from several such tests (sand crush, trauzl, and so forth) in order to gauge relative brisance. True values for comparison require field experiments.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Density of loading refers to the mass of an explosive per unit volume. Several methods of loading are available, including pellet loading, cast loading, and press loading, the choice being determined by the characteristics of the explosive. Dependent upon the method employed, an average density of the loaded charge can be obtained that is within 80–99% of the theoretical maximum density of the explosive. High load density can reduce sensitivity by making the mass more resistant to internal friction. However, if density is increased to the extent that individual crystals are crushed, the explosive may become more sensitive. Increased load density also permits the use of more explosive, thereby increasing the power of the warhead. It is possible to compress an explosive beyond a point of sensitivity, known also as dead-pressing, in which the material is no longer capable of being reliably initiated, if at all.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Volatility is the readiness with which a substance vaporizes. Excessive volatility often results in the development of pressure within rounds of ammunition and separation of mixtures into their constituents. Volatility affects the chemical composition of the explosive such that a marked reduction in stability may occur, which results in an increase in the danger of handling.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "The introduction of water into an explosive is highly undesirable since it reduces the sensitivity, strength, and velocity of detonation of the explosive. Hygroscopicity is a measure of a material's moisture-absorbing tendencies. Moisture affects explosives adversely by acting as an inert material that absorbs heat when vaporized, and by acting as a solvent medium that can cause undesired chemical reactions. Sensitivity, strength, and velocity of detonation are reduced by inert materials that reduce the continuity of the explosive mass. When the moisture content evaporates during detonation, cooling occurs, which reduces the temperature of reaction. Stability is also affected by the presence of moisture since moisture promotes decomposition of the explosive and, in addition, causes corrosion of the explosive's metal container.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Explosives considerably differ from one another as to their behavior in the presence of water. Gelatin dynamites containing nitroglycerine have a degree of water resistance. Explosives based on ammonium nitrate have little or no water resistance as ammonium nitrate is highly soluble in water and is hygroscopic.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Many explosives are toxic to some extent. Manufacturing inputs can also be organic compounds or hazardous materials that require special handling due to risks (such as carcinogens). The decomposition products, residual solids, or gases of some explosives can be toxic, whereas others are harmless, such as carbon dioxide and water.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Examples of harmful by-products are:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "\"Green explosives\" seek to reduce environment and health impacts. An example of such is the lead-free primary explosive copper(I) 5-nitrotetrazolate, an alternative to lead azide. One variety of a green explosive is CDP explosives, whose synthesis does not involve any toxic ingredients, consumes carbon dioxide while detonating and does not release any nitric oxides into the atmosphere when used.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Explosive material may be incorporated in the explosive train of a device or system. An example is a pyrotechnic lead igniting a booster, which causes the main charge to detonate.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The most widely used explosives are condensed liquids or solids converted to gaseous products by explosive chemical reactions and the energy released by those reactions. The gaseous products of complete reaction are typically carbon dioxide, steam, and nitrogen. Gaseous volumes computed by the ideal gas law tend to be too large at high pressures characteristic of explosions. Ultimate volume expansion may be estimated at three orders of magnitude, or one liter per gram of explosive. Explosives with an oxygen deficit will generate soot or gases like carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which may react with surrounding materials such as atmospheric oxygen. Attempts to obtain more precise volume estimates must consider the possibility of such side reactions, condensation of steam, and aqueous solubility of gases like carbon dioxide.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "By comparison, CDP detonation is based on the rapid reduction of carbon dioxide to carbon with the abundant release of energy. Rather than produce typical waste gases like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen and nitric oxides, CDP is different. Instead, the highly energetic reduction of carbon dioxide to carbon vaporizes and pressurizes excess dry ice at the wave front, which is the only gas released from the detonation. The velocity of detonation for CDP formulations can therefore be customized by adjusting the weight percentage of reducing agent and dry ice. CDP detonations produce a large amount of solid materials that can have great commercial value as an abrasive:",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "Example – CDP Detonation Reaction with Magnesium: XCO2 + 2Mg → 2MgO + C + (X-1)CO2",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The products of detonation in this example are magnesium oxide, carbon in various phases including diamond, and vaporized excess carbon dioxide that was not consumed by the amount of magnesium in the explosive formulation.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "Oxygen balance is an expression that is used to indicate the degree to which an explosive can be oxidized. If an explosive molecule contains just enough oxygen to convert all of its carbon to carbon dioxide, all of its hydrogen to water, and all of its metal to metal oxide with no excess, the molecule is said to have a zero oxygen balance. The molecule is said to have a positive oxygen balance if it contains more oxygen than is needed and a negative oxygen balance if it contains less oxygen than is needed. The sensitivity, strength, and brisance of an explosive are all somewhat dependent upon oxygen balance and tend to approach their maxima as oxygen balance approaches zero.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "Oxygen balance applies to traditional explosives mechanics with the assumption that carbon is oxidized to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide during detonation. In what seems like a paradox to an explosives expert, Cold Detonation Physics uses carbon in its most highly oxidized state as the source of oxygen in the form of carbon dioxide. Oxygen balance, therefore, either does not apply to a CDP formulation or must be calculated without including the carbon in the carbon dioxide.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "A chemical explosive may consist of either a chemically pure compound, such as nitroglycerin, or a mixture of a fuel and an oxidizer, such as black powder or grain dust and air.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "Some chemical compounds are unstable in that, when shocked, they react, possibly to the point of detonation. Each molecule of the compound dissociates into two or more new molecules (generally gases) with the release of energy.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "The above compositions may describe most of the explosive material, but a practical explosive will often include small percentages of other substances. For example, dynamite is a mixture of highly sensitive nitroglycerin with sawdust, powdered silica, or most commonly diatomaceous earth, which act as stabilizers. Plastics and polymers may be added to bind powders of explosive compounds; waxes may be incorporated to make them safer to handle; aluminium powder may be introduced to increase total energy and blast effects. Explosive compounds are also often \"alloyed\": HMX or RDX powders may be mixed (typically by melt-casting) with TNT to form Octol or Cyclotol.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "An oxidizer is a pure substance (molecule) that in a chemical reaction can contribute some atoms of one or more oxidizing elements, in which the fuel component of the explosive burns. On the simplest level, the oxidizer may itself be an oxidizing element, such as gaseous or liquid oxygen.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The availability and cost of explosives are determined by the availability of the raw materials and the cost, complexity, and safety of the manufacturing operations.",
"title": "Properties"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "A primary explosive is an explosive that is extremely sensitive to stimuli such as impact, friction, heat, static electricity, or electromagnetic radiation. Some primary explosives are also known as contact explosives. A relatively small amount of energy is required for initiation. As a very general rule, primary explosives are considered to be those compounds that are more sensitive than PETN. As a practical measure, primary explosives are sufficiently sensitive that they can be reliably initiated with a blow from a hammer; however, PETN can also usually be initiated in this manner, so this is only a very broad guideline. Additionally, several compounds, such as nitrogen triiodide, are so sensitive that they cannot even be handled without detonating. Nitrogen triiodide is so sensitive that it can be reliably detonated by exposure to alpha radiation; it is the only explosive for which this is true.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "Primary explosives are often used in detonators or to trigger larger charges of less sensitive secondary explosives. Primary explosives are commonly used in blasting caps and percussion caps to translate a physical shock signal. In other situations, different signals such as electrical or physical shock, or, in the case of laser detonation systems, light, are used to initiate an action, i.e., an explosion. A small quantity, usually milligrams, is sufficient to initiate a larger charge of explosive that is usually safer to handle.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "Examples of primary high explosives are:",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "A secondary explosive is less sensitive than a primary explosive and requires substantially more energy to be initiated. Because they are less sensitive, they are usable in a wider variety of applications and are safer to handle and store. Secondary explosives are used in larger quantities in an explosive train and are usually initiated by a smaller quantity of a primary explosive.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "Examples of secondary explosives include TNT and RDX.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "Tertiary explosives, also called blasting agents, are so insensitive to shock that they cannot be reliably detonated by practical quantities of primary explosive, and instead require an intermediate explosive booster of secondary explosive. These are often used for safety and the typically lower costs of material and handling. The largest consumers are large-scale mining and construction operations.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "Most tertiaries include a fuel and an oxidizer. ANFO can be a tertiary explosive if its reaction rate is slow.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "Low explosives (or low order explosives) are compounds wherein the rate of decomposition proceeds through the material at less than the speed of sound. The decomposition is propagated by a flame front (deflagration) which travels much more slowly through the explosive material than a shock wave of a high explosive. Under normal conditions, low explosives undergo deflagration at rates that vary from a few centimetres per second to approximately 0.4 kilometres per second (1,300 ft/s). It is possible for them to deflagrate very quickly, producing an effect similar to a detonation. This can happen under higher pressure (such as when gunpowder deflagrates inside the confined space of a bullet casing, accelerating the bullet to well beyond the speed of sound) or temperature.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "A low explosive is usually a mixture of a combustible substance and an oxidant that decomposes rapidly (deflagration); however, they burn more slowly than a high explosive, which has an extremely fast burn rate.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Low explosives are normally employed as propellants. Included in this group are petroleum products such as propane and gasoline, gunpowder (including smokeless powder), and light pyrotechnics, such as flares and fireworks, but can replace high explosives in certain applications, including in gas pressure blasting.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "High explosives (HE, or high order explosives) are explosive materials that detonate, meaning that the explosive shock front passes through the material at a supersonic speed. High explosives detonate with explosive velocity of about 3–9 kilometres per second (9,800–29,500 ft/s). For instance, TNT has a detonation (burn) rate of approximately 6.9 km/s (22,600 feet per second), detonating cord of 6.7 km/s (22,000 feet per second), and C-4 about 8.0 km/s (26,000 feet per second). They are normally employed in mining, demolition, and military applications. The term high explosive is in contrast with the term low explosive, which explodes (deflagrates) at a lower rate.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "High explosives can be divided into two explosives classes differentiated by sensitivity: primary explosive and secondary explosive. Although tertiary explosives (such as ANFO at 3,200 m/s) can technically meet the explosive velocity definition, they are not considered high explosives in regulatory contexts.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "Countless high-explosive compounds are chemically possible, but commercially and militarily important ones have included NG, TNT, TNP, TNX, RDX, HMX, PETN, TATP, TATB, and HNS.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "Explosives are often characterized by the physical form that the explosives are produced or used in. These use forms are commonly categorized as:",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Shipping labels and tags may include both United Nations and national markings.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "United Nations markings include numbered Hazard Class and Division (HC/D) codes and alphabetic Compatibility Group codes. Though the two are related, they are separate and distinct. Any Compatibility Group designator can be assigned to any Hazard Class and Division. An example of this hybrid marking would be a consumer firework, which is labeled as 1.4G or 1.4S.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "Examples of national markings would include United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) codes.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "The UN GHS Hazard Class and Division (HC/D) is a numeric designator within a hazard class indicating the character, predominance of associated hazards, and potential for causing personnel casualties and property damage. It is an internationally accepted system that communicates using the minimum amount of markings the primary hazard associated with a substance.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "Listed below are the Divisions for Class 1 (Explosives):",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "To see an entire UNO Table, browse Paragraphs 3-8 and 3-9 of NAVSEA OP 5, Vol. 1, Chapter 3.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Compatibility Group codes are used to indicate storage compatibility for HC/D Class 1 (explosive) materials. Letters are used to designate 13 compatibility groups as follows.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "The legality of possessing or using explosives varies by jurisdiction. Various countries around the world have enacted explosives law and require licenses to manufacture, distribute, store, use, possess explosives or ingredients.",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "In the Netherlands, the civil and commercial use of explosives is covered under the Wet explosieven voor civiel gebruik (explosives for civil use Act), in accordance with EU directive nr. 93/15/EEG (Dutch). The illegal use of explosives is covered under the Wet Wapens en Munitie (Weapons and Munition Act) (Dutch).",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The new Explosives Regulations 2014 (ER 2014) came into force on 1 October 2014 and defines \"explosive\" as:",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "\"a) any explosive article or explosive substance which would —",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "(i) if packaged for transport, be classified in accordance with the United Nations Recommendations as falling within Class 1; or",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "(ii) be classified in accordance with the United Nations Recommendations as —",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "(aa) being unduly sensitive or so reactive as to be subject to spontaneous reaction and accordingly too dangerous to transport, and",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "(bb) falling within Class 1; or",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "(b) a desensitised explosive,",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "but it does not include an explosive substance produced as part of a manufacturing process which thereafter reprocesses it in order to produce a substance or preparation which is not an explosive substance\"",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "\"Anyone who wishes to acquire and or keep relevant explosives needs to contact their local police explosives liaison officer. All explosives are relevant explosives apart from those listed under Schedule 2 of Explosives Regulations 2014.\"",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "During World War I, numerous laws were created to regulate war related industries and increase security within the United States. In 1917, the 65th United States Congress created many laws, including the Espionage Act of 1917 and Explosives Act of 1917.",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "The Explosives Act of 1917 (session 1, chapter 83, 40 Stat. 385) was signed on 6 October 1917 and went into effect on 16 November 1917. The legal summary is \"An Act to prohibit the manufacture, distribution, storage, use, and possession in time of war of explosives, providing regulations for the safe manufacture, distribution, storage, use, and possession of the same, and for other purposes\". This was the first federal regulation of licensing explosives purchases. The act was deactivated after World War I ended.",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "After the United States entered World War II, the Explosives Act of 1917 was reactivated. In 1947, the act was deactivated by President Truman.",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "The Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 (Pub. L. 91–452) transferred many explosives regulations to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) of the Department of Treasury. The bill became effective in 1971.",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "Currently, regulations are governed by Title 18 of the United States Code and Title 27 of the Code of Federal Regulations:",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "Many states restrict the possession, sale, and use of explosives.",
"title": "Regulation"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "Listed in Alphabetical Order:",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| An explosive is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An explosive charge is a measured quantity of explosive material, which may either be composed solely of one ingredient or be a mixture containing at least two substances. The potential energy stored in an explosive material may, for example, be chemical energy, such as nitroglycerin or grain dust
pressurized gas, such as a gas cylinder, aerosol can, or BLEVE
nuclear energy, such as in the fissile isotopes uranium-235 and plutonium-239 Explosive materials may be categorized by the speed at which they expand. Materials that detonate are said to be "high explosives" and materials that deflagrate are said to be "low explosives". Explosives may also be categorized by their sensitivity. Sensitive materials that can be initiated by a relatively small amount of heat or pressure are primary explosives and materials that are relatively insensitive are secondary or tertiary explosives. A wide variety of chemicals can explode; a smaller number are manufactured specifically for the purpose of being used as explosives. The remainder are too dangerous, sensitive, toxic, expensive, unstable, or prone to decomposition or degradation over short time spans. In contrast, some materials are merely combustible or flammable if they burn without exploding. The distinction, however, is not razor-sharp. Certain materials—dusts, powders, gases, or volatile organic liquids—may be simply combustible or flammable under ordinary conditions, but become explosive in specific situations or forms, such as dispersed airborne clouds, or confinement or sudden release. | 2001-12-04T13:34:07Z | 2023-12-16T08:59:08Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive |
10,193 | Enter the Dragon | Enter the Dragon (Chinese: 龍爭虎鬥) is a 1973 martial arts film directed by Robert Clouse from a story written by Michael Allin. It stars Bruce Lee, John Saxon and Jim Kelly. It was Lee's final completed film appearance before his death on 20 July 1973 at the age of 32. An American-Hong Kong co-production, it premiered in Los Angeles on 19 August 1973, one month after Lee's death.
Enter the Dragon was estimated to have grossed over US$400 million worldwide (estimated to be the equivalent of over $2 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2022), against a budget of $850,000. It is one of the most successful martial arts films ever and is widely regarded as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time. In 2004, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Among the first films to combine martial arts action with spy film elements and the emerging blaxploitation genre, its success led to a series of similar productions combining the martial arts and blaxploitation genres. Its themes generated scholarly debate about the changes taking place within post-colonial Asian societies following the end of World War II.
Enter the Dragon is also considered one of the most influential action films of all time, with its success contributing to mainstream worldwide interest in the martial arts as well as inspiring numerous fictional works, including action films, television shows, action games, comic books, manga and anime.
Lee, a highly proficient martial artist and instructor from Hong Kong, is approached by Braithwaite, a British intelligence agent investigating a suspected crime lord named Han. Lee is persuaded to attend a high-profile martial arts tournament on Han's private island to gather evidence that will prove Han's involvement in drug trafficking and prostitution. Shortly before his departure, Lee also learns that the man responsible for his sister's death, O'Hara, is working as Han's bodyguard on the island. Also fighting in the competition are Roper, an indebted gambling addict, and fellow Vietnam War veteran Williams.
At the end of the first day, Han gives strict orders to the competitors not to leave their rooms. Lee makes contact with covert operative Mei-ling and sneaks into Han's underground compound, looking for evidence. He is discovered by several guards, but manages to escape. The next morning, Han orders his giant enforcer Bolo to kill the guards in public for failing in their duties. After the execution, the competition resumes with Lee facing O'Hara. During the fight, Han warns O'Hara to step down as Lee beats him in humiliating fashion. Lee then kills him after he attacks Lee with a pair of broken bottles, getting justice for his sister's murder. Embarrassed, Han abruptly ends the day's competition after stating that O'Hara's treachery has disgraced them. Han confronts Williams, who had also left his room the previous night to exercise.
Han believes Williams to have knowledge of the intruder and after a destructive brawl, beats Williams to death with his iron prosthetic hand. Han then reveals his drug operation to Roper, hoping that he will join his organisation. Han also implicitly threatens to imprison Roper, along with all the other martial artists who joined Han's tournaments in the past, if Roper will not join his operation. Despite being initially intrigued, Roper reluctantly accepts after learning of Williams's fate. Lee sneaks out again that night and manages to send a message to Braithwaite, but he is captured after a prolonged battle with the guards. The next morning, Han arranges for Roper to fight Lee, but Roper refuses. As a punishment, Roper has to fight Bolo instead, whom he manages to overpower and beat after a grueling battle.
Enraged by the unexpected failure, Han commands his remaining men to kill Lee and Roper. Facing insurmountable odds, they are soon aided by the island's prisoners and the other invited martial artists, who had been freed by Mei-ling. Han escapes and is pursued by Lee, who finally corners him in his museum. After a brutal fight, Han runs away into a hidden mirror room. The mirrors initially give Han an advantage, but Lee smashes all the room's mirrors to reveal Han's location and eventually kills him. Lee returns outside to the main battle, which is now over. Han's surviving men are arrested, his girls are killed and Tania, who had become Roper's lover, is killed during the battle too. Bruised and bloodied, Lee and Roper exchange a weary thumbs-up as the military finally arrives to take control of the island.
Due to the success of his earlier films, Warner Bros. began helping Bruce Lee with the film in 1972. They brought in producers Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller. The film was produced on a tight production budget of $850,000. Fighting sequences were staged by Bruce Lee.
The screenplay title was originally named Blood and Steel. The story features heroic protagonist who are Asian, white, and black, as the producers wanted a film that would appeal to the widest possible international audience. The scene in which Lee states that his style is "Fighting Without Fighting" is based upon a famous anecdote involving the 16th century samurai Tsukahara Bokuden.
Rod Taylor was first choice for playing the down-on-his-luck martial artist Roper. Director Robert Clouse had already worked with Taylor in the 1970 film Darker than Amber. However, Taylor was dropped after Bruce Lee deemed him to be too tall for the role. John Saxon, who was a black belt in Judo and Shotokan Karate (he studied under grandmaster Hidetaka Nishiyama for three years), became the preferred choice. During contractual negotiations, Saxon's agent told the film's producers that if they wanted him they would have to change the plot so that the character of Williams is killed instead of Roper. They agreed and the script was changed. In a six decade career, the character would become one of Saxon's best known roles.
Rockne Tarkington was originally cast in the role of Williams. However, he unexpectedly dropped out days before the production was about to begin in Hong Kong. Producer Fred Weintraub knew that karate world champion Jim Kelly had a training dojo in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, so he hastily arranged a meeting. Weintraub was immediately impressed, and Kelly was cast in the film. The success of Kelly's appearance launched his career as a star: after Enter the Dragon, he signed a three-film deal with Warner Bros and went on to make several martial arts-themed blaxploitation films in the 1970s.
Jackie Chan has uncredited roles as various guards during the fights with Lee. However, Yuen Wah was Lee's main stunt double for the film, responsible for the gymnastics stunts such as the cartwheels and jumping back flip in the opening fight.
Sammo Hung also has an uncredited role in the opening fight scene against Lee at the start of the film.
A rumor surrounding the making of Enter The Dragon claims that actor Bob Wall did not like Bruce Lee and that their fight scenes were not choreographed. However, Wall has denied this, stating he and Lee were good friends.
Chuck Norris was originally considered for the role of O'Hara but declined, stating that one cinematic loss to Lee was enough for him.
The film was shot on location in Hong Kong. In keeping with local film-making practices, scenes were filmed without sound: dialogue and sound effects were added or dubbed in during post-production. Bruce Lee, after he had been goaded or challenged, fought several real fights with the film's extras and some set intruders during filming. The scenes on Han's Island were filmed at a residence known as Palm Villa near the coastal town of Stanley. The villa is now demolished and the area heavily redeveloped around Tai Tam Bay where the martial artists were filmed coming ashore.
Argentinian musician Lalo Schifrin composed the film's musical score. While Schifrin was widely known at the time for his jazz scores, he also incorporated funk and traditional film score elements into the film's soundtrack. He composed the score by sampling sounds from China, Korea, and Japan. The soundtrack has sold over 500,000 copies, earning a gold record.
Enter the Dragon was heavily advertised in the United States before its release. The budget for advertising was over US$1 million. It was unlike any promotional campaign that had been seen before, and was extremely comprehensive. To advertise the film, the studio offered free Karate classes, produced thousands of illustrated flip books, comic books, posters, photographs, and organized dozens of news releases, interviews, and public appearances for the stars. Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Newsweek all wrote stories on the film.
Enter the Dragon was one of the most successful films of 1973. Upon release in Hong Kong, the film grossed HK$3,307,536, which was huge business for the time, but less than Lee's previous 1972 films Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon.
In North America, the film was receiving offers of US$500,000 (equivalent to $3,300,000 in 2022) from American distributors by April 1973 for the distribution rights, several months before release. Upon its limited release in August 1973 in four theaters in New York, the film entered the weekly box office charts at number 17 with a gross of $140,010 (equivalent to $920,000 in 2022) in 3 days. Upon its expansion the following week, it topped the charts for two weeks. Over the next four weeks, it remained in the top 10 while competing with other kung fu films, including Lady Kung Fu, The Shanghai Killers and Deadly China Doll which held the top spot for one week each.
In October, Enter the Dragon regained the top spot in its eighth week. It sold 14.1 million tickets and grossed $25,000,000 (equivalent to $160,000,000 in 2022) from its initial US release, making it the year's fourth highest-grossing film in the market. It was repeatedly re-released throughout the 1970s, with each re-release entering the top five in the box office charts. The film's US gross had increased to $100 million by 1982, and more than $120 million (equivalent to $670 million adjusted for inflation) by 1998.
In Europe, the film initially monopolized several London West End cinemas for five weeks, before becoming a sellout success across Britain and the rest of Europe. In Spain, it was the seventh top-grossing film of 1973, selling 2,462,489 tickets. In France, it was one of the top five highest-grossing films of 1974 (above two other Lee films, The Way of the Dragon at number 8 and Fist of Fury at number 12), with 4,444,582 ticket sales. In Germany, it was one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 1974, with 1.7 million ticket sales. In Greece, the film earned $1,000,000 (equivalent to $6,600,000 in 2022) in its first year of release.
In Japan, it was the second highest-grossing film of 1974 with distributor rental earnings of ¥1,642,000,000 (equivalent to ¥3,445,000,000 in 2019). In South Korea, the film sold 229,681 tickets in the capital city of Seoul. In India, the movie was released in 1975 and opened to full houses; in one Bombay theater, New Excelsior, it had a packed 32-week run. The film was also a success in Iran, where there was a theater which played it daily up until the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Against a tight budget of $850,000, the film grossed US$100,000,000 (equivalent to $660,000,000 in 2022) upon its initial 1973 worldwide release, making it one of the world's highest-grossing films of all time up until then. The film went on to have multiple re-releases around the world over the next several decades, significantly increasing its worldwide gross. The film went on to gross over $220 million internationally by 1981, making it the highest-grossing martial arts film of all time. It was reportedly still among the top 50 all-time highest-grossing films in 1990.
By 1998, it had grossed more than $300 million worldwide. As of 2001, it has grossed an estimated total of over $400 million worldwide, having earned more than 400 times its original budget. The film's cost-to-profit ratio makes it one of the most commercially successful and profitable films of all time. Adjusted for inflation, the film's worldwide gross is estimated to be the equivalent of over $2 billion as of 2022.
Upon release, the film initially received mixed reviews from several critics, including a favorable review from Variety magazine. The film eventually went on to be well-received by most critics, and it is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1973. Critics have referred to Enter the Dragon as "a low-rent James Bond thriller", a "remake of Dr. No" with elements of Fu Manchu. J.C. Maçek III of PopMatters wrote, "Of course the real showcase here is the obvious star here, Bruce Lee, whose performance as an actor and a fighter are the most enhanced by the perfect sound and video transfer. While Kelly was a famous martial artist and a surprisingly good actor and Saxon was a famous actor and a surprisingly good martial artist, Lee proves to be a master of both fields."
Many acclaimed newspapers and magazines reviewed the film. Variety described it as "rich in the atmosphere", the music score as "a strong asset" and the photography as "interesting". The New York Times gave the film a rave review: "The picture is expertly made and well-meshed; it moves like lightning and brims with color. It is also the most savagely murderous and numbing hand-hacker (not a gun in it) you will ever see anywhere."
The film holds an 88% approval rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 78 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Badass to the max, Enter the Dragon is the ultimate kung-fu movie and fitting (if untimely) Bruce Lee swan song." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100 based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". In 2004, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Enter the Dragon was selected as the best martial arts film of all time, in a 2013 poll of The Guardian and The Observer critics. The film also ranks No. 474 on Empire magazine's 2008 list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.
Enter the Dragon has remained one of the most popular martial arts films since its premiere and has been released numerous times worldwide on multiple home video formats. For almost three decades, many theatrical and home video versions were censored for violence, especially in the West. In the U.K. alone, at least four different versions have been released. Since 2001, the film has been released uncut in the U.K. and most other territories. Most DVDs and Blu-rays come with a wide range of extra features in the form of documentaries, interviews, etc. In 2013, a second, remastered HD transfer appeared on Blu-ray, billed as the "40th Anniversary Edition".
In 2020, new 2K digital restorations of the theatrical cut and special edition were included as part of the Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits box set by The Criterion Collection (under licensed from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment through the physical home media joint venture in US and Canada named Studio Distribution Services, LLC. and Fortune Star Media Limited), which featured all of Lee's films, as well as Game of Death II.
The film has been parodied and referenced in places such as the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again, the satirical publication The Onion, the Japanese game-show Takeshi's Castle, and the 1977 John Landis comedy anthology film The Kentucky Fried Movie (in its lengthy "A Fistful of Yen" sequence, basically a comedic, note for note remake of Dragon) and also in the film Balls of Fury. It was also parodied on television in That '70s Show during the episode "Jackie Moves On" with regular character Fez taking on the Bruce Lee role. Several clips from the film are comically used during the theatre scene in The Last Dragon.
Lee's martial arts films were broadly lampooned in the recurring Almost Live! sketch Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan.
Indian director Ram Gopal Varma made a martial-arts film titled 'Ladki: Enter the Girl Dragon'.
In August 2007, the now-defunct Warner Independent Pictures announced that television producer Kurt Sutter would be remaking the film as a noir-style thriller entitled Awaken the Dragon with Korean singer-actor Rain starring. It was announced in September 2014 that Spike Lee would work on the remake. In March 2015, Brett Ratner revealed that he wanted to make the remake. In July 2018, David Leitch was in early talks to direct the remake.
Enter the Dragon has been cited as one of the most influential action films of all time. Sascha Matuszak of Vice called it the most influential kung fu film and said it "is referenced in all manner of media, the plot line and characters continue to influence storytellers today, and the impact was particularly felt in the revolutionizing way the film portrayed African-Americans, Asians and traditional martial arts." Joel Stice of Uproxx called it "arguably the most influential Kung Fu movie of all time." Kuan-Hsing Chen and Beng Huat Chua cited its fight scenes as influential as well as its "hybrid form and its mode of address" which pitches "an elemental story of good against evil in such a spectacle-saturated way". Hollywood filmmaker Quentin Tarantino cited Enter the Dragon as a formative influence on his career.
According to Scott Mendelson of Forbes, Enter the Dragon contains spy film elements similar to the James Bond franchise. Enter the Dragon was the most successful action-spy film to not be part of the James Bond franchise; Enter the Dragon had an initial global box office comparable to the James Bond films of that era, and a lifetime gross surpassing every James Bond film up until GoldenEye (1995). Mendelson argues that, had Lee lived after Enter the Dragon was released, the film had the potential to launch an action-spy film franchise starring Lee that could have rivalled the success of the James Bond franchise.
The film had an impact on mixed martial arts (MMA). In the opening fight sequence, where Lee fights Sammo Hung, Lee demonstrated elements of what would later become known as MMA. Both fighters wore what would later become common mixed martial arts clothing items, including kempo gloves and small shorts, and the fight ends with Lee utilizing an armbar (then used in judo and jiu-jitsu) to submit Hung. According to UFC Hall of Fame fighter Urijah Faber, "that was the moment" that MMA was born.
The Dragon Ball manga and anime franchise, debuted in 1984, was inspired by Enter the Dragon, which Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama was a fan of. The title Dragon Ball was also inspired by Enter the Dragon, and the piercing eyes of Goku's Super Saiyan transformation was based on Bruce Lee's paralyzing glare.
Enter the Dragon inspired early beat 'em up brawler games. It was cited by game designer Yoshihisa Kishimoto as a key inspiration behind Technōs Japan's brawler Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun (1986), released as Renegade in the West. Its spiritual successor Double Dragon (1987) also drew inspiration from Enter the Dragon, with the game's title being a homage to the film. Double Dragon also features two enemies named Roper and Williams, a reference to the two characters Roper and Williams from Enter the Dragon. The sequel Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988) includes opponents named Bolo and Oharra.
Enter the Dragon was the foundation for fighting games. The film's tournament plot inspired numerous fighting games including the Tekken series. The Street Fighter video game franchise, debuted in 1987, was inspired by Enter the Dragon, with the gameplay centered around an international fighting tournament, and each character having a unique combination of ethnicity, nationality and fighting style. Street Fighter went on to set the template for all fighting games that followed. The little-known 1985 Nintendo arcade game Arm Wrestling contains voice leftovers from the film, as well as their original counterparts. The popular fighting game Mortal Kombat borrows multiple plot elements from Enter the Dragon, as does its movie adaptation. | [
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"text": "Enter the Dragon was estimated to have grossed over US$400 million worldwide (estimated to be the equivalent of over $2 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2022), against a budget of $850,000. It is one of the most successful martial arts films ever and is widely regarded as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time. In 2004, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being \"culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant\". Among the first films to combine martial arts action with spy film elements and the emerging blaxploitation genre, its success led to a series of similar productions combining the martial arts and blaxploitation genres. Its themes generated scholarly debate about the changes taking place within post-colonial Asian societies following the end of World War II.",
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"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Lee, a highly proficient martial artist and instructor from Hong Kong, is approached by Braithwaite, a British intelligence agent investigating a suspected crime lord named Han. Lee is persuaded to attend a high-profile martial arts tournament on Han's private island to gather evidence that will prove Han's involvement in drug trafficking and prostitution. Shortly before his departure, Lee also learns that the man responsible for his sister's death, O'Hara, is working as Han's bodyguard on the island. Also fighting in the competition are Roper, an indebted gambling addict, and fellow Vietnam War veteran Williams.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "At the end of the first day, Han gives strict orders to the competitors not to leave their rooms. Lee makes contact with covert operative Mei-ling and sneaks into Han's underground compound, looking for evidence. He is discovered by several guards, but manages to escape. The next morning, Han orders his giant enforcer Bolo to kill the guards in public for failing in their duties. After the execution, the competition resumes with Lee facing O'Hara. During the fight, Han warns O'Hara to step down as Lee beats him in humiliating fashion. Lee then kills him after he attacks Lee with a pair of broken bottles, getting justice for his sister's murder. Embarrassed, Han abruptly ends the day's competition after stating that O'Hara's treachery has disgraced them. Han confronts Williams, who had also left his room the previous night to exercise.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Han believes Williams to have knowledge of the intruder and after a destructive brawl, beats Williams to death with his iron prosthetic hand. Han then reveals his drug operation to Roper, hoping that he will join his organisation. Han also implicitly threatens to imprison Roper, along with all the other martial artists who joined Han's tournaments in the past, if Roper will not join his operation. Despite being initially intrigued, Roper reluctantly accepts after learning of Williams's fate. Lee sneaks out again that night and manages to send a message to Braithwaite, but he is captured after a prolonged battle with the guards. The next morning, Han arranges for Roper to fight Lee, but Roper refuses. As a punishment, Roper has to fight Bolo instead, whom he manages to overpower and beat after a grueling battle.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Enraged by the unexpected failure, Han commands his remaining men to kill Lee and Roper. Facing insurmountable odds, they are soon aided by the island's prisoners and the other invited martial artists, who had been freed by Mei-ling. Han escapes and is pursued by Lee, who finally corners him in his museum. After a brutal fight, Han runs away into a hidden mirror room. The mirrors initially give Han an advantage, but Lee smashes all the room's mirrors to reveal Han's location and eventually kills him. Lee returns outside to the main battle, which is now over. Han's surviving men are arrested, his girls are killed and Tania, who had become Roper's lover, is killed during the battle too. Bruised and bloodied, Lee and Roper exchange a weary thumbs-up as the military finally arrives to take control of the island.",
"title": "Plot"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Due to the success of his earlier films, Warner Bros. began helping Bruce Lee with the film in 1972. They brought in producers Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller. The film was produced on a tight production budget of $850,000. Fighting sequences were staged by Bruce Lee.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The screenplay title was originally named Blood and Steel. The story features heroic protagonist who are Asian, white, and black, as the producers wanted a film that would appeal to the widest possible international audience. The scene in which Lee states that his style is \"Fighting Without Fighting\" is based upon a famous anecdote involving the 16th century samurai Tsukahara Bokuden.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Rod Taylor was first choice for playing the down-on-his-luck martial artist Roper. Director Robert Clouse had already worked with Taylor in the 1970 film Darker than Amber. However, Taylor was dropped after Bruce Lee deemed him to be too tall for the role. John Saxon, who was a black belt in Judo and Shotokan Karate (he studied under grandmaster Hidetaka Nishiyama for three years), became the preferred choice. During contractual negotiations, Saxon's agent told the film's producers that if they wanted him they would have to change the plot so that the character of Williams is killed instead of Roper. They agreed and the script was changed. In a six decade career, the character would become one of Saxon's best known roles.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Rockne Tarkington was originally cast in the role of Williams. However, he unexpectedly dropped out days before the production was about to begin in Hong Kong. Producer Fred Weintraub knew that karate world champion Jim Kelly had a training dojo in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, so he hastily arranged a meeting. Weintraub was immediately impressed, and Kelly was cast in the film. The success of Kelly's appearance launched his career as a star: after Enter the Dragon, he signed a three-film deal with Warner Bros and went on to make several martial arts-themed blaxploitation films in the 1970s.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Jackie Chan has uncredited roles as various guards during the fights with Lee. However, Yuen Wah was Lee's main stunt double for the film, responsible for the gymnastics stunts such as the cartwheels and jumping back flip in the opening fight.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Sammo Hung also has an uncredited role in the opening fight scene against Lee at the start of the film.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A rumor surrounding the making of Enter The Dragon claims that actor Bob Wall did not like Bruce Lee and that their fight scenes were not choreographed. However, Wall has denied this, stating he and Lee were good friends.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Chuck Norris was originally considered for the role of O'Hara but declined, stating that one cinematic loss to Lee was enough for him.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The film was shot on location in Hong Kong. In keeping with local film-making practices, scenes were filmed without sound: dialogue and sound effects were added or dubbed in during post-production. Bruce Lee, after he had been goaded or challenged, fought several real fights with the film's extras and some set intruders during filming. The scenes on Han's Island were filmed at a residence known as Palm Villa near the coastal town of Stanley. The villa is now demolished and the area heavily redeveloped around Tai Tam Bay where the martial artists were filmed coming ashore.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Argentinian musician Lalo Schifrin composed the film's musical score. While Schifrin was widely known at the time for his jazz scores, he also incorporated funk and traditional film score elements into the film's soundtrack. He composed the score by sampling sounds from China, Korea, and Japan. The soundtrack has sold over 500,000 copies, earning a gold record.",
"title": "Production"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Enter the Dragon was heavily advertised in the United States before its release. The budget for advertising was over US$1 million. It was unlike any promotional campaign that had been seen before, and was extremely comprehensive. To advertise the film, the studio offered free Karate classes, produced thousands of illustrated flip books, comic books, posters, photographs, and organized dozens of news releases, interviews, and public appearances for the stars. Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Newsweek all wrote stories on the film.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Enter the Dragon was one of the most successful films of 1973. Upon release in Hong Kong, the film grossed HK$3,307,536, which was huge business for the time, but less than Lee's previous 1972 films Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "In North America, the film was receiving offers of US$500,000 (equivalent to $3,300,000 in 2022) from American distributors by April 1973 for the distribution rights, several months before release. Upon its limited release in August 1973 in four theaters in New York, the film entered the weekly box office charts at number 17 with a gross of $140,010 (equivalent to $920,000 in 2022) in 3 days. Upon its expansion the following week, it topped the charts for two weeks. Over the next four weeks, it remained in the top 10 while competing with other kung fu films, including Lady Kung Fu, The Shanghai Killers and Deadly China Doll which held the top spot for one week each.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In October, Enter the Dragon regained the top spot in its eighth week. It sold 14.1 million tickets and grossed $25,000,000 (equivalent to $160,000,000 in 2022) from its initial US release, making it the year's fourth highest-grossing film in the market. It was repeatedly re-released throughout the 1970s, with each re-release entering the top five in the box office charts. The film's US gross had increased to $100 million by 1982, and more than $120 million (equivalent to $670 million adjusted for inflation) by 1998.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "In Europe, the film initially monopolized several London West End cinemas for five weeks, before becoming a sellout success across Britain and the rest of Europe. In Spain, it was the seventh top-grossing film of 1973, selling 2,462,489 tickets. In France, it was one of the top five highest-grossing films of 1974 (above two other Lee films, The Way of the Dragon at number 8 and Fist of Fury at number 12), with 4,444,582 ticket sales. In Germany, it was one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 1974, with 1.7 million ticket sales. In Greece, the film earned $1,000,000 (equivalent to $6,600,000 in 2022) in its first year of release.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In Japan, it was the second highest-grossing film of 1974 with distributor rental earnings of ¥1,642,000,000 (equivalent to ¥3,445,000,000 in 2019). In South Korea, the film sold 229,681 tickets in the capital city of Seoul. In India, the movie was released in 1975 and opened to full houses; in one Bombay theater, New Excelsior, it had a packed 32-week run. The film was also a success in Iran, where there was a theater which played it daily up until the 1979 Iranian Revolution.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Against a tight budget of $850,000, the film grossed US$100,000,000 (equivalent to $660,000,000 in 2022) upon its initial 1973 worldwide release, making it one of the world's highest-grossing films of all time up until then. The film went on to have multiple re-releases around the world over the next several decades, significantly increasing its worldwide gross. The film went on to gross over $220 million internationally by 1981, making it the highest-grossing martial arts film of all time. It was reportedly still among the top 50 all-time highest-grossing films in 1990.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "By 1998, it had grossed more than $300 million worldwide. As of 2001, it has grossed an estimated total of over $400 million worldwide, having earned more than 400 times its original budget. The film's cost-to-profit ratio makes it one of the most commercially successful and profitable films of all time. Adjusted for inflation, the film's worldwide gross is estimated to be the equivalent of over $2 billion as of 2022.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Upon release, the film initially received mixed reviews from several critics, including a favorable review from Variety magazine. The film eventually went on to be well-received by most critics, and it is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1973. Critics have referred to Enter the Dragon as \"a low-rent James Bond thriller\", a \"remake of Dr. No\" with elements of Fu Manchu. J.C. Maçek III of PopMatters wrote, \"Of course the real showcase here is the obvious star here, Bruce Lee, whose performance as an actor and a fighter are the most enhanced by the perfect sound and video transfer. While Kelly was a famous martial artist and a surprisingly good actor and Saxon was a famous actor and a surprisingly good martial artist, Lee proves to be a master of both fields.\"",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Many acclaimed newspapers and magazines reviewed the film. Variety described it as \"rich in the atmosphere\", the music score as \"a strong asset\" and the photography as \"interesting\". The New York Times gave the film a rave review: \"The picture is expertly made and well-meshed; it moves like lightning and brims with color. It is also the most savagely murderous and numbing hand-hacker (not a gun in it) you will ever see anywhere.\"",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The film holds an 88% approval rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 78 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, \"Badass to the max, Enter the Dragon is the ultimate kung-fu movie and fitting (if untimely) Bruce Lee swan song.\" On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100 based on reviews from 16 critics, indicating \"universal acclaim\". In 2004, the film was deemed \"culturally significant\" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Enter the Dragon was selected as the best martial arts film of all time, in a 2013 poll of The Guardian and The Observer critics. The film also ranks No. 474 on Empire magazine's 2008 list of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Enter the Dragon has remained one of the most popular martial arts films since its premiere and has been released numerous times worldwide on multiple home video formats. For almost three decades, many theatrical and home video versions were censored for violence, especially in the West. In the U.K. alone, at least four different versions have been released. Since 2001, the film has been released uncut in the U.K. and most other territories. Most DVDs and Blu-rays come with a wide range of extra features in the form of documentaries, interviews, etc. In 2013, a second, remastered HD transfer appeared on Blu-ray, billed as the \"40th Anniversary Edition\".",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In 2020, new 2K digital restorations of the theatrical cut and special edition were included as part of the Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits box set by The Criterion Collection (under licensed from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment through the physical home media joint venture in US and Canada named Studio Distribution Services, LLC. and Fortune Star Media Limited), which featured all of Lee's films, as well as Game of Death II.",
"title": "Release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "The film has been parodied and referenced in places such as the 1976 film The Pink Panther Strikes Again, the satirical publication The Onion, the Japanese game-show Takeshi's Castle, and the 1977 John Landis comedy anthology film The Kentucky Fried Movie (in its lengthy \"A Fistful of Yen\" sequence, basically a comedic, note for note remake of Dragon) and also in the film Balls of Fury. It was also parodied on television in That '70s Show during the episode \"Jackie Moves On\" with regular character Fez taking on the Bruce Lee role. Several clips from the film are comically used during the theatre scene in The Last Dragon.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Lee's martial arts films were broadly lampooned in the recurring Almost Live! sketch Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Indian director Ram Gopal Varma made a martial-arts film titled 'Ladki: Enter the Girl Dragon'.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "In August 2007, the now-defunct Warner Independent Pictures announced that television producer Kurt Sutter would be remaking the film as a noir-style thriller entitled Awaken the Dragon with Korean singer-actor Rain starring. It was announced in September 2014 that Spike Lee would work on the remake. In March 2015, Brett Ratner revealed that he wanted to make the remake. In July 2018, David Leitch was in early talks to direct the remake.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Enter the Dragon has been cited as one of the most influential action films of all time. Sascha Matuszak of Vice called it the most influential kung fu film and said it \"is referenced in all manner of media, the plot line and characters continue to influence storytellers today, and the impact was particularly felt in the revolutionizing way the film portrayed African-Americans, Asians and traditional martial arts.\" Joel Stice of Uproxx called it \"arguably the most influential Kung Fu movie of all time.\" Kuan-Hsing Chen and Beng Huat Chua cited its fight scenes as influential as well as its \"hybrid form and its mode of address\" which pitches \"an elemental story of good against evil in such a spectacle-saturated way\". Hollywood filmmaker Quentin Tarantino cited Enter the Dragon as a formative influence on his career.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "According to Scott Mendelson of Forbes, Enter the Dragon contains spy film elements similar to the James Bond franchise. Enter the Dragon was the most successful action-spy film to not be part of the James Bond franchise; Enter the Dragon had an initial global box office comparable to the James Bond films of that era, and a lifetime gross surpassing every James Bond film up until GoldenEye (1995). Mendelson argues that, had Lee lived after Enter the Dragon was released, the film had the potential to launch an action-spy film franchise starring Lee that could have rivalled the success of the James Bond franchise.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "The film had an impact on mixed martial arts (MMA). In the opening fight sequence, where Lee fights Sammo Hung, Lee demonstrated elements of what would later become known as MMA. Both fighters wore what would later become common mixed martial arts clothing items, including kempo gloves and small shorts, and the fight ends with Lee utilizing an armbar (then used in judo and jiu-jitsu) to submit Hung. According to UFC Hall of Fame fighter Urijah Faber, \"that was the moment\" that MMA was born.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "The Dragon Ball manga and anime franchise, debuted in 1984, was inspired by Enter the Dragon, which Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama was a fan of. The title Dragon Ball was also inspired by Enter the Dragon, and the piercing eyes of Goku's Super Saiyan transformation was based on Bruce Lee's paralyzing glare.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Enter the Dragon inspired early beat 'em up brawler games. It was cited by game designer Yoshihisa Kishimoto as a key inspiration behind Technōs Japan's brawler Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun (1986), released as Renegade in the West. Its spiritual successor Double Dragon (1987) also drew inspiration from Enter the Dragon, with the game's title being a homage to the film. Double Dragon also features two enemies named Roper and Williams, a reference to the two characters Roper and Williams from Enter the Dragon. The sequel Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988) includes opponents named Bolo and Oharra.",
"title": "Legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "Enter the Dragon was the foundation for fighting games. The film's tournament plot inspired numerous fighting games including the Tekken series. The Street Fighter video game franchise, debuted in 1987, was inspired by Enter the Dragon, with the gameplay centered around an international fighting tournament, and each character having a unique combination of ethnicity, nationality and fighting style. Street Fighter went on to set the template for all fighting games that followed. The little-known 1985 Nintendo arcade game Arm Wrestling contains voice leftovers from the film, as well as their original counterparts. The popular fighting game Mortal Kombat borrows multiple plot elements from Enter the Dragon, as does its movie adaptation.",
"title": "Legacy"
}
]
| Enter the Dragon is a 1973 martial arts film directed by Robert Clouse from a story written by Michael Allin. It stars Bruce Lee, John Saxon and Jim Kelly. It was Lee's final completed film appearance before his death on 20 July 1973 at the age of 32. An American-Hong Kong co-production, it premiered in Los Angeles on 19 August 1973, one month after Lee's death. Enter the Dragon was estimated to have grossed over US$400 million worldwide, against a budget of $850,000. It is one of the most successful martial arts films ever and is widely regarded as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time. In 2004, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Among the first films to combine martial arts action with spy film elements and the emerging blaxploitation genre, its success led to a series of similar productions combining the martial arts and blaxploitation genres. Its themes generated scholarly debate about the changes taking place within post-colonial Asian societies following the end of World War II. Enter the Dragon is also considered one of the most influential action films of all time, with its success contributing to mainstream worldwide interest in the martial arts as well as inspiring numerous fictional works, including action films, television shows, action games, comic books, manga and anime. | 2001-12-04T17:11:22Z | 2023-12-18T02:16:38Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enter_the_Dragon |
10,201 | Exothermic process | In thermodynamics, an exothermic process (from Ancient Greek έξω (éxō) 'outwards', and θερμικός (thermikós) 'thermal') is a thermodynamic process or reaction that releases energy from the system to its surroundings, usually in the form of heat, but also in a form of light (e.g. a spark, flame, or flash), electricity (e.g. a battery), or sound (e.g. explosion heard when burning hydrogen). The term exothermic was first coined by 19th-century French chemist Marcellin Berthelot.
The opposite of an exothermic process is an endothermic process, one that absorbs energy usually in the form of heat. The concept is frequently applied in the physical sciences to chemical reactions where chemical bond energy is converted to thermal energy (heat).
Exothermic and endothermic describe two types of chemical reactions or systems found in nature, as follows:
After an exothermic reaction, more energy has been released to the surroundings than was absorbed to initiate and maintain the reaction. An example would be the burning of a candle, wherein the sum of calories produced by combustion (found by looking at radiant heating of the surroundings and visible light produced, including the increase in temperature of the fuel (wax) itself, which is converted to hot CO2 and water vapor) exceeds the number of calories absorbed initially in lighting the flame and in the flame maintaining itself (some energy is reabsorbed and used in melting, then vaporizing the wax, etc. but is far outstripped by the energy released when in CO2 and H2O are produced).
In an endothermic reaction or system, energy is taken from the surroundings in the course of the reaction, usually driven by a favorable entropy increase in the system. An example of an endothermic reaction is a first aid cold pack, in which the reaction of two chemicals, or dissolving of one in another, requires calories from the surroundings, and the reaction cools the pouch and surroundings by absorbing heat from them.
Photosynthesis, the process that allows plants to convert carbon dioxide and water to sugar and oxygen, is an endothermic process: plants absorb radiant energy from the sun and use it in an endothermic, otherwise non-spontaneous process. The chemical energy stored can be freed by the inverse (spontaneous) process: combustion of sugar, which gives carbon dioxide, water and heat (radiant energy).
Exothermic refers to a transformation in which a closed system releases energy (heat) to the surroundings, expressed by
When the transformation occurs at constant pressure and without exchange of electrical energy, heat Q is equal to the enthalpy change, i.e.
while at constant volume, according to the first law of thermodynamics it equals internal energy (U) change, i.e.
In an adiabatic system (i.e. a system that does not exchange heat with the surroundings), an otherwise exothermic process results in an increase in temperature of the system.
In exothermic chemical reactions, the heat that is released by the reaction takes the form of electromagnetic energy or kinetic energy of molecules. The transition of electrons from one quantum energy level to another causes light to be released. This light is equivalent in energy to some of the stabilization energy of the energy for the chemical reaction, i.e. the bond energy. This light that is released can be absorbed by other molecules in solution to give rise to molecular translations and rotations, which gives rise to the classical understanding of heat. In an exothermic reaction, the activation energy (energy needed to start the reaction) is less than the energy that is subsequently released, so there is a net release of energy.
Some examples of exothermic processes are:
Chemical exothermic reactions are generally more spontaneous than their counterparts, endothermic reactions.
In a thermochemical reaction that is exothermic, the heat may be listed among the products of the reaction. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In thermodynamics, an exothermic process (from Ancient Greek έξω (éxō) 'outwards', and θερμικός (thermikós) 'thermal') is a thermodynamic process or reaction that releases energy from the system to its surroundings, usually in the form of heat, but also in a form of light (e.g. a spark, flame, or flash), electricity (e.g. a battery), or sound (e.g. explosion heard when burning hydrogen). The term exothermic was first coined by 19th-century French chemist Marcellin Berthelot.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The opposite of an exothermic process is an endothermic process, one that absorbs energy usually in the form of heat. The concept is frequently applied in the physical sciences to chemical reactions where chemical bond energy is converted to thermal energy (heat).",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Exothermic and endothermic describe two types of chemical reactions or systems found in nature, as follows:",
"title": "Two types of chemical reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After an exothermic reaction, more energy has been released to the surroundings than was absorbed to initiate and maintain the reaction. An example would be the burning of a candle, wherein the sum of calories produced by combustion (found by looking at radiant heating of the surroundings and visible light produced, including the increase in temperature of the fuel (wax) itself, which is converted to hot CO2 and water vapor) exceeds the number of calories absorbed initially in lighting the flame and in the flame maintaining itself (some energy is reabsorbed and used in melting, then vaporizing the wax, etc. but is far outstripped by the energy released when in CO2 and H2O are produced).",
"title": "Two types of chemical reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In an endothermic reaction or system, energy is taken from the surroundings in the course of the reaction, usually driven by a favorable entropy increase in the system. An example of an endothermic reaction is a first aid cold pack, in which the reaction of two chemicals, or dissolving of one in another, requires calories from the surroundings, and the reaction cools the pouch and surroundings by absorbing heat from them.",
"title": "Two types of chemical reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Photosynthesis, the process that allows plants to convert carbon dioxide and water to sugar and oxygen, is an endothermic process: plants absorb radiant energy from the sun and use it in an endothermic, otherwise non-spontaneous process. The chemical energy stored can be freed by the inverse (spontaneous) process: combustion of sugar, which gives carbon dioxide, water and heat (radiant energy).",
"title": "Two types of chemical reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Exothermic refers to a transformation in which a closed system releases energy (heat) to the surroundings, expressed by",
"title": "Energy release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "When the transformation occurs at constant pressure and without exchange of electrical energy, heat Q is equal to the enthalpy change, i.e.",
"title": "Energy release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "while at constant volume, according to the first law of thermodynamics it equals internal energy (U) change, i.e.",
"title": "Energy release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In an adiabatic system (i.e. a system that does not exchange heat with the surroundings), an otherwise exothermic process results in an increase in temperature of the system.",
"title": "Energy release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In exothermic chemical reactions, the heat that is released by the reaction takes the form of electromagnetic energy or kinetic energy of molecules. The transition of electrons from one quantum energy level to another causes light to be released. This light is equivalent in energy to some of the stabilization energy of the energy for the chemical reaction, i.e. the bond energy. This light that is released can be absorbed by other molecules in solution to give rise to molecular translations and rotations, which gives rise to the classical understanding of heat. In an exothermic reaction, the activation energy (energy needed to start the reaction) is less than the energy that is subsequently released, so there is a net release of energy.",
"title": "Energy release"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "Some examples of exothermic processes are:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Chemical exothermic reactions are generally more spontaneous than their counterparts, endothermic reactions.",
"title": "Implications for chemical reactions"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In a thermochemical reaction that is exothermic, the heat may be listed among the products of the reaction.",
"title": "Implications for chemical reactions"
}
]
| In thermodynamics, an exothermic process is a thermodynamic process or reaction that releases energy from the system to its surroundings, usually in the form of heat, but also in a form of light, electricity, or sound. The term exothermic was first coined by 19th-century French chemist Marcellin Berthelot. The opposite of an exothermic process is an endothermic process, one that absorbs energy usually in the form of heat. The concept is frequently applied in the physical sciences to chemical reactions where chemical bond energy is converted to thermal energy (heat). | 2001-12-05T04:54:19Z | 2023-11-01T18:15:03Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exothermic_process |
10,204 | Elihu Yale | Elihu Yale (5 April 1649 – 8 July 1721) was a British-American colonial administrator and philanthropist. Although born in Boston, Massachusetts, he only lived in America as a child, spending the rest of his life in England, Wales, and India. He became a clerk for the East India Company at Fort St. George (later Madras), and eventually rose to President of the settlement. He later lost that position under charges of corruption for self-dealing and had to pay a fine. In 1699, he returned to Britain with a considerable fortune, around £200,000, mostly made by selling diamonds, and spent his time and wealth in philanthropy and art collecting. He is best remembered as the primary benefactor of Yale College (now Yale University), which was named in his honor, following a sizable donation of books, portrait, and textiles under the request of Rev. Cotton Mather, a Harvard graduate. No descendants of his have survived past his grandchildren.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to David Yale (1613–1690), a wealthy Boston merchant and attorney to Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, and Ursula Knight; he was the grandson of Ann Yale (born Lloyd), daughter of Bishop George Lloyd. After the death of her first husband, Thomas Yale Sr. (1587–1619), son of Chancellor David Yale, she remarried to Governor Theophilus Eaton, Ambassador to the court of Denmark. Governor Eaton was the co-founder of two of the Thirteen British Colonies, which are represented on the Flag of the United States, mainly through the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the New Haven Colony, and was the brother of Nathaniel Eaton, Harvard's first Headmaster and President designate, at the founding of Harvard in 1636.
His son, Samuel Eaton, the uncle of Elihu, was implied in the foundation of Harvard as well, being one of the seven founders of the Harvard Corporation, the governing board and charter that incorporated Harvard in 1650. It was they, along with Elihu's uncle and aunt, Thomas Yale, Jr, and Anne Yale, Jr, who brought the reconstituted Eaton/Yale family to America, while other members of the family stayed in England. Their estates in Wales were Plas-yn-Yale and Plas Grono, and Elihu's brother was London merchant Thomas Yale, later Ambassador to the King of Siam for the East India Company.
Elihu's father, David Yale, would later come from London to New Haven Colony with his stepfather, Theophilus Eaton, in 1639. He moved to Boston in 1641 and met and married Elihu Yale's mother, Ursula, in 1643. In 1652, at the age of three, Elihu Yale left New England, never to return, as David Yale took his family back to London. While documentation of this period is sparse, a letter suggests that David Yale remained a successful merchant and settled his family in the Hanseatic merchant district "Steelyard Court". In 1662, at the age of thirteen, Elihu Yale entered the private school of William Dugard, but Dugard died a few months after Elihu Yale enrolled. Elihu Yale likely lived through the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London.
In 1670, at the age of 21, Elihu Yale became a clerk for the East India Company and served an apprenticeship in London in the Leadenhall Street office. It is possible that Elihu Yale had business training in his father's merchant counting house, and his father's connections helped him get the job. The following year in 1671, Yale was one of twenty men chosen as "Writers" in India. Elihu Yale was bonded for £500 with the help of his father and his brother David. For 20 years Yale served the East India Company. In 1684, he became the first president of Fort St George, the company's post at Madras (now Chennai), India. He succeeded a number of agents from Sir Andrew Cogan to William Gyfford. Yale was instrumental in the development of the Government General Hospital, housed at Fort St George. Yale amassed a fortune while working for the company, largely through secret contracts with Madras merchants, against the East India Company's directive. By 1692, his repeated flouting of East India Company regulations and growing embarrassment at his illegal profiteering resulted in his being relieved of the post of governor.
Elihu Yale was re-appointed as President of Madras of Fort St George on 26 July, 1687. During that year, following a personal dispute with the King of Siam, Gov. Yale commanded the Anglo-Siamese War against King Narai the Great and his chief minister, Constantine Phaulkon, who were scheming with Louis XIV of Versailles to increase French influence in the region. He sent warships and sought retaliation against Englishmen who changed sides. During this time, his brother Thomas Yale became Ambassador to the King of Siam, and brought back a letter from the Emperor of Japan to be delivered to King Charles II of England. Elihu would entertain at his house the French Ambassador and musketeer, Count Claude de Forbin, drinking to the health of the royal families of England and France.
He then implemented an order which required the English at Fort St George to make all attempts at procurement of the town of Santhome on lease. To this effect, Chinna Venkatadri was sent to negotiate with the local governor on 4 August 1687. The mission was successful and Venkatadri assumed sovereignty over Santhome for a period of three years. Notwithstanding the vehement protests of the Portuguese inhabitants of Santhome, the English gained absolute control over all lands up to St Thomas Mount for a period of three years.
In September 1687, the Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb took Golconda after the Siege of Golconda, defeating Sultan Abul Hasan Qutb Shah. The Mughals took the Sultan of Golconda prisoner and annexed the state. The newly designated Mughal Subedar of the province immediately sent a letter to the British authorities at Fort St George demanding that the English at Madras acknowledge the overlordship of the Mughal Emperor. The English complied willingly. Yale sent a letter to general Mahabat Khan and complied with the ceremonial performances of Prince Muhammad Kam Bakhsh and prime minister Asad Khan. Aurangazeb guaranteed the independence of Madras, but in return demanded that the English supply troops in the event of a war against the Marathas. It was around this time that Yale's three-year-old son David Yale died and was interred in the Madras cemetery.
The records of this period mention a flourishing slave trade in Madras. After English merchants began to kidnap young children and deport them to distant parts of the world, the administration of Fort St George stepped in and introduced laws to curb the practice. On 2 February 1688, Elihu Yale decreed that slaves should be examined by the judges of the choultry before being transported. Transportation of young children, in particular, was made unlawful. Beyond this, the nature of Yale's involvement in the slave trade remains disputed. A blog post by a Yale history Ph.D. candidate and manager of the Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal notes that he permitted a law that at least ten slaves should be carried on every ship bound for Europe and in his capacity as judge he also on several occasions sentenced so-called "black criminals" to whipping and enslavement. On the other hand, according to Steven Pincus, a former Yale professor of history and current professor at the University of Chicago, Yale was never a slave trader and never owned slaves – and in fact opposed the slave trade during his time as President of Madras.
During Yale's presidency, a plan for setting up a corporation in Madras was conceived by Sir Josiah Child, the Governor of the East India Company, in a letter addressed to the factors at Madras on 28 September 1687. Three months later, Child and his deputy had an audience with King James II of England, and as per the ensuing discussions, a charter was issued by the King on 30 December 1687 which established the Corporation of Madras. The corporation was established to restrain the powers of Gov. Yale, and became the oldest corporation in India, and second oldest municipal body in the world after the City of London. The charter came into effect on 29 September 1688, and a Corporation was established comprising a Mayor, 12 Aldermen, 60-100 Burgesses and sergeants. Nathaniel Higginson, who was then the second member of the Council of Fort St George, took office as the Mayor of Madras.
In August 1689, a French fleet appeared near the coast of Ceylon compelling the Governor of Pulicat Lawrence Pitt who was on high seas to seek protection within the bastions of Fort St George. Throughout the year 1690, French naval ships from Pondicherry ravaged the coast in order to drive the English and the Dutch out of the East Indies but were unsuccessful. They eventually withdrew from their enterprise when faced with heavy losses. It was also during this time that the English purchased the town of Tegnapatnam from the Marathas.
As president of Fort St George, Yale purchased territory for private purposes with East India Company funds, including a fort at Devanampattinam (now Cuddalore). Yale imposed high taxes for the maintenance of the colonial garrison and town, resulting in an unpopular regime and several revolts by Indians, brutally quelled by garrison soldiers. Yale was also notorious for arresting and trying Indians on his own private authority, including the hanging of a stable boy who had absconded with a Company horse.
Charges of corruption were brought against Elihu Yale in the last years of his presidency. He was eventually removed in 1692 and replaced with Nathaniel Higginson as the President of Madras.
Yale returned to Britain in 1699, with a fortune that amounted to £200,000, mostly made by selling diamonds from the Golconda mines and the Kollur mines, in Southern India. Notable diamonds from these mines included the Orlov Diamond, belonging to Prince Grigory Orlov and Catherine the Great, the Black Orlov, belonging to Russian princesses, the Hope Diamond, belonging to Louis XIV and Thomas Hope, the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond, belonging to the Habsburgs and Wittelsbachs, and many others.
Along with Sir Jean Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the traveling merchant of Louis XIV of Versailles, Yale was among the most important European diamond traders in the world, as nearly all diamonds came from India during that period. In relation to GDP, his fortune amounted to 1/4 % of the United Kingdom's GDP at the time, which translates to nearly 6 billion British pounds in 2021 money. He kept doing business with his friends Governor Thomas Pitt, grandfather of the Prime Minister of Britain, and Sir Charles Cotterell, during the era where London became the international trading centre of diamonds, dislodging Portugal and the Netherlands.
He spent the rest of his life at Plas Grono on the Erddig estate, a mansion in Wrexham, Wales, bought by his father, and at his main London residence in Queen's Square. Initially named "Devonshire Square", neighbors included the Duke of Powis at Powis House, Lord Chancellor Bathurst, Queen Anne and her son, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, artists Charles Burney and Jonathan Richardson, and others.
He had four houses in London as well as several coach houses and stables to store his vast art collection of more than 10,000 items consisting of 7,000 paintings, jewels, pictures, books, watches, swords, and other items. A famous object of his collection was one of the Jewels of Mary, Queen of Scots as well as a painting from Dutch painter Adriaen van der Werff, who painted for the Medici family. Other notable artists whose works were part of his collection were Bruegel, Van Dyck, Dürer, Rubens and Rembrandt.
He also leased Latimer House from his son-in-law, Lord James Cavendish, son of the 1st Duke of Devonshire, to accommodate his daughter Ursula. Elihu was later elected High Sheriff of Denbighshire in Wales, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1717, under the then President, Sir Isaac Newton. Yale's candidature was introduced by Sir Hans Sloan, founder of the British Museum, and compeer of Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. In the same year, Yale was asked by Isaac Newton to deal with the donations from the estate of Dr. Thomas Paget.
After Jacques de Paiva's death in 1687, a Portuguese Jewish diamond merchant and mines owner, Elihu Yale fell in love with his widow Hieronima de Paiva and brought her to live with him, causing quite a scandal within Madras’s colonial society. Elihu Yale and Hieromima de Paiva had a son. The son died in South Africa.
Elihu Yale was previously married to Catherine Elford in 1680, widow of Joseph Hynmers, second-in-command of Fort St George, India as Deputy Governor for the East India Company. Her father was wealthy Levant merchant Walter Elford, son of Turkey merchant Walter Sr., the step-nephew of Admiral Sir Francis Drake of Buckland Abbey, the explorer, and the half-brother of Sir Francis Drake, the MP.
Walter Elford Sr. was among the pioneers of the English Coffee Houses on Exchange Alley, next to the Royal Exchange, owning the Great Coffee House (Turk's Head) until the Great Fire of London, and was featured in Samuel Pepys's diaries. Catherine Elford's maternal grandfather was merchant Richard Chambers, Alderman and Sheriff of the City of London, family of Sir Amyas Bampfylde of Poltimore House and Barrington Court.
Their wedding took place at St Mary's Church, at Fort St George, where Yale was a vestryman and treasurer. The marriage was the first registered at the church. They had 4 children together.
David Yale (died 1687) died young.
Katherine Yale (died 1715) married Dudley North of Glemham Hall, son of Sir Dudley North of Camden Place, and grandson of Dudley North, 4th Baron North of Kirtling Tower. He was a cousin of Francis North, 1st Earl of Guilford of Wroxton Abbey and a grandson of Anne Montagu of Boughton House, member of the Ducal House of Montagu.
Their daughter Anne North would marry Nicholas Herbert, member of the Ducal House of Herbert, son of the 8th Earl of Pembroke, Thomas Herbert of Wilton House and his first wife, Margaret Sawyer of Highclere Castle while one of their sons, William Dudley North, would marry Lady Barbara Herbert, daughter of Thomas and his second wife, Barbara Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. Nicholas's only daughter, Barbara, would marry the 2nd Earl of Aldborough, Edward Stratford, member of the House of Stratford.
Anne Yale (died 1734), married Lord James Cavendish of Staveley Hall, member of the Ducal House of Cavendish, son of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire of Chatsworth House and Lady Mary Butler, member of the Ducal House of Butler and daughter of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde of Kilkenny Castle.
James was also a grandson of Countess Elizabeth Cecil of Hatfield House, member of the Salisbury's House of Cecil, a great-grandson of Countess Catherine Howard of Audley End House, member of the Ducal House of Howard, and a nephew of John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter of Burghley House, member of the Exeter's House of Cecil.
Ursula Yale (died 1721), died childless at Latimer House, the house was rented by Elihu Yale from his son-in-law Lord James Cavendish, husband of Anne Yale, and is buried in the small church on the estate, St Mary Magdalene.
Yale died on 8 July 1721 in London. His body was buried in the churchyard of the parish church of St Giles' Church, Wrexham, Wales. His tomb is inscribed with these lines:
Born in America, in Europe bred In Africa travell'd and in Asia wed Where long he liv'd and thriv'd; In London dead Much good, some ill, he did; so hope all's even And that his soul thro' mercy's gone to Heaven You that survive and read this tale, take care For this most certain exit to prepare Where blest in peace, the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the silent dust.
In Boston, Massachusetts, a tablet to Yale was erected in 1927 at Scollay Square, near the site of Yale's birth. Yale president Arthur Twining Hadley penned the inscription, which reads: "On Pemberton Hill, 255 Feet North of This Spot, Was Born on April Fifth 1649 Elihu Yale, Governor of Madras, Whose Permanent Memorial in His Native Land is the College That Bears His Name."
At his death, with no proper will, his heirs-at-law inherited the Plas Grono estate and sold it to Sir George Wynne of Leswood Hall, designed by Francis Smith, an architect of Aston Hall and Sutton Scarsdale Hall.
In 1718, Cotton Mather contacted Yale and asked for his help. Mather represented a small institution of learning that had been founded in 1701 in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, as the Collegiate School of Connecticut, which needed money for a new building. In 1717, Sir Isaac Newton sent to the college a copy of his book Principia, on Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and in 1718, Elihu Yale sent Mather 417 books, a portrait of King George I of Britain, and nine bales of goods. These last were sold by the school for £800. In gratitude, officials named the new building Yale; eventually the entire institution became Yale College.
Yale was also a vestryman and treasurer of St Mary's Church at Fort St George. On 6 October 1968, the 250th anniversary of the naming of Yale College for Elihu Yale, the classmates of Chester Bowles, then the American ambassador to India and a graduate of Yale (1924), donated money for lasting improvements to the church and erected a plaque to commemorate the occasion. In 1970, a portrait of him, Elihu Yale seated at table with the Second Duke of Devonshire and Lord James Cavendish, later renamed Elihu Yale with Members of his Family and an Enslaved Child, was donated to the Yale Center for British Art from Chatsworth House. A portrait, painted during the 18th century, was also given to Yale University by U.S President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
On 5 April 1999, Yale University recognised the 350th anniversary of Yale's birthday. An article that year in American Heritage magazine rated Elihu Yale the "most overrated philanthropist" in American history, arguing that the college that became Yale University was successful largely because of the generosity of a man named Jeremiah Dummer, but that the trustees of the school did not want it known by the name "Dummer College".
In her article for The Atlantic about Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University, Alexandra Robbins alleges that Yale's headstone was stolen years ago from its proper setting in Wrexham. She further alleges that the tombstone is now displayed in a glass case in a room with purple walls.
One of Elihu Yale's responsibilities as president of Fort St George was overseeing its slave trade, though he was never a slave trader, opposed the slave trade, and imposed several restrictions on it during his tenure. In 2016, Elizabeth Kuebler-Wolf wrote in the Journal of Global History that Yale enslaved one or two people as household servants, citing Hiram Bingham's 1939 book Elihu Yale. In 2021, the Associated Press wrote that there is no evidence that Yale had enslaved anyone, although his relatives in New Haven likely did.
In 2014, Yale history graduate student Joseph Yannielli argued that he benefited from the trade because it was among his responsibilities as president, and wrote of Yale: "On two separate occasions, he sentenced “black Criminalls” accused of burglary to suffer whipping, branding, and foreign enslavement", citing "Records of Fort St. George: Diary and Consultation Book of 1688 (Madras: Superintendent Government Press, 1916), 30, 137; Records of Fort St. George: Diary and Consultation Book of 1689 (Madras: Superintendent Government Press, 1916), 99."
He added that although Yale "probably did not own any of these people – the majority were held as the property of the East India Company – he certainly profited both directly and indirectly from their sale".
The ancestry of the Yale family can be traced back from Chancellor Thomas Yale, born 1525, to many Royal and noble houses of Britain as descendants of the Royal House of Mathrafal, the Royal House of Aberffraw, the Royal House of Plantagenet, the Princely House of Powys Fadog, the Tudors of Penmynydd and many others. For the House of Mathrafal, and Powys Fadog, it was through Tudur ap Gruffudd, Lord of Gwyddelwern and brother of the last native Prince of Wales, Owain Glyndŵr, while for the House of Aberffraw, and the Tudors of Penmynydd, it was through Elen Ferch Tomos, the mother of Owain. From these families they inherited Lordships and estates, such as Plas yn Iâl (Yale).
The Coat of arms of the Yales came originally in the family from Osborn Fitzgerald, Lord of Ynys-m-Maengwyn and Corsygedol, of which they were the direct descendants, and was used to create the coat of arms of Yale College. Osborn Fitzgerald was a member of the House of Fitzgerald through the Earls of Desmond. He made the trip from Ireland to Wales during the thirteenth century with Gruffydd ab Ednyved Vychan, son of Seneschal Ednyfed Fychan, and was granted Lordships by the Prince of North Wales, Llywelyn the Great. He was the progenitor of many houses in Wales, including the House of Yale, co-representative of the Sovereign Dynasties of Powys, North Wales, and South Wales, having inherited the claims of Owain Glyndwr, Prince of Wales.
The House of Yale is, on the paternal side, a cadet branch of the Royal House of Mathrafal, through the Princes of Powys Fadog, and a cadet branch of the Fitzgerald dynasty, through the Merioneth House of Corsygedol. Their Fitzgerald ancestor was lord Gerald of Windsor, son of baron Walter FitzOtho, 1st Governor of Windsor Castle for William the Conqueror, and were cousins of the Tudors through Tudur ap Gruffudd and Owain Glyndwr of the Mathrafal dynasty.
The family estate at Plas yn Iâl ("Iâl" is anglicised as "Yale"), North Wales, of which the family took the name, was inherited from Baron Elissau ab Gruffydd, a member of the Royal House of Mathrafal and descendant of the Royal House of Plantagenet, when he married Margaret, the heiress of Plas yn Yale, in the Lordship of Bromfield and Yale. Her ancestor, Lord Mostyn, was granted the estate by the Prince of Wales, Owain Gwynedd, for his services at the Battle of Crogen in 1165. Elissau ab Gruffydd was the grandfather of Chancellor Thomas Yale, who was the first to adopt definitively the Yale surname, and had, as his ancestor, Prince Gruffudd Fychan I, the Lord of Yale. The estate was originally called Allt Llwyn Dragon, which means Dragon's Grove Hill.
Media related to Elihu Yale at Wikimedia Commons | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Elihu Yale (5 April 1649 – 8 July 1721) was a British-American colonial administrator and philanthropist. Although born in Boston, Massachusetts, he only lived in America as a child, spending the rest of his life in England, Wales, and India. He became a clerk for the East India Company at Fort St. George (later Madras), and eventually rose to President of the settlement. He later lost that position under charges of corruption for self-dealing and had to pay a fine. In 1699, he returned to Britain with a considerable fortune, around £200,000, mostly made by selling diamonds, and spent his time and wealth in philanthropy and art collecting. He is best remembered as the primary benefactor of Yale College (now Yale University), which was named in his honor, following a sizable donation of books, portrait, and textiles under the request of Rev. Cotton Mather, a Harvard graduate. No descendants of his have survived past his grandchildren.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to David Yale (1613–1690), a wealthy Boston merchant and attorney to Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, and Ursula Knight; he was the grandson of Ann Yale (born Lloyd), daughter of Bishop George Lloyd. After the death of her first husband, Thomas Yale Sr. (1587–1619), son of Chancellor David Yale, she remarried to Governor Theophilus Eaton, Ambassador to the court of Denmark. Governor Eaton was the co-founder of two of the Thirteen British Colonies, which are represented on the Flag of the United States, mainly through the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the New Haven Colony, and was the brother of Nathaniel Eaton, Harvard's first Headmaster and President designate, at the founding of Harvard in 1636.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "His son, Samuel Eaton, the uncle of Elihu, was implied in the foundation of Harvard as well, being one of the seven founders of the Harvard Corporation, the governing board and charter that incorporated Harvard in 1650. It was they, along with Elihu's uncle and aunt, Thomas Yale, Jr, and Anne Yale, Jr, who brought the reconstituted Eaton/Yale family to America, while other members of the family stayed in England. Their estates in Wales were Plas-yn-Yale and Plas Grono, and Elihu's brother was London merchant Thomas Yale, later Ambassador to the King of Siam for the East India Company.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Elihu's father, David Yale, would later come from London to New Haven Colony with his stepfather, Theophilus Eaton, in 1639. He moved to Boston in 1641 and met and married Elihu Yale's mother, Ursula, in 1643. In 1652, at the age of three, Elihu Yale left New England, never to return, as David Yale took his family back to London. While documentation of this period is sparse, a letter suggests that David Yale remained a successful merchant and settled his family in the Hanseatic merchant district \"Steelyard Court\". In 1662, at the age of thirteen, Elihu Yale entered the private school of William Dugard, but Dugard died a few months after Elihu Yale enrolled. Elihu Yale likely lived through the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1670, at the age of 21, Elihu Yale became a clerk for the East India Company and served an apprenticeship in London in the Leadenhall Street office. It is possible that Elihu Yale had business training in his father's merchant counting house, and his father's connections helped him get the job. The following year in 1671, Yale was one of twenty men chosen as \"Writers\" in India. Elihu Yale was bonded for £500 with the help of his father and his brother David. For 20 years Yale served the East India Company. In 1684, he became the first president of Fort St George, the company's post at Madras (now Chennai), India. He succeeded a number of agents from Sir Andrew Cogan to William Gyfford. Yale was instrumental in the development of the Government General Hospital, housed at Fort St George. Yale amassed a fortune while working for the company, largely through secret contracts with Madras merchants, against the East India Company's directive. By 1692, his repeated flouting of East India Company regulations and growing embarrassment at his illegal profiteering resulted in his being relieved of the post of governor.",
"title": "East India Company"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Elihu Yale was re-appointed as President of Madras of Fort St George on 26 July, 1687. During that year, following a personal dispute with the King of Siam, Gov. Yale commanded the Anglo-Siamese War against King Narai the Great and his chief minister, Constantine Phaulkon, who were scheming with Louis XIV of Versailles to increase French influence in the region. He sent warships and sought retaliation against Englishmen who changed sides. During this time, his brother Thomas Yale became Ambassador to the King of Siam, and brought back a letter from the Emperor of Japan to be delivered to King Charles II of England. Elihu would entertain at his house the French Ambassador and musketeer, Count Claude de Forbin, drinking to the health of the royal families of England and France.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "He then implemented an order which required the English at Fort St George to make all attempts at procurement of the town of Santhome on lease. To this effect, Chinna Venkatadri was sent to negotiate with the local governor on 4 August 1687. The mission was successful and Venkatadri assumed sovereignty over Santhome for a period of three years. Notwithstanding the vehement protests of the Portuguese inhabitants of Santhome, the English gained absolute control over all lands up to St Thomas Mount for a period of three years.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In September 1687, the Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb took Golconda after the Siege of Golconda, defeating Sultan Abul Hasan Qutb Shah. The Mughals took the Sultan of Golconda prisoner and annexed the state. The newly designated Mughal Subedar of the province immediately sent a letter to the British authorities at Fort St George demanding that the English at Madras acknowledge the overlordship of the Mughal Emperor. The English complied willingly. Yale sent a letter to general Mahabat Khan and complied with the ceremonial performances of Prince Muhammad Kam Bakhsh and prime minister Asad Khan. Aurangazeb guaranteed the independence of Madras, but in return demanded that the English supply troops in the event of a war against the Marathas. It was around this time that Yale's three-year-old son David Yale died and was interred in the Madras cemetery.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The records of this period mention a flourishing slave trade in Madras. After English merchants began to kidnap young children and deport them to distant parts of the world, the administration of Fort St George stepped in and introduced laws to curb the practice. On 2 February 1688, Elihu Yale decreed that slaves should be examined by the judges of the choultry before being transported. Transportation of young children, in particular, was made unlawful. Beyond this, the nature of Yale's involvement in the slave trade remains disputed. A blog post by a Yale history Ph.D. candidate and manager of the Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal notes that he permitted a law that at least ten slaves should be carried on every ship bound for Europe and in his capacity as judge he also on several occasions sentenced so-called \"black criminals\" to whipping and enslavement. On the other hand, according to Steven Pincus, a former Yale professor of history and current professor at the University of Chicago, Yale was never a slave trader and never owned slaves – and in fact opposed the slave trade during his time as President of Madras.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "During Yale's presidency, a plan for setting up a corporation in Madras was conceived by Sir Josiah Child, the Governor of the East India Company, in a letter addressed to the factors at Madras on 28 September 1687. Three months later, Child and his deputy had an audience with King James II of England, and as per the ensuing discussions, a charter was issued by the King on 30 December 1687 which established the Corporation of Madras. The corporation was established to restrain the powers of Gov. Yale, and became the oldest corporation in India, and second oldest municipal body in the world after the City of London. The charter came into effect on 29 September 1688, and a Corporation was established comprising a Mayor, 12 Aldermen, 60-100 Burgesses and sergeants. Nathaniel Higginson, who was then the second member of the Council of Fort St George, took office as the Mayor of Madras.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In August 1689, a French fleet appeared near the coast of Ceylon compelling the Governor of Pulicat Lawrence Pitt who was on high seas to seek protection within the bastions of Fort St George. Throughout the year 1690, French naval ships from Pondicherry ravaged the coast in order to drive the English and the Dutch out of the East Indies but were unsuccessful. They eventually withdrew from their enterprise when faced with heavy losses. It was also during this time that the English purchased the town of Tegnapatnam from the Marathas.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "As president of Fort St George, Yale purchased territory for private purposes with East India Company funds, including a fort at Devanampattinam (now Cuddalore). Yale imposed high taxes for the maintenance of the colonial garrison and town, resulting in an unpopular regime and several revolts by Indians, brutally quelled by garrison soldiers. Yale was also notorious for arresting and trying Indians on his own private authority, including the hanging of a stable boy who had absconded with a Company horse.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Charges of corruption were brought against Elihu Yale in the last years of his presidency. He was eventually removed in 1692 and replaced with Nathaniel Higginson as the President of Madras.",
"title": "Tenure as President of Madras"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Yale returned to Britain in 1699, with a fortune that amounted to £200,000, mostly made by selling diamonds from the Golconda mines and the Kollur mines, in Southern India. Notable diamonds from these mines included the Orlov Diamond, belonging to Prince Grigory Orlov and Catherine the Great, the Black Orlov, belonging to Russian princesses, the Hope Diamond, belonging to Louis XIV and Thomas Hope, the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond, belonging to the Habsburgs and Wittelsbachs, and many others.",
"title": "Return to Britain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Along with Sir Jean Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the traveling merchant of Louis XIV of Versailles, Yale was among the most important European diamond traders in the world, as nearly all diamonds came from India during that period. In relation to GDP, his fortune amounted to 1/4 % of the United Kingdom's GDP at the time, which translates to nearly 6 billion British pounds in 2021 money. He kept doing business with his friends Governor Thomas Pitt, grandfather of the Prime Minister of Britain, and Sir Charles Cotterell, during the era where London became the international trading centre of diamonds, dislodging Portugal and the Netherlands.",
"title": "Return to Britain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "He spent the rest of his life at Plas Grono on the Erddig estate, a mansion in Wrexham, Wales, bought by his father, and at his main London residence in Queen's Square. Initially named \"Devonshire Square\", neighbors included the Duke of Powis at Powis House, Lord Chancellor Bathurst, Queen Anne and her son, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, artists Charles Burney and Jonathan Richardson, and others.",
"title": "Return to Britain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "He had four houses in London as well as several coach houses and stables to store his vast art collection of more than 10,000 items consisting of 7,000 paintings, jewels, pictures, books, watches, swords, and other items. A famous object of his collection was one of the Jewels of Mary, Queen of Scots as well as a painting from Dutch painter Adriaen van der Werff, who painted for the Medici family. Other notable artists whose works were part of his collection were Bruegel, Van Dyck, Dürer, Rubens and Rembrandt.",
"title": "Return to Britain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "He also leased Latimer House from his son-in-law, Lord James Cavendish, son of the 1st Duke of Devonshire, to accommodate his daughter Ursula. Elihu was later elected High Sheriff of Denbighshire in Wales, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1717, under the then President, Sir Isaac Newton. Yale's candidature was introduced by Sir Hans Sloan, founder of the British Museum, and compeer of Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. In the same year, Yale was asked by Isaac Newton to deal with the donations from the estate of Dr. Thomas Paget.",
"title": "Return to Britain"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "After Jacques de Paiva's death in 1687, a Portuguese Jewish diamond merchant and mines owner, Elihu Yale fell in love with his widow Hieronima de Paiva and brought her to live with him, causing quite a scandal within Madras’s colonial society. Elihu Yale and Hieromima de Paiva had a son. The son died in South Africa.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Elihu Yale was previously married to Catherine Elford in 1680, widow of Joseph Hynmers, second-in-command of Fort St George, India as Deputy Governor for the East India Company. Her father was wealthy Levant merchant Walter Elford, son of Turkey merchant Walter Sr., the step-nephew of Admiral Sir Francis Drake of Buckland Abbey, the explorer, and the half-brother of Sir Francis Drake, the MP.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Walter Elford Sr. was among the pioneers of the English Coffee Houses on Exchange Alley, next to the Royal Exchange, owning the Great Coffee House (Turk's Head) until the Great Fire of London, and was featured in Samuel Pepys's diaries. Catherine Elford's maternal grandfather was merchant Richard Chambers, Alderman and Sheriff of the City of London, family of Sir Amyas Bampfylde of Poltimore House and Barrington Court.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Their wedding took place at St Mary's Church, at Fort St George, where Yale was a vestryman and treasurer. The marriage was the first registered at the church. They had 4 children together.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "David Yale (died 1687) died young.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Katherine Yale (died 1715) married Dudley North of Glemham Hall, son of Sir Dudley North of Camden Place, and grandson of Dudley North, 4th Baron North of Kirtling Tower. He was a cousin of Francis North, 1st Earl of Guilford of Wroxton Abbey and a grandson of Anne Montagu of Boughton House, member of the Ducal House of Montagu.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "Their daughter Anne North would marry Nicholas Herbert, member of the Ducal House of Herbert, son of the 8th Earl of Pembroke, Thomas Herbert of Wilton House and his first wife, Margaret Sawyer of Highclere Castle while one of their sons, William Dudley North, would marry Lady Barbara Herbert, daughter of Thomas and his second wife, Barbara Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. Nicholas's only daughter, Barbara, would marry the 2nd Earl of Aldborough, Edward Stratford, member of the House of Stratford.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "Anne Yale (died 1734), married Lord James Cavendish of Staveley Hall, member of the Ducal House of Cavendish, son of William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire of Chatsworth House and Lady Mary Butler, member of the Ducal House of Butler and daughter of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde of Kilkenny Castle.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "James was also a grandson of Countess Elizabeth Cecil of Hatfield House, member of the Salisbury's House of Cecil, a great-grandson of Countess Catherine Howard of Audley End House, member of the Ducal House of Howard, and a nephew of John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter of Burghley House, member of the Exeter's House of Cecil.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Ursula Yale (died 1721), died childless at Latimer House, the house was rented by Elihu Yale from his son-in-law Lord James Cavendish, husband of Anne Yale, and is buried in the small church on the estate, St Mary Magdalene.",
"title": "Marriage and children"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Yale died on 8 July 1721 in London. His body was buried in the churchyard of the parish church of St Giles' Church, Wrexham, Wales. His tomb is inscribed with these lines:",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Born in America, in Europe bred In Africa travell'd and in Asia wed Where long he liv'd and thriv'd; In London dead Much good, some ill, he did; so hope all's even And that his soul thro' mercy's gone to Heaven You that survive and read this tale, take care For this most certain exit to prepare Where blest in peace, the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the silent dust.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In Boston, Massachusetts, a tablet to Yale was erected in 1927 at Scollay Square, near the site of Yale's birth. Yale president Arthur Twining Hadley penned the inscription, which reads: \"On Pemberton Hill, 255 Feet North of This Spot, Was Born on April Fifth 1649 Elihu Yale, Governor of Madras, Whose Permanent Memorial in His Native Land is the College That Bears His Name.\"",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "At his death, with no proper will, his heirs-at-law inherited the Plas Grono estate and sold it to Sir George Wynne of Leswood Hall, designed by Francis Smith, an architect of Aston Hall and Sutton Scarsdale Hall.",
"title": "Death"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In 1718, Cotton Mather contacted Yale and asked for his help. Mather represented a small institution of learning that had been founded in 1701 in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, as the Collegiate School of Connecticut, which needed money for a new building. In 1717, Sir Isaac Newton sent to the college a copy of his book Principia, on Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and in 1718, Elihu Yale sent Mather 417 books, a portrait of King George I of Britain, and nine bales of goods. These last were sold by the school for £800. In gratitude, officials named the new building Yale; eventually the entire institution became Yale College.",
"title": "Yale University"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "Yale was also a vestryman and treasurer of St Mary's Church at Fort St George. On 6 October 1968, the 250th anniversary of the naming of Yale College for Elihu Yale, the classmates of Chester Bowles, then the American ambassador to India and a graduate of Yale (1924), donated money for lasting improvements to the church and erected a plaque to commemorate the occasion. In 1970, a portrait of him, Elihu Yale seated at table with the Second Duke of Devonshire and Lord James Cavendish, later renamed Elihu Yale with Members of his Family and an Enslaved Child, was donated to the Yale Center for British Art from Chatsworth House. A portrait, painted during the 18th century, was also given to Yale University by U.S President Dwight D. Eisenhower.",
"title": "Yale University"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "On 5 April 1999, Yale University recognised the 350th anniversary of Yale's birthday. An article that year in American Heritage magazine rated Elihu Yale the \"most overrated philanthropist\" in American history, arguing that the college that became Yale University was successful largely because of the generosity of a man named Jeremiah Dummer, but that the trustees of the school did not want it known by the name \"Dummer College\".",
"title": "Yale University"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "In her article for The Atlantic about Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University, Alexandra Robbins alleges that Yale's headstone was stolen years ago from its proper setting in Wrexham. She further alleges that the tombstone is now displayed in a glass case in a room with purple walls.",
"title": "Yale University"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "One of Elihu Yale's responsibilities as president of Fort St George was overseeing its slave trade, though he was never a slave trader, opposed the slave trade, and imposed several restrictions on it during his tenure. In 2016, Elizabeth Kuebler-Wolf wrote in the Journal of Global History that Yale enslaved one or two people as household servants, citing Hiram Bingham's 1939 book Elihu Yale. In 2021, the Associated Press wrote that there is no evidence that Yale had enslaved anyone, although his relatives in New Haven likely did.",
"title": "Yale University"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "In 2014, Yale history graduate student Joseph Yannielli argued that he benefited from the trade because it was among his responsibilities as president, and wrote of Yale: \"On two separate occasions, he sentenced “black Criminalls” accused of burglary to suffer whipping, branding, and foreign enslavement\", citing \"Records of Fort St. George: Diary and Consultation Book of 1688 (Madras: Superintendent Government Press, 1916), 30, 137; Records of Fort St. George: Diary and Consultation Book of 1689 (Madras: Superintendent Government Press, 1916), 99.\"",
"title": "Yale University"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "He added that although Yale \"probably did not own any of these people – the majority were held as the property of the East India Company – he certainly profited both directly and indirectly from their sale\".",
"title": "Yale University"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "The ancestry of the Yale family can be traced back from Chancellor Thomas Yale, born 1525, to many Royal and noble houses of Britain as descendants of the Royal House of Mathrafal, the Royal House of Aberffraw, the Royal House of Plantagenet, the Princely House of Powys Fadog, the Tudors of Penmynydd and many others. For the House of Mathrafal, and Powys Fadog, it was through Tudur ap Gruffudd, Lord of Gwyddelwern and brother of the last native Prince of Wales, Owain Glyndŵr, while for the House of Aberffraw, and the Tudors of Penmynydd, it was through Elen Ferch Tomos, the mother of Owain. From these families they inherited Lordships and estates, such as Plas yn Iâl (Yale).",
"title": "Ancestry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The Coat of arms of the Yales came originally in the family from Osborn Fitzgerald, Lord of Ynys-m-Maengwyn and Corsygedol, of which they were the direct descendants, and was used to create the coat of arms of Yale College. Osborn Fitzgerald was a member of the House of Fitzgerald through the Earls of Desmond. He made the trip from Ireland to Wales during the thirteenth century with Gruffydd ab Ednyved Vychan, son of Seneschal Ednyfed Fychan, and was granted Lordships by the Prince of North Wales, Llywelyn the Great. He was the progenitor of many houses in Wales, including the House of Yale, co-representative of the Sovereign Dynasties of Powys, North Wales, and South Wales, having inherited the claims of Owain Glyndwr, Prince of Wales.",
"title": "Ancestry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The House of Yale is, on the paternal side, a cadet branch of the Royal House of Mathrafal, through the Princes of Powys Fadog, and a cadet branch of the Fitzgerald dynasty, through the Merioneth House of Corsygedol. Their Fitzgerald ancestor was lord Gerald of Windsor, son of baron Walter FitzOtho, 1st Governor of Windsor Castle for William the Conqueror, and were cousins of the Tudors through Tudur ap Gruffudd and Owain Glyndwr of the Mathrafal dynasty.",
"title": "Ancestry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The family estate at Plas yn Iâl (\"Iâl\" is anglicised as \"Yale\"), North Wales, of which the family took the name, was inherited from Baron Elissau ab Gruffydd, a member of the Royal House of Mathrafal and descendant of the Royal House of Plantagenet, when he married Margaret, the heiress of Plas yn Yale, in the Lordship of Bromfield and Yale. Her ancestor, Lord Mostyn, was granted the estate by the Prince of Wales, Owain Gwynedd, for his services at the Battle of Crogen in 1165. Elissau ab Gruffydd was the grandfather of Chancellor Thomas Yale, who was the first to adopt definitively the Yale surname, and had, as his ancestor, Prince Gruffudd Fychan I, the Lord of Yale. The estate was originally called Allt Llwyn Dragon, which means Dragon's Grove Hill.",
"title": "Ancestry"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "Media related to Elihu Yale at Wikimedia Commons",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| Elihu Yale was a British-American colonial administrator and philanthropist. Although born in Boston, Massachusetts, he only lived in America as a child, spending the rest of his life in England, Wales, and India. He became a clerk for the East India Company at Fort St. George, and eventually rose to President of the settlement. He later lost that position under charges of corruption for self-dealing and had to pay a fine. In 1699, he returned to Britain with a considerable fortune, around £200,000, mostly made by selling diamonds, and spent his time and wealth in philanthropy and art collecting. He is best remembered as the primary benefactor of Yale College, which was named in his honor, following a sizable donation of books, portrait, and textiles under the request of Rev. Cotton Mather, a Harvard graduate. No descendants of his have survived past his grandchildren. | 2001-12-05T13:47:40Z | 2023-12-17T08:13:59Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elihu_Yale |
10,207 | Émile Baudot | Jean-Maurice-Émile Baudot (French: [eˈmil boˈdo]; 11 September 1845 – 28 March 1903), French telegraph engineer and inventor of the first means of digital communication Baudot code, was one of the pioneers of telecommunications. He invented a multiplexed printing telegraph system that used his code and allowed multiple transmissions over a single line. The baud unit was named after him.
Baudot was born in Magneux, Haute-Marne, France, the son of farmer Pierre Emile Baudot, who later became the mayor of Magneux. His only formal education was at his local primary school, after which he carried out agricultural work on his father's farm before joining the French Post & Telegraph Administration as an apprentice operator in 1869.
The telegraph service trained him in the Morse telegraph and also sent him on a four-month course of instruction on the Hughes printing telegraph system, which was later to inspire his own system.
After serving briefly during the Franco-Prussian War, he returned to civilian duties in Paris in 1872.
The Telegraph Service encouraged Baudot to develop—on his own time—a system for time-multiplexing several telegraph messages using Hughes teleprinters. He realised that with most printing telegraphs of the period the line is idle for most of the time, apart from the brief intervals when a character is transmitted. Baudot devised one of the first applications of time-division multiplexing in telegraphy. Using synchronized clockwork-powered switches at the transmitting and receiving ends, he was able to transmit five messages simultaneously; the system was officially adopted by the French Post & Telegraph Administration five years later.
Baudot invented his telegraph code in 1870 and patented it in 1874. It was a 5-bit code, with equal on and off intervals, which allowed telegraph transmission of the Roman alphabet, punctuation and control signals. By 1874 or 1875 (various sources give both dates) he had also perfected the electromechanical hardware to transmit his code. His inventions were based on the printing mechanism from Hughes' instrument, a distributor invented by Bernard Meyer in 1871, and the five-unit code devised by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber. Baudot combined these, together with original ideas of his own, to produce a complete multiplex system.
On 17 June 1874 Baudot patented his first printing telegraph (Patent no. 103,898 "Système de télégraphie rapide"), in which the signals were translated automatically into typographic characters. Baudot's hardware had three main parts: the keyboard, the distributor, and a paper tape.
Each operator - there were as many as four - was allocated a single sector. The keyboard had just five piano type keys, operated with two fingers of the left hand and three fingers of the right hand. The five unit code was designed to be easy to remember. Once the keys had been pressed they were locked down until the contacts again passed over the sector connected to that particular keyboard, when the keyboard was unlocked ready for the next character to be entered, with an audible click (known as the "cadence signal") to warn the operator. Operators had to maintain a steady rhythm, and the usual speed of operation was 30 words per minute.
The receiver was also connected to the distributor. The signals from the telegraph line were temporarily stored on a set of five electromagnets, before being decoded to print the corresponding character on paper tape.
Accurate operation of this system depended on the distributor at the transmitting end keeping in synchronization with the one at the receiving end and operators only sending characters when the contacts passed over their allocated sector. This could be achieved at a speed of 30 wpm by strictly observing the "cadence" of rhythm of the system when the distributor gave the operator the use of the line.
The Baudot system was accepted by the French Telegraph Administration in 1875, with the first online tests of his system occurring between Paris and Bordeaux on 12 November 1877. At the end of 1877, the Paris-Rome line, which was about 1,700 kilometres (1,100 mi), began operating a duplex Baudot.
The Baudot apparatus was shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle (1878) and won him the Exposition's gold medal, as well as bringing his system to worldwide notice.
After the first success of his system, Baudot was promoted to Controller in 1880, and was named Inspector-Engineer in 1882.
In July 1887 he conducted successful tests on the Atlantic telegraph cable between Weston-super-Mare and Waterville, Nova Scotia operated by the Commercial Company, with a double Baudot installed in duplex, the Baudot transmitters and receivers substituted for the recorder.
On 8 August 1890 he established communications between Paris, Vannes, and Lorient over a single wire. On 3 January 1894 he installed a triplex apparatus on the telegraph between Paris and Bordeaux that had previously been operating with some difficulty on the Hughes telegraph system. On 27 April 1894 he established communications between the Paris stock exchange and the Milan stock exchange, again over a single wire, using his new invention, the retransmitter.
In 1897 the Baudot system was improved by switching to punched tape, which was prepared offline like the Morse tape used with the Wheatstone and Creed systems. A tape reader, controlled by the Baudot distributor, then replaced the manual keyboard. The tape had five rows of holes for the code, with a sixth row of smaller holes for transporting the tape through the reader mechanism. Baudot's code was later standardised as International Telegraph Alphabet Number One.
Baudot received little help from the French Telegraph Administration for his system, and often had to fund his own research, even having to sell the gold medal awarded by the 1878 Exposition Universelle in 1880.
The Baudot telegraph system was employed progressively in France, and then was adopted in other countries, Italy being the first to introduce it, in its inland service, in 1887. The Netherlands followed in 1895, Switzerland in 1896, and Austria and Brazil in 1897. The British Post Office adopted it for a simplex circuit between London and Paris during 1897, then used it for more general purposes from 1898. In 1900 it was adopted by Germany, by Russia in 1904, the British West Indies in 1905, Spain in 1906, Belgium in 1909, Argentina in 1912, and Romania in 1913.
Baudot married Marie Josephine Adelaide Langrognet on 15 January 1890. She died only three months later, on 9 April 1890.
Soon after starting work with the telegraph service, Baudot began to suffer physical discomfort and was frequently absent from work for this reason, for as long as a month on one occasion. His condition affected him for the rest of his life, until he died on 28 March 1903, at Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, at the age of 57.
In 1874, French telegraph operator Louis Victor Mimault patented a telegraph system using five separate lines to transmit. After his patent was rejected by the Telegraph Administration, Mimault modified his device to incorporate features from the Meyer telegraph and obtained a new patent which was also rejected. In the meantime, Baudot had patented his prototype telegraph a few weeks earlier.
Mimault claimed priority of invention over Baudot and brought a patent suit against him in 1877. The Tribunal Civil de la Seine, which reviewed testimony from three experts unconnected with the Telegraph Administration, found in favor of Mimault and accorded him priority of invention of the Baudot code and ruled that Baudot's patents were simply improvements of Mimault's. Neither inventor was satisfied with this judgment, which was eventually rescinded with Mimault being ordered to pay all legal costs.
Mimault became unnerved because of the decision, and after an incident where he shot at and wounded two students of the École Polytechnique (charges for which were dropped), he demanded a special act to prolong the duration of his patents, 100,000 Francs, and election to the Légion d'honneur. A commission directed by Jules Raynaud (head of telegraph research) rejected his demands. Upon hearing the decision, Mimault shot and killed Raynaud, and was sentenced to 10 years of forced labour and 20 years of exile. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Jean-Maurice-Émile Baudot (French: [eˈmil boˈdo]; 11 September 1845 – 28 March 1903), French telegraph engineer and inventor of the first means of digital communication Baudot code, was one of the pioneers of telecommunications. He invented a multiplexed printing telegraph system that used his code and allowed multiple transmissions over a single line. The baud unit was named after him.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Baudot was born in Magneux, Haute-Marne, France, the son of farmer Pierre Emile Baudot, who later became the mayor of Magneux. His only formal education was at his local primary school, after which he carried out agricultural work on his father's farm before joining the French Post & Telegraph Administration as an apprentice operator in 1869.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The telegraph service trained him in the Morse telegraph and also sent him on a four-month course of instruction on the Hughes printing telegraph system, which was later to inspire his own system.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "After serving briefly during the Franco-Prussian War, he returned to civilian duties in Paris in 1872.",
"title": "Early life"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The Telegraph Service encouraged Baudot to develop—on his own time—a system for time-multiplexing several telegraph messages using Hughes teleprinters. He realised that with most printing telegraphs of the period the line is idle for most of the time, apart from the brief intervals when a character is transmitted. Baudot devised one of the first applications of time-division multiplexing in telegraphy. Using synchronized clockwork-powered switches at the transmitting and receiving ends, he was able to transmit five messages simultaneously; the system was officially adopted by the French Post & Telegraph Administration five years later.",
"title": "Telegraphy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Baudot invented his telegraph code in 1870 and patented it in 1874. It was a 5-bit code, with equal on and off intervals, which allowed telegraph transmission of the Roman alphabet, punctuation and control signals. By 1874 or 1875 (various sources give both dates) he had also perfected the electromechanical hardware to transmit his code. His inventions were based on the printing mechanism from Hughes' instrument, a distributor invented by Bernard Meyer in 1871, and the five-unit code devised by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber. Baudot combined these, together with original ideas of his own, to produce a complete multiplex system.",
"title": "Telegraphy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "On 17 June 1874 Baudot patented his first printing telegraph (Patent no. 103,898 \"Système de télégraphie rapide\"), in which the signals were translated automatically into typographic characters. Baudot's hardware had three main parts: the keyboard, the distributor, and a paper tape.",
"title": "Baudot system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Each operator - there were as many as four - was allocated a single sector. The keyboard had just five piano type keys, operated with two fingers of the left hand and three fingers of the right hand. The five unit code was designed to be easy to remember. Once the keys had been pressed they were locked down until the contacts again passed over the sector connected to that particular keyboard, when the keyboard was unlocked ready for the next character to be entered, with an audible click (known as the \"cadence signal\") to warn the operator. Operators had to maintain a steady rhythm, and the usual speed of operation was 30 words per minute.",
"title": "Baudot system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The receiver was also connected to the distributor. The signals from the telegraph line were temporarily stored on a set of five electromagnets, before being decoded to print the corresponding character on paper tape.",
"title": "Baudot system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Accurate operation of this system depended on the distributor at the transmitting end keeping in synchronization with the one at the receiving end and operators only sending characters when the contacts passed over their allocated sector. This could be achieved at a speed of 30 wpm by strictly observing the \"cadence\" of rhythm of the system when the distributor gave the operator the use of the line.",
"title": "Baudot system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The Baudot system was accepted by the French Telegraph Administration in 1875, with the first online tests of his system occurring between Paris and Bordeaux on 12 November 1877. At the end of 1877, the Paris-Rome line, which was about 1,700 kilometres (1,100 mi), began operating a duplex Baudot.",
"title": "First use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The Baudot apparatus was shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle (1878) and won him the Exposition's gold medal, as well as bringing his system to worldwide notice.",
"title": "First use"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "After the first success of his system, Baudot was promoted to Controller in 1880, and was named Inspector-Engineer in 1882.",
"title": "Later career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In July 1887 he conducted successful tests on the Atlantic telegraph cable between Weston-super-Mare and Waterville, Nova Scotia operated by the Commercial Company, with a double Baudot installed in duplex, the Baudot transmitters and receivers substituted for the recorder.",
"title": "Later career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "On 8 August 1890 he established communications between Paris, Vannes, and Lorient over a single wire. On 3 January 1894 he installed a triplex apparatus on the telegraph between Paris and Bordeaux that had previously been operating with some difficulty on the Hughes telegraph system. On 27 April 1894 he established communications between the Paris stock exchange and the Milan stock exchange, again over a single wire, using his new invention, the retransmitter.",
"title": "Later career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In 1897 the Baudot system was improved by switching to punched tape, which was prepared offline like the Morse tape used with the Wheatstone and Creed systems. A tape reader, controlled by the Baudot distributor, then replaced the manual keyboard. The tape had five rows of holes for the code, with a sixth row of smaller holes for transporting the tape through the reader mechanism. Baudot's code was later standardised as International Telegraph Alphabet Number One.",
"title": "Later career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Baudot received little help from the French Telegraph Administration for his system, and often had to fund his own research, even having to sell the gold medal awarded by the 1878 Exposition Universelle in 1880.",
"title": "Later career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The Baudot telegraph system was employed progressively in France, and then was adopted in other countries, Italy being the first to introduce it, in its inland service, in 1887. The Netherlands followed in 1895, Switzerland in 1896, and Austria and Brazil in 1897. The British Post Office adopted it for a simplex circuit between London and Paris during 1897, then used it for more general purposes from 1898. In 1900 it was adopted by Germany, by Russia in 1904, the British West Indies in 1905, Spain in 1906, Belgium in 1909, Argentina in 1912, and Romania in 1913.",
"title": "Later career"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Baudot married Marie Josephine Adelaide Langrognet on 15 January 1890. She died only three months later, on 9 April 1890.",
"title": "Final years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "Soon after starting work with the telegraph service, Baudot began to suffer physical discomfort and was frequently absent from work for this reason, for as long as a month on one occasion. His condition affected him for the rest of his life, until he died on 28 March 1903, at Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, at the age of 57.",
"title": "Final years"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "In 1874, French telegraph operator Louis Victor Mimault patented a telegraph system using five separate lines to transmit. After his patent was rejected by the Telegraph Administration, Mimault modified his device to incorporate features from the Meyer telegraph and obtained a new patent which was also rejected. In the meantime, Baudot had patented his prototype telegraph a few weeks earlier.",
"title": "Mimault patent suit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Mimault claimed priority of invention over Baudot and brought a patent suit against him in 1877. The Tribunal Civil de la Seine, which reviewed testimony from three experts unconnected with the Telegraph Administration, found in favor of Mimault and accorded him priority of invention of the Baudot code and ruled that Baudot's patents were simply improvements of Mimault's. Neither inventor was satisfied with this judgment, which was eventually rescinded with Mimault being ordered to pay all legal costs.",
"title": "Mimault patent suit"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Mimault became unnerved because of the decision, and after an incident where he shot at and wounded two students of the École Polytechnique (charges for which were dropped), he demanded a special act to prolong the duration of his patents, 100,000 Francs, and election to the Légion d'honneur. A commission directed by Jules Raynaud (head of telegraph research) rejected his demands. Upon hearing the decision, Mimault shot and killed Raynaud, and was sentenced to 10 years of forced labour and 20 years of exile.",
"title": "Mimault patent suit"
}
]
| Jean-Maurice-Émile Baudot, French telegraph engineer and inventor of the first means of digital communication Baudot code, was one of the pioneers of telecommunications. He invented a multiplexed printing telegraph system that used his code and allowed multiple transmissions over a single line. The baud unit was named after him. | 2023-07-04T18:41:18Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Baudot |
|
10,211 | Economic security | Economic security or financial security is the condition of having stable income or other resources to support a standard of living now and in the foreseeable future. It includes:
Without such security, people may experience its opposite: economic insecurity and resulting economic anxiety.
Financial security more often refers to individual and family money management and savings. Economic security tends to include the broader effect of a society's production levels and monetary support for non-working citizens.
In the United States, children's economic security is indicated by the income level and employment security of their families or organizations. Economic security of people over 50 years old is based on Social Security benefits, pensions and savings, earnings and employment, and health insurance coverage.
In 1972, the state legislature of Arizona formed a Department of Economic Security with a mission to promote "the safety, well-being, and self sufficiency of children, adults, and families". This department combines state government activities previously managed by the Employment Security Commission, the State Department of Public Welfare, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, the State Office of Economic Opportunity, the Apprenticeship Council, and the State Office of Manpower Planning. The State Department of Mental Retardation (renamed the Division of Developmental Disabilities, House Bill 2213) joined the Department in 1974 . The purpose in creating the Department was to provide an integration of direct services to people in such a way as to reduce duplication of administrative efforts, services and expenditures. Family Connections became a part of the Department in January 2007.
The Minnesota Department of Economic Security was formed in 1977 from the departments of Employment Services and Vocational Rehabilitation, the Governor's Manpower Office, and the Economic Opportunity Office, which administered anti-poverty programs. In 1985, State Services for the Blind was included in this department. In 2003, the Minnesota Department of Economic Security and Minnesota Department of Trade and Economic Development were merged to form The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
In the context of domestic politics and international relations, national economic security is the ability of a country to follow its choice of policies to develop the national economy in the manner desired. Historically, conquest of nations have made conquerors rich through plunder, access to new resources and enlarged trade through controlling of the economies of conquered nations. Today's complex system of international trade is characterized by multi-national agreements and mutual inter-dependence. Availability of natural resources and capacity for production and distribution are essential under this system, leading many experts to consider economic security to be as important a part of national security as military policy.
Economic security has been proposed as a key determinant of international relations, particularly in the geopolitics of petroleum in American foreign policy after 1973 oil crisis and September 11, 2001.
In Canada, threats to the country's overall economic security are considered economic espionage, which is "illegal, clandestine or coercive activity by a foreign government in order to gain unauthorized access to economic intelligence, such as proprietary information or technology, for economic advantage."
In January 2021, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued Strategic Action Plan to Counter the Threat Posed by China.
In October 2021 in Japan, prime minister Fumio Kishida created the first-ever ministerial post for economic security. And in April 2022, Japan's National Diet passed an economic security bill aimed at guarding technology and reinforcing critical supply chains, while also imposing tighter oversight of Japanese firms working in sensitive sectors or critical infrastructure. Measures in the legislation, which is primarily aimed at warding off risks from China, will be implemented over two years once it is enacted, according to the bill.
In March 2023, Japan and Germany agreed to strengthen cooperation on economic security in the aftermath of tensions over global supply chains and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine. In the first high-ministerial government consultations held between the two countries, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reached out to Tokyo to seek to reduce Germany's dependence on China for imports of raw materials.
On April 4, 2023, a G7 Trade Ministers' Meeting via video conference was held to discuss on enhancing economic security, and a G7 Trade Ministers' Statement was issued on the day. Also in April 2023, Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) launched a division dedicated to economic security. The agency also plans to set up such dedicated units in its regional bureaus nationwide to step up efforts to prevent cutting-edge technology and data from being leaked out of the country. On 20 May 2023 on occasion of the G7 Hiroshima summit, economic security was discussed for the first time as the G7 agenda, and "G7 Leaders' Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security" was issued based on the discussion.
On 20 June 2023, the European Commission and the High Representative proposed a Joint Communication on a European Economic Security Strategy which will be discussed by EU leaders at their meeting.
It is widely believed that there is a tradeoff between economic security and economic opportunity.
Individual economic security
National economic security | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Economic security or financial security is the condition of having stable income or other resources to support a standard of living now and in the foreseeable future. It includes:",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "Without such security, people may experience its opposite: economic insecurity and resulting economic anxiety.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Financial security more often refers to individual and family money management and savings. Economic security tends to include the broader effect of a society's production levels and monetary support for non-working citizens.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "In the United States, children's economic security is indicated by the income level and employment security of their families or organizations. Economic security of people over 50 years old is based on Social Security benefits, pensions and savings, earnings and employment, and health insurance coverage.",
"title": "Components of individual economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In 1972, the state legislature of Arizona formed a Department of Economic Security with a mission to promote \"the safety, well-being, and self sufficiency of children, adults, and families\". This department combines state government activities previously managed by the Employment Security Commission, the State Department of Public Welfare, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, the State Office of Economic Opportunity, the Apprenticeship Council, and the State Office of Manpower Planning. The State Department of Mental Retardation (renamed the Division of Developmental Disabilities, House Bill 2213) joined the Department in 1974 . The purpose in creating the Department was to provide an integration of direct services to people in such a way as to reduce duplication of administrative efforts, services and expenditures. Family Connections became a part of the Department in January 2007.",
"title": "Components of individual economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Minnesota Department of Economic Security was formed in 1977 from the departments of Employment Services and Vocational Rehabilitation, the Governor's Manpower Office, and the Economic Opportunity Office, which administered anti-poverty programs. In 1985, State Services for the Blind was included in this department. In 2003, the Minnesota Department of Economic Security and Minnesota Department of Trade and Economic Development were merged to form The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.",
"title": "Components of individual economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In the context of domestic politics and international relations, national economic security is the ability of a country to follow its choice of policies to develop the national economy in the manner desired. Historically, conquest of nations have made conquerors rich through plunder, access to new resources and enlarged trade through controlling of the economies of conquered nations. Today's complex system of international trade is characterized by multi-national agreements and mutual inter-dependence. Availability of natural resources and capacity for production and distribution are essential under this system, leading many experts to consider economic security to be as important a part of national security as military policy.",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Economic security has been proposed as a key determinant of international relations, particularly in the geopolitics of petroleum in American foreign policy after 1973 oil crisis and September 11, 2001.",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In Canada, threats to the country's overall economic security are considered economic espionage, which is \"illegal, clandestine or coercive activity by a foreign government in order to gain unauthorized access to economic intelligence, such as proprietary information or technology, for economic advantage.\"",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In January 2021, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued Strategic Action Plan to Counter the Threat Posed by China.",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "In October 2021 in Japan, prime minister Fumio Kishida created the first-ever ministerial post for economic security. And in April 2022, Japan's National Diet passed an economic security bill aimed at guarding technology and reinforcing critical supply chains, while also imposing tighter oversight of Japanese firms working in sensitive sectors or critical infrastructure. Measures in the legislation, which is primarily aimed at warding off risks from China, will be implemented over two years once it is enacted, according to the bill.",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In March 2023, Japan and Germany agreed to strengthen cooperation on economic security in the aftermath of tensions over global supply chains and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine. In the first high-ministerial government consultations held between the two countries, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reached out to Tokyo to seek to reduce Germany's dependence on China for imports of raw materials.",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "On April 4, 2023, a G7 Trade Ministers' Meeting via video conference was held to discuss on enhancing economic security, and a G7 Trade Ministers' Statement was issued on the day. Also in April 2023, Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) launched a division dedicated to economic security. The agency also plans to set up such dedicated units in its regional bureaus nationwide to step up efforts to prevent cutting-edge technology and data from being leaked out of the country. On 20 May 2023 on occasion of the G7 Hiroshima summit, economic security was discussed for the first time as the G7 agenda, and \"G7 Leaders' Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security\" was issued based on the discussion.",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "On 20 June 2023, the European Commission and the High Representative proposed a Joint Communication on a European Economic Security Strategy which will be discussed by EU leaders at their meeting.",
"title": "National economic security"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "It is widely believed that there is a tradeoff between economic security and economic opportunity.",
"title": "Other"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Individual economic security",
"title": "See also"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "National economic security",
"title": "See also"
}
]
| Economic security or financial security is the condition of having stable income or other resources to support a standard of living now and in the foreseeable future. It includes: probable continued solvency
predictability of the future cash flow of a person or other economic entity, such as a country
employment security or job security Without such security, people may experience its opposite: economic insecurity and resulting economic anxiety. Financial security more often refers to individual and family money management and savings. Economic security tends to include the broader effect of a society's production levels and monetary support for non-working citizens. | 2001-12-06T00:05:22Z | 2023-09-14T00:26:53Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_security |
10,213 | Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution | Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), also known as 2.75G, Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC), and Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM. EDGE is considered a pre-3G radio technology and is part of ITU's 3G definition. EDGE was deployed on GSM networks beginning in 2003 – initially by Cingular (now AT&T) in the United States.
EDGE is standardized also by 3GPP as part of the GSM family. A variant, so called Compact-EDGE, was developed for use in a portion of Digital AMPS network spectrum.
Through the introduction of sophisticated methods of coding and transmitting data, EDGE delivers higher bit-rates per radio channel, resulting in a threefold increase in capacity and performance compared with an ordinary GSM/GPRS connection.
EDGE can be used for any packet switched application, such as an Internet connection.
Evolved EDGE continues in release 7 of the 3GPP standard providing reduced latency and more than doubled performance e.g. to complement High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA). Peak bit-rates of up to 1 Mbit/s and typical bit-rates of 400 kbit/s can be expected.
EDGE/EGPRS is implemented as a bolt-on enhancement for 2.5G GSM/GPRS networks, making it easier for existing GSM carriers to upgrade to it. EDGE is a superset to GPRS and can function on any network with GPRS deployed on it, provided the carrier implements the necessary upgrade. EDGE requires no hardware or software changes to be made in GSM core networks. EDGE-compatible transceiver units must be installed and the base station subsystem needs to be upgraded to support EDGE. If the operator already has this in place, which is often the case today, the network can be upgraded to EDGE by activating an optional software feature. Today EDGE is supported by all major chip vendors for both GSM and WCDMA/HSPA.
In addition to Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK), EDGE uses higher-order PSK/8 phase-shift keying (8PSK) for the upper five of its nine modulation and coding schemes. EDGE produces a 3-bit word for every change in carrier phase. This effectively triples the gross data rate offered by GSM. EDGE, like GPRS, uses a rate adaptation algorithm that adapts the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) according to the quality of the radio channel, and thus the bit rate and robustness of data transmission. It introduces a new technology not found in GPRS, incremental redundancy, which, instead of retransmitting disturbed packets, sends more redundancy information to be combined in the receiver. This increases the probability of correct decoding.
EDGE can carry a bandwidth up to 236 kbit/s (with end-to-end latency of less than 150 ms) for 4 timeslots (theoretical maximum is 473.6 kbit/s for 8 timeslots) in packet mode. This means it can handle four times as much traffic as standard GPRS. EDGE meets the International Telecommunication Union's requirement for a 3G network, and has been accepted by the ITU as part of the IMT-2000 family of 3G standards. It also enhances the circuit data mode called HSCSD, increasing the data rate of this service.
The channel encoding process in GPRS as well as EGPRS/EDGE consists of two steps: first, a cyclic code is used to add parity bits, which are also referred to as the Block Check Sequence, followed by coding with a possibly punctured convolutional code. In GPRS, the Coding Schemes CS-1 to CS-4 specify the number of parity bits generated by the cyclic code and the puncturing rate of the convolutional code. In GPRS Coding Schemes CS-1 through CS-3, the convolutional code is of rate 1/2, i.e. each input bit is converted into two coded bits. In Coding Schemes CS-2 and CS-3, the output of the convolutional code is punctured to achieve the desired code rate. In GPRS Coding Scheme CS-4, no convolutional coding is applied.
In EGPRS/EDGE, the modulation and coding schemes MCS-1 to MCS-9 take the place of the coding schemes of GPRS, and additionally specify which modulation scheme is used, GMSK or 8PSK. MCS-1 through MCS-4 use GMSK and have performance similar (but not equal) to GPRS, while MCS-5 through MCS-9 use 8PSK. In all EGPRS modulation and coding schemes, a convolutional code of rate 1/3 is used, and puncturing is used to achieve the desired code rate. In contrast to GPRS, the Radio Link Control (RLC) and medium access control (MAC) headers and the payload data are coded separately in EGPRS. The headers are coded more robustly than the data.
Evolved EDGE, also called EDGE Evolution and 2.875G, is a bolt-on extension to the GSM mobile telephony standard, which improves on EDGE in a number of ways. Latencies are reduced by lowering the Transmission Time Interval by half (from 20 ms to 10 ms). Bit rates are increased up to 1 Mbit/s peak bandwidth and latencies down to 80 ms using dual carrier, higher symbol rate and higher-order modulation (32QAM and 16QAM instead of 8PSK), and turbo codes to improve error correction. This results in real world downlink speeds of up to 600kbit/s. Further the signal quality is improved using dual antennas improving average bit-rates and spectrum efficiency.
The main intention of increasing the existing EDGE throughput is that many operators would like to upgrade their existing infrastructure rather than invest on new network infrastructure. Mobile operators have invested billions in GSM networks, many of which are already capable of supporting EDGE data speeds up to 236.8 kbit/s. With a software upgrade and a new device compliant with Evolved EDGE (like an Evolved EDGE smartphone) for the user, these data rates can be boosted to speeds approaching 1 Mbit/s (i.e. 98.6 kbit/s per timeslot for 32QAM). Many service providers may not invest in a completely new technology like 3G networks.
Considerable research and development happened throughout the world for this new technology. A successful trial by Nokia Siemens and "one of China's leading operators" has been achieved in a live environment. With the introduction for more advanced wireless technologies like UMTS and LTE, which also focus on a network coverage layer on low frequencies and the upcoming phase-out and shutdown of 2G mobile networks, it is very unlikely that Evolved EDGE will ever see any deployment on live networks. Up to now (as of 2016) there are no commercial networks which support the Evolved EDGE standard (3GPP Rel-7).
With Evolved EDGE come three major features designed to reduce latency over the air interface.
In EDGE, a single RLC data block (ranging from 23 to 148 bytes of data) is transmitted over four frames, using a single time slot. On average, this requires 20 ms for one way transmission. Under the RTTI scheme, one data block is transmitted over two frames in two timeslots, reducing the latency of the air interface to 10 ms.
In addition, Reduced Latency also implies support of Piggy-backed ACK/NACK (PAN), in which a bitmap of blocks not received is included in normal data blocks. Using the PAN field, the receiver may report missing data blocks immediately, rather than waiting to send a dedicated PAN message.
A final enhancement is RLC-non persistent mode. With EDGE, the RLC interface could operate in either acknowledged mode, or unacknowledged mode. In unacknowledged mode, there is no retransmission of missing data blocks, so a single corrupt block would cause an entire upper-layer IP packet to be lost. With non-persistent mode, an RLC data block may be retransmitted if it is less than a certain age. Once this time expires, it is considered lost, and subsequent data blocks may then be forwarded to upper layers.
Both uplink and downlink throughput is improved by using 16 or 32 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation), along with turbo codes and higher symbol rates.
The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) states that, as of May 2013, there were 604 GSM/EDGE networks in 213 countries, from a total of 606 mobile network operator commitments in 213 countries. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), also known as 2.75G, Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC), and Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM. EDGE is considered a pre-3G radio technology and is part of ITU's 3G definition. EDGE was deployed on GSM networks beginning in 2003 – initially by Cingular (now AT&T) in the United States.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "EDGE is standardized also by 3GPP as part of the GSM family. A variant, so called Compact-EDGE, was developed for use in a portion of Digital AMPS network spectrum.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Through the introduction of sophisticated methods of coding and transmitting data, EDGE delivers higher bit-rates per radio channel, resulting in a threefold increase in capacity and performance compared with an ordinary GSM/GPRS connection.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "EDGE can be used for any packet switched application, such as an Internet connection.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Evolved EDGE continues in release 7 of the 3GPP standard providing reduced latency and more than doubled performance e.g. to complement High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA). Peak bit-rates of up to 1 Mbit/s and typical bit-rates of 400 kbit/s can be expected.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "EDGE/EGPRS is implemented as a bolt-on enhancement for 2.5G GSM/GPRS networks, making it easier for existing GSM carriers to upgrade to it. EDGE is a superset to GPRS and can function on any network with GPRS deployed on it, provided the carrier implements the necessary upgrade. EDGE requires no hardware or software changes to be made in GSM core networks. EDGE-compatible transceiver units must be installed and the base station subsystem needs to be upgraded to support EDGE. If the operator already has this in place, which is often the case today, the network can be upgraded to EDGE by activating an optional software feature. Today EDGE is supported by all major chip vendors for both GSM and WCDMA/HSPA.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "In addition to Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK), EDGE uses higher-order PSK/8 phase-shift keying (8PSK) for the upper five of its nine modulation and coding schemes. EDGE produces a 3-bit word for every change in carrier phase. This effectively triples the gross data rate offered by GSM. EDGE, like GPRS, uses a rate adaptation algorithm that adapts the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) according to the quality of the radio channel, and thus the bit rate and robustness of data transmission. It introduces a new technology not found in GPRS, incremental redundancy, which, instead of retransmitting disturbed packets, sends more redundancy information to be combined in the receiver. This increases the probability of correct decoding.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "EDGE can carry a bandwidth up to 236 kbit/s (with end-to-end latency of less than 150 ms) for 4 timeslots (theoretical maximum is 473.6 kbit/s for 8 timeslots) in packet mode. This means it can handle four times as much traffic as standard GPRS. EDGE meets the International Telecommunication Union's requirement for a 3G network, and has been accepted by the ITU as part of the IMT-2000 family of 3G standards. It also enhances the circuit data mode called HSCSD, increasing the data rate of this service.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The channel encoding process in GPRS as well as EGPRS/EDGE consists of two steps: first, a cyclic code is used to add parity bits, which are also referred to as the Block Check Sequence, followed by coding with a possibly punctured convolutional code. In GPRS, the Coding Schemes CS-1 to CS-4 specify the number of parity bits generated by the cyclic code and the puncturing rate of the convolutional code. In GPRS Coding Schemes CS-1 through CS-3, the convolutional code is of rate 1/2, i.e. each input bit is converted into two coded bits. In Coding Schemes CS-2 and CS-3, the output of the convolutional code is punctured to achieve the desired code rate. In GPRS Coding Scheme CS-4, no convolutional coding is applied.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In EGPRS/EDGE, the modulation and coding schemes MCS-1 to MCS-9 take the place of the coding schemes of GPRS, and additionally specify which modulation scheme is used, GMSK or 8PSK. MCS-1 through MCS-4 use GMSK and have performance similar (but not equal) to GPRS, while MCS-5 through MCS-9 use 8PSK. In all EGPRS modulation and coding schemes, a convolutional code of rate 1/3 is used, and puncturing is used to achieve the desired code rate. In contrast to GPRS, the Radio Link Control (RLC) and medium access control (MAC) headers and the payload data are coded separately in EGPRS. The headers are coded more robustly than the data.",
"title": "Technology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Evolved EDGE, also called EDGE Evolution and 2.875G, is a bolt-on extension to the GSM mobile telephony standard, which improves on EDGE in a number of ways. Latencies are reduced by lowering the Transmission Time Interval by half (from 20 ms to 10 ms). Bit rates are increased up to 1 Mbit/s peak bandwidth and latencies down to 80 ms using dual carrier, higher symbol rate and higher-order modulation (32QAM and 16QAM instead of 8PSK), and turbo codes to improve error correction. This results in real world downlink speeds of up to 600kbit/s. Further the signal quality is improved using dual antennas improving average bit-rates and spectrum efficiency.",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The main intention of increasing the existing EDGE throughput is that many operators would like to upgrade their existing infrastructure rather than invest on new network infrastructure. Mobile operators have invested billions in GSM networks, many of which are already capable of supporting EDGE data speeds up to 236.8 kbit/s. With a software upgrade and a new device compliant with Evolved EDGE (like an Evolved EDGE smartphone) for the user, these data rates can be boosted to speeds approaching 1 Mbit/s (i.e. 98.6 kbit/s per timeslot for 32QAM). Many service providers may not invest in a completely new technology like 3G networks.",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "Considerable research and development happened throughout the world for this new technology. A successful trial by Nokia Siemens and \"one of China's leading operators\" has been achieved in a live environment. With the introduction for more advanced wireless technologies like UMTS and LTE, which also focus on a network coverage layer on low frequencies and the upcoming phase-out and shutdown of 2G mobile networks, it is very unlikely that Evolved EDGE will ever see any deployment on live networks. Up to now (as of 2016) there are no commercial networks which support the Evolved EDGE standard (3GPP Rel-7).",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "With Evolved EDGE come three major features designed to reduce latency over the air interface.",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In EDGE, a single RLC data block (ranging from 23 to 148 bytes of data) is transmitted over four frames, using a single time slot. On average, this requires 20 ms for one way transmission. Under the RTTI scheme, one data block is transmitted over two frames in two timeslots, reducing the latency of the air interface to 10 ms.",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "In addition, Reduced Latency also implies support of Piggy-backed ACK/NACK (PAN), in which a bitmap of blocks not received is included in normal data blocks. Using the PAN field, the receiver may report missing data blocks immediately, rather than waiting to send a dedicated PAN message.",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "A final enhancement is RLC-non persistent mode. With EDGE, the RLC interface could operate in either acknowledged mode, or unacknowledged mode. In unacknowledged mode, there is no retransmission of missing data blocks, so a single corrupt block would cause an entire upper-layer IP packet to be lost. With non-persistent mode, an RLC data block may be retransmitted if it is less than a certain age. Once this time expires, it is considered lost, and subsequent data blocks may then be forwarded to upper layers.",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Both uplink and downlink throughput is improved by using 16 or 32 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation), along with turbo codes and higher symbol rates.",
"title": "Evolved EDGE"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) states that, as of May 2013, there were 604 GSM/EDGE networks in 213 countries, from a total of 606 mobile network operator commitments in 213 countries.",
"title": "Networks"
}
]
| Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), also known as 2.75G, Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC), and Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM. EDGE is considered a pre-3G radio technology and is part of ITU's 3G definition. EDGE was deployed on GSM networks beginning in 2003 – initially by Cingular in the United States. EDGE is standardized also by 3GPP as part of the GSM family. A variant, so called Compact-EDGE, was developed for use in a portion of Digital AMPS network spectrum. Through the introduction of sophisticated methods of coding and transmitting data, EDGE delivers higher bit-rates per radio channel, resulting in a threefold increase in capacity and performance compared with an ordinary GSM/GPRS connection. EDGE can be used for any packet switched application, such as an Internet connection. Evolved EDGE continues in release 7 of the 3GPP standard providing reduced latency and more than doubled performance e.g. to complement High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA). Peak bit-rates of up to 1 Mbit/s and typical bit-rates of 400 kbit/s can be expected. | 2002-02-25T15:51:15Z | 2023-11-19T04:56:24Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Data_rates_for_GSM_Evolution |
10,216 | Eth | Eth (/ɛð/ edh, uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð; also spelled edh or eð), known as ðæt in Old English, is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese (in which it is called edd), and Elfdalian.
It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with ⟨dh⟩, and later ⟨d⟩.
It is often transliterated as ⟨d⟩.
The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
In Old English, ⟨ð⟩ (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with ⟨þ⟩ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone /ð/, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives both now spelled ⟨th⟩.
Unlike the runic letter ⟨þ⟩, ⟨ð⟩ is a modified Roman letter. Neither ⟨ð⟩ nor ⟨þ⟩ was found in the earliest records of Old English. A study of Mercian royal diplomas found that ⟨ð⟩ (along with ⟨đ⟩) began to emerge in the early 8th century, with ⟨ð⟩ becoming strongly preferred by the 780s. Another source indicates that the letter is "derived from Irish writing".
Under King Alfred the Great, ⟨þ⟩ grew greatly in popularity and started to overtake ⟨ð⟩. ⟨Þ⟩ completely overtook ⟨ð⟩ by Middle English, and ⟨þ⟩ died out by Early Modern English, mostly due to the rise of the printing press, and was replaced by the digraph th.
In Icelandic, ⟨ð⟩, called "eð", represents an alveolar non-sibilant fricative, voiced [ð̠] intervocalically and word-finally, and voiceless [θ̠] otherwise, which form one phoneme, /θ/. Generally, /θ/ is represented by thorn ⟨Þ⟩ at the beginning of words and by ⟨ð⟩ elsewhere. The ⟨ð⟩ in the name of the letter is devoiced in the nominative and accusative cases: [ɛθ̠]. In the Icelandic alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ follows ⟨d⟩.
In Faroese, ⟨ð⟩ is not assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons, but it indicates most glides. When ⟨ð⟩ appears before ⟨r⟩, it is in a few words pronounced [ɡ]. In the Faroese alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ follows ⟨d⟩.
In Olav Jakobsen Høyem's version of Nynorsk based on Trøndersk, ⟨ð⟩ was always silent, and was introduced for etymological reasons.
⟨Ð⟩ has also been used by some in written Welsh to represent /ð/, which is normally represented as dd.
⟨Ð⟩ is sometimes used in Khmer romanization to represent ឍ thô.
U+00F0 ð LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH represents a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
U+1D9E ᶞ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ETH is used in phonetic transcription.
U+1D06 ᴆ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL ETH is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.
The Faroese and Icelandic keyboard layouts have a dedicated button for eth.
On Microsoft Windows, eth can be typed using the alt code Alt+(0240) for lowercase or Alt+(0208) for uppercase, or by typing AltGr+d using the US International keyboard layout. On Windows 10, it can also be inserted into text via the symbol menu, presented by using Windows+; or Windows+. then selecting Symbols, associated with the Omega (Ω) character, and then selecting Latin Symbols, associated with the C-cedilla (Ç) character.
Using the compose key ("multi key") which is popular on Linux, eth can be typed by typing Compose D H for lowercase or Compose ⇧ Shift+D ⇧ Shift+H for capital letters.
On ChromeOS with 'extended keyboard' Chrome extension, AltGr+D will result in ð being displayed; ⇧ Shift+AltGr+D will result in Ð.
This operator gives rise to spin-weighted spherical harmonics. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eth (/ɛð/ edh, uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð; also spelled edh or eð), known as ðæt in Old English, is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese (in which it is called edd), and Elfdalian.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with ⟨dh⟩, and later ⟨d⟩.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "It is often transliterated as ⟨d⟩.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "In Old English, ⟨ð⟩ (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with ⟨þ⟩ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone /ð/, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives both now spelled ⟨th⟩.",
"title": "Old English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Unlike the runic letter ⟨þ⟩, ⟨ð⟩ is a modified Roman letter. Neither ⟨ð⟩ nor ⟨þ⟩ was found in the earliest records of Old English. A study of Mercian royal diplomas found that ⟨ð⟩ (along with ⟨đ⟩) began to emerge in the early 8th century, with ⟨ð⟩ becoming strongly preferred by the 780s. Another source indicates that the letter is \"derived from Irish writing\".",
"title": "Old English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Under King Alfred the Great, ⟨þ⟩ grew greatly in popularity and started to overtake ⟨ð⟩. ⟨Þ⟩ completely overtook ⟨ð⟩ by Middle English, and ⟨þ⟩ died out by Early Modern English, mostly due to the rise of the printing press, and was replaced by the digraph th.",
"title": "Old English"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "In Icelandic, ⟨ð⟩, called \"eð\", represents an alveolar non-sibilant fricative, voiced [ð̠] intervocalically and word-finally, and voiceless [θ̠] otherwise, which form one phoneme, /θ/. Generally, /θ/ is represented by thorn ⟨Þ⟩ at the beginning of words and by ⟨ð⟩ elsewhere. The ⟨ð⟩ in the name of the letter is devoiced in the nominative and accusative cases: [ɛθ̠]. In the Icelandic alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ follows ⟨d⟩.",
"title": "Icelandic"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "In Faroese, ⟨ð⟩ is not assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons, but it indicates most glides. When ⟨ð⟩ appears before ⟨r⟩, it is in a few words pronounced [ɡ]. In the Faroese alphabet, ⟨ð⟩ follows ⟨d⟩.",
"title": "Faroese"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In Olav Jakobsen Høyem's version of Nynorsk based on Trøndersk, ⟨ð⟩ was always silent, and was introduced for etymological reasons.",
"title": "Norwegian"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "⟨Ð⟩ has also been used by some in written Welsh to represent /ð/, which is normally represented as dd.",
"title": "Welsh"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "⟨Ð⟩ is sometimes used in Khmer romanization to represent ឍ thô.",
"title": "Khmer"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "U+00F0 ð LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH represents a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.",
"title": "Phonetic transcription"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "U+1D9E ᶞ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ETH is used in phonetic transcription.",
"title": "Phonetic transcription"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "U+1D06 ᴆ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL ETH is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.",
"title": "Phonetic transcription"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Faroese and Icelandic keyboard layouts have a dedicated button for eth.",
"title": "Computer input"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "On Microsoft Windows, eth can be typed using the alt code Alt+(0240) for lowercase or Alt+(0208) for uppercase, or by typing AltGr+d using the US International keyboard layout. On Windows 10, it can also be inserted into text via the symbol menu, presented by using Windows+; or Windows+. then selecting Symbols, associated with the Omega (Ω) character, and then selecting Latin Symbols, associated with the C-cedilla (Ç) character.",
"title": "Computer input"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Using the compose key (\"multi key\") which is popular on Linux, eth can be typed by typing Compose D H for lowercase or Compose ⇧ Shift+D ⇧ Shift+H for capital letters.",
"title": "Computer input"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "On ChromeOS with 'extended keyboard' Chrome extension, AltGr+D will result in ð being displayed; ⇧ Shift+AltGr+D will result in Ð.",
"title": "Computer input"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "This operator gives rise to spin-weighted spherical harmonics.",
"title": "Modern uses"
}
]
| Eth, known as ðæt in Old English, is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian. It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with ⟨dh⟩, and later ⟨d⟩. It is often transliterated as ⟨d⟩. The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet. | 2001-12-07T17:23:22Z | 2023-12-28T16:37:43Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth |
10,217 | Eth, Nord | Eth (French pronunciation: [ɛt]) is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.
It is about 10 km (6.2 mi) east-southeast of Valenciennes. Residents are called Ethois (feminine plural Ethoises). | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Eth (French pronunciation: [ɛt]) is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "It is about 10 km (6.2 mi) east-southeast of Valenciennes. Residents are called Ethois (feminine plural Ethoises).",
"title": ""
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{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "",
"title": "References"
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| Eth is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It is about 10 km (6.2 mi) east-southeast of Valenciennes. Residents are called Ethois. | 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z | 2023-08-04T05:36:38Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth,_Nord |
10,221 | Euphrates | The Euphrates (/juːˈfreɪtiːz/ yoo-FRAY-teez; see below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (lit. 'the land between the rivers'). Originating in Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf.
The Euphrates is the fifteenth-longest river in Asia and the longest in Western Asia, at about 2,780 km (1,730 mi), and has a drainage area of 440,000 km (170,000 sq mi) that covers six countries.
The term Euphrates derives from the Greek Euphrátēs (Εὐφρᾱ́της), adapted from Old Persian: 𐎢𐎳𐎼𐎠𐎬𐎢, romanized: Ufrātu, itself from Elamite: 𒌑𒅁𒊏𒌅𒅖, romanized: ú-ip-ra-tu-iš. The Elamite name is ultimately derived from a name spelt in cuneiform 𒌓𒄒𒉣 , which read as Sumerian is Buranuna and read as Akkadian is Purattu; many cuneiform signs have a Sumerian pronunciation and an Akkadian pronunciation, taken from a Sumerian word and an Akkadian word that mean the same. The Akkadian Purattu has been perpetuated in Semitic languages (cf. Arabic: الفرات al-Furāt; Syriac: ̇ܦܪܬ Pǝrāṯ, Hebrew: פְּרָת Pǝrāṯ) and in other nearby languages of the time (cf. Hurrian Puranti, Sabarian Uruttu). The Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov suggest the proto-Sumerian *burudu "copper" (Sumerian urudu) as an origin, with an explanation that Euphrates was the river by which copper ore was transported in rafts, since Mesopotamia was the center of copper metallurgy during the period.
The Euphrates is called Yeprat in Armenian (Եփրատ), Perat in modern Hebrew (פרת), Fırat in Turkish and Firat in Kurdish. The Mandaic name is Praš (ࡐࡓࡀࡔ), and is often mentioned as Praš Ziwa (pronounced Fraš Ziwa) in Mandaean scriptures such as the Ginza Rabba. In Mandaean scriptures, the Euphrates is considered to be the earthly manifestation of the heavenly yardna or flowing river (similar to the Yazidi concept of Lalish being the earthly manifestation of its heavenly counterpart, or the ‘Sacred House’ Kaaba in Mecca being the earthly manifestation of the heavenly Al-Bayt Al-Mamur).
The earliest references to the Euphrates come from cuneiform texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq and date to the mid-3rd millennium BCE. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna (logographic: UD.KIB.NUN). The name could also be written KIB.NUN.(NA) or KIB.NUN, with the prefix "" indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also written UD.KIB.NUN, indicating a historically strong relationship between the city and the river.
The Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates (450 kilometres (280 mi)) and the Murat Su or Eastern Euphrates (650 kilometres (400 mi)) 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) upstream from the town of Keban in southeastern Turkey. Daoudy and Frenken put the length of the Euphrates from the source of the Murat River to the confluence with the Tigris at 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi), of which 1,230 kilometres (760 mi) is in Turkey, 710 kilometres (440 mi) in Syria and 1,060 kilometres (660 mi) in Iraq. The same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates and the Tigris with the Persian Gulf, is given by various sources as 145–195 kilometres (90–121 mi).
Both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3,290 metres (10,790 ft) and 3,520 metres (11,550 ft) amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 metres (2,274 ft) amsl. From Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 metres (1,207 ft) over a distance of less than 600 kilometres (370 mi). Once the Euphrates enters the Upper Mesopotamian plains, its grade drops significantly; within Syria the river falls 163 metres (535 ft) while over the last stretch between Hīt and the Shatt al-Arab the river drops only 55 metres (180 ft).
The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, resulting in peak volumes during the months April through May. Discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The average natural annual flow of the Euphrates has been determined from early- and mid-twentieth century records as 20.9 cubic kilometres (5.0 cu mi) at Keban, 36.6 cubic kilometres (8.8 cu mi) at Hīt and 21.5 cubic kilometres (5.2 cu mi) at Hindiya. However, these averages mask the high inter-annual variability in discharge; at Birecik, just north of the Syro–Turkish border, annual discharges have been measured that ranged from a low volume of 15.3 cubic kilometres (3.7 cu mi) in 1961 to a high of 42.7 cubic kilometres (10.2 cu mi) in 1963.
The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s. Data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 cubic metres (12,600 cu ft) per second (11.2 cubic kilometres (2.7 cu mi) per year). The seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7,510 cubic metres (265,000 cu ft) per second, while after 1990 it is only 2,514 cubic metres (88,800 cu ft) per second. The minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 cubic metres (1,900 cu ft) per second before 1990 to 58 cubic metres (2,000 cu ft) per second afterward.
In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates; the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur. These rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries; emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a karstic spring near 'Ayn al-'Arus and flows due south until it reaches the Euphrates at the city of Raqqa. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three. Its main karstic springs are located around Ra's al-'Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah. Once the Euphrates enters Iraq, there are no more natural tributaries to the Euphrates, although canals connecting the Euphrates basin with the Tigris basin exist.
The drainage basins of the Kara Su and the Murat River cover an area of 22,000 square kilometres (8,500 sq mi) and 40,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi), respectively. Estimates of the area of the Euphrates drainage basin vary widely; from a low 233,000 square kilometres (90,000 sq mi) to a high 766,000 square kilometres (296,000 sq mi). Recent estimates put the basin area at 388,000 square kilometres (150,000 sq mi), 444,000 square kilometres (171,000 sq mi) and 579,314 square kilometres (223,674 sq mi). The greater part of the Euphrates basin is located in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. According to both Daoudy and Frenken, Turkey's share is 28 percent, Syria's is 17 percent and that of Iraq is 40 percent. Isaev and Mikhailova estimate the percentages of the drainage basin lying within Turkey, Syria and Iraq at 33, 20 and 47 percent respectively. Some sources estimate that approximately 15 percent of the drainage basin is located within Saudi Arabia, while a small part falls inside the borders of Kuwait. Finally, some sources also include Jordan in the drainage basin of the Euphrates; a small part of the eastern desert (220 square kilometres (85 sq mi)) drains toward the east rather than to the west.
In 2021, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources reported that the Euphrates river could dry out by 2040 due to climate change and droughts.
The Euphrates flows through a number of distinct vegetation zones. Although millennia-long human occupation in most parts of the Euphrates basin has significantly degraded the landscape, patches of original vegetation remain. The steady drop in annual rainfall from the sources of the Euphrates toward the Persian Gulf is a strong determinant for the vegetation that can be supported. In its upper reaches the Euphrates flows through the mountains of Southeast Turkey and their southern foothills which support a xeric woodland. Plant species in the moister parts of this zone include various oaks, pistachio trees, and Rosaceae (rose/plum family). The drier parts of the xeric woodland zone supports less dense oak forest and Rosaceae. Here can also be found the wild variants of many cereals, including einkorn wheat, emmer, oat and rye.
South of this zone lies a zone of mixed woodland-steppe vegetation. Between Raqqa and the Syro–Iraqi border the Euphrates flows through a steppe landscape. This steppe is characterised by white wormwood (Artemisia herba-alba) and Amaranthaceae. Throughout history, this zone has been heavily overgrazed due to the practicing of sheep and goat pastoralism by its inhabitants. Southeast of the border between Syria and Iraq starts true desert. This zone supports either no vegetation at all or small pockets of Chenopodiaceae or Poa sinaica. Although today nothing of it survives due to human interference, research suggests that the Euphrates Valley would have supported a riverine forest. Species characteristic of this type of forest include the Oriental plane, the Euphrates poplar, the tamarisk, the ash and various wetland plants.
Among the fish species in the Tigris–Euphrates basin, the family of the Cyprinidae are the most common, with 34 species out of 52 in total. Among the Cyprinids, the mangar has good recreational fishing qualities, leading the British to nickname it the "Tigris salmon." The Euphrates softshell turtle is an endangered soft-shelled turtle that is limited to the Tigris–Euphrates river system.
The Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs from the 1st millennium BCE depict lion and bull hunts in fertile landscapes. Sixteenth to nineteenth century European travellers in the Syrian Euphrates basin reported on an abundance of animals living in the area, many of which have become rare or even extinct. Species like gazelle, onager and the now-extinct Arabian ostrich lived in the steppe bordering the Euphrates valley, while the valley itself was home to the wild boar. Carnivorous species include the wolf, the golden jackal, the red fox, the leopard and the lion. The Syrian brown bear can be found in the mountains of Southeast Turkey. The presence of Eurasian beaver has been attested in the bone assemblage of the prehistoric site of Tell Abu Hureyra in Syria, but the beaver has never been sighted in historical times.
The Hindiya Barrage on the Iraqi Euphrates, based on plans by British civil engineer William Willcocks and finished in 1913, was the first modern water diversion structure built in the Tigris–Euphrates river system. The Hindiya Barrage was followed in the 1950s by the Ramadi Barrage and the nearby Abu Dibbis Regulator, which serve to regulate the flow regime of the Euphrates and to discharge excess flood water into the depression that is now Lake Habbaniyah. Iraq's largest dam on the Euphrates is the Haditha Dam; a 9-kilometre-long (5.6 mi) earth-fill dam creating Lake Qadisiyah. Syria and Turkey built their first dams in the Euphrates in the 1970s. The Tabqa Dam in Syria was completed in 1973 while Turkey finished the Keban Dam, a prelude to the immense Southeastern Anatolia Project, in 1974. Since then, Syria has built two more dams in the Euphrates, the Baath Dam and the Tishrin Dam, and plans to build a fourth dam – the Halabiye Dam – between Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The Tabqa Dam is Syria's largest dam and its reservoir (Lake Assad) is an important source of irrigation and drinking water. It was planned that 640,000 hectares (2,500 sq mi) should be irrigated from Lake Assad, but in 2000 only 100,000–124,000 hectares (390–480 sq mi) had been realized. Syria also built three smaller dams on the Khabur and its tributaries.
With the implementation of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (Turkish: Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or GAP) in the 1970s, Turkey launched an ambitious plan to harness the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates for irrigation and hydroelectricity production and provide an economic stimulus to its southeastern provinces. GAP affects a total area of 75,000 square kilometres (29,000 sq mi) and approximately 7 million people; representing about 10 percent of Turkey's total surface area and population, respectively. When completed, GAP will consist of 22 dams – including the Keban Dam – and 19 power plants and provide irrigation water to 1,700,000 hectares (6,600 sq mi) of agricultural land, which is about 20 percent of the irrigable land in Turkey. C. 910,000 hectares (3,500 sq mi) of this irrigated land is located in the Euphrates basin. By far the largest dam in GAP is the Atatürk Dam, located c. 55 kilometres (34 mi) northwest of Şanlıurfa. This 184-metre-high (604 ft) and 1,820-metre-long (5,970 ft) dam was completed in 1992; thereby creating a reservoir that is the third-largest lake in Turkey. With a maximum capacity of 48.7 cubic kilometres (11.7 cu mi), the Atatürk Dam reservoir is large enough to hold the entire annual discharge of the Euphrates. Completion of GAP was scheduled for 2010 but has been delayed because the World Bank has withheld funding due to the lack of an official agreement on water sharing between Turkey and the downstream states on the Euphrates and the Tigris.
Apart from barrages and dams, Iraq has also created an intricate network of canals connecting the Euphrates with Lake Habbaniyah, Lake Tharthar, and Abu Dibbis reservoir; all of which can be used to store excess floodwater. Via the Shatt al-Hayy, the Euphrates is connected with the Tigris. The largest canal in this network is the Main Outfall Drain or so-called "Third River;" constructed between 1953 and 1992. This 565-kilometre-long (351 mi) canal is intended to drain the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris south of Baghdad to prevent soil salinization from irrigation. It also allows large freight barges to navigate up to Baghdad.
The construction of the dams and irrigation schemes on the Euphrates has had a significant impact on the environment and society of each riparian country. The dams constructed as part of GAP – in both the Euphrates and the Tigris basins – have affected 382 villages and almost 200,000 people have been resettled elsewhere. The largest number of people was displaced by the building of the Atatürk Dam, which alone affected 55,300 people. A survey among those who were displaced showed that the majority were unhappy with their new situation and that the compensation they had received was considered insufficient. The flooding of Lake Assad led to the forced displacement of c. 4,000 families, who were resettled in other parts of northern Syria as part of a now abandoned plan to create an "Arab belt" along the borders with Turkey and Iraq.
Apart from the changes in the discharge regime of the river, the numerous dams and irrigation projects have also had other effects on the environment. The creation of reservoirs with large surfaces in countries with high average temperatures has led to increased evaporation; thereby reducing the total amount of water that is available for human use. Annual evaporation from reservoirs has been estimated at 2 cubic kilometres (0.48 cu mi) in Turkey, 1 cubic kilometre (0.24 cu mi) in Syria and 5 cubic kilometres (1.2 cu mi) in Iraq. Water quality in the Iraqi Euphrates is low because irrigation water tapped in Turkey and Syria flows back into the river, together with dissolved fertilizer chemicals used on the fields. The salinity of Euphrates water in Iraq has increased as a result of upstream dam construction, leading to lower suitability as drinking water. The many dams and irrigation schemes, and the associated large-scale water abstraction, have also had a detrimental effect on the ecologically already fragile Mesopotamian Marshes and on freshwater fish habitats in Iraq.
The inundation of large parts of the Euphrates valley, especially in Turkey and Syria, has led to the flooding of many archaeological sites and other places of cultural significance. Although concerted efforts have been made to record or save as much of the endangered cultural heritage as possible, many sites are probably lost forever. The combined GAP projects on the Turkish Euphrates have led to major international efforts to document the archaeological and cultural heritage of the endangered parts of the valley. Especially the flooding of Zeugma with its unique Roman mosaics by the reservoir of the Birecik Dam has generated much controversy in both the Turkish and international press. The construction of the Tabqa Dam in Syria led to a large international campaign coordinated by UNESCO to document the heritage that would disappear under the waters of Lake Assad. Archaeologists from numerous countries excavated sites ranging in date from the Natufian to the Abbasid period, and two minarets were dismantled and rebuilt outside the flood zone. Important sites that have been flooded or affected by the rising waters of Lake Assad include Mureybet, Emar and Abu Hureyra. A similar international effort was made when the Tishrin Dam was constructed, which led, among others, to the flooding of the important Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site of Jerf el Ahmar. An archaeological survey and rescue excavations were also carried out in the area flooded by Lake Qadisiya in Iraq. Parts of the flooded area have recently become accessible again due to the drying up of the lake, resulting not only in new possibilities for archaeologists to do more research, but also providing opportunities for looting, which has been rampant elsewhere in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion.
In Islam, a hadith is mentioned prophecying about unearthing of a gold mountain beneath the Euphrates river before the apocalypse, with many people dying fighting over it; it is said to be one of the future minor signs of the coming of Judgement Day:
"Sahih Muslim 2894 c Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:
The Last Hour would not come unless the Euphrates would uncover a treasure of gold, so he who finds it should not take anything out of that."
In the Christian Bible, the Euphrates River is mentioned in Revelation 16:12, in the final book of the New Testament. Author, John of Patmos writes about the Euphrates river drying up as part of a series of events that foretell the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The river Phrath mentioned in Genesis 2:14 is also identified as the Euphrates.
The early occupation of the Euphrates basin was limited to its upper reaches; that is, the area that is popularly known as the Fertile Crescent. Acheulean stone artifacts have been found in the Sajur basin and in the El Kowm oasis in the central Syrian steppe; the latter together with remains of Homo erectus that were dated to 450,000 years old. In the Taurus Mountains and the upper part of the Syrian Euphrates valley, early permanent villages such as Abu Hureyra – at first occupied by hunter-gatherers but later by some of the earliest farmers, Jerf el Ahmar, Mureybet and Nevalı Çori became established from the eleventh millennium BCE onward. In the absence of irrigation, these early farming communities were limited to areas where rainfed agriculture was possible, that is, the upper parts of the Syrian Euphrates as well as Turkey. Late Neolithic villages, characterized by the introduction of pottery in the early 7th millennium BCE, are known throughout this area. Occupation of lower Mesopotamia started in the 6th millennium and is generally associated with the introduction of irrigation, as rainfall in this area is insufficient for dry agriculture. Evidence for irrigation has been found at several sites dating to this period, including Tell es-Sawwan. During the 5th millennium BCE, or late Ubaid period, northeastern Syria was dotted by small villages, although some of them grew to a size of over 10 hectares (25 acres). In Iraq, sites like Eridu and Ur were already occupied during the Ubaid period. Clay boat models found at Tell Mashnaqa along the Khabur indicate that riverine transport was already practiced during this period. The Uruk period, roughly coinciding with the 4th millennium BCE, saw the emergence of truly urban settlements across Mesopotamia. Cities like Tell Brak and Uruk grew to over 100 hectares (250 acres) in size and displayed monumental architecture. The spread of southern Mesopotamian pottery, architecture and sealings far into Turkey and Iran has generally been interpreted as the material reflection of a widespread trade system aimed at providing the Mesopotamian cities with raw materials. Habuba Kabira on the Syrian Euphrates is a prominent example of a settlement that is interpreted as an Uruk colony.
During the Jemdet Nasr (3600–3100 BCE) and Early Dynastic periods (3100–2350 BCE), southern Mesopotamia experienced a growth in the number and size of settlements, suggesting strong population growth. These settlements, including Sumero-Akkadian sites like Sippar, Uruk, Adab and Kish, were organized in competing city-states. Many of these cities were located along canals of the Euphrates and the Tigris that have since dried up, but that can still be identified from remote sensing imagery. A similar development took place in Upper Mesopotamia, Subartu and Assyria, although only from the mid 3rd millennium and on a smaller scale than in Lower Mesopotamia. Sites like Ebla, Mari and Tell Leilan grew to prominence for the first time during this period.
Large parts of the Euphrates basin were for the first time united under a single ruler during the Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC) and Ur III empires, which controlled – either directly or indirectly through vassals – large parts of modern-day Iraq and northeastern Syria. Following their collapse, the Old Assyrian Empire (1975–1750 BCE) and Mari asserted their power over northeast Syria and northern Mesopotamia, while southern Mesopotamia was controlled by city-states like Isin, Kish and Larsa before their territories were absorbed by the newly emerged state of Babylonia under Hammurabi in the early to mid 18th century BCE.
In the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, the Euphrates basin was divided between Kassite Babylon in the south and Mitanni, Assyria and the Hittite Empire in the north, with the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) eventually eclipsing the Hittites, Mitanni and Kassite Babylonians. Following the end of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the late 11th century BCE, struggles broke out between Babylonia and Assyria over the control of the Iraqi Euphrates basin. The Neo-Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC) eventually emerged victorious out of this conflict and also succeeded in gaining control of the northern Euphrates basin in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE.
In the centuries to come, control of the wider Euphrates basin shifted from the Neo-Assyrian Empire (which collapsed between 612 and 599 BC) to the short lived Median Empire (612–546 BC) and equally brief Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC) in the last years of the 7th century BC, and eventually to the Achaemenid Empire (539–333 BC). The Achaemenid Empire was in turn overrun by Alexander the Great, who defeated the last king Darius III and died in Babylon in 323 BCE.
Subsequent to this, the region came under the control of the Seleucid Empire (312–150 BC), Parthian Empire (150–226 AD) (during which several Neo-Assyrian states such as Adiabene came to rule certain regions of the Euphrates), and was fought over by the Roman Empire, its succeeding Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire (226–638 AD), until the Islamic conquest of the mid 7th century AD. The Battle of Karbala took place near the banks of this river in 680 AD.
In the north, the river served as a border between Greater Armenia (331 BC–428 AD) and Lesser Armenia (the latter became a Roman province in the 1st century BC).
After World War I, the borders in Southwest Asia were redrawn in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), when the Ottoman Empire was partitioned. Clause 109 of the treaty stipulated that the three riparian states of the Euphrates (at that time Turkey, France for its Syrian mandate and the United Kingdom for its mandate of Iraq) had to reach a mutual agreement on the use of its water and on the construction of any hydraulic installation. An agreement between Turkey and Iraq signed in 1946 required Turkey to report to Iraq on any hydraulic changes it made on the Tigris–Euphrates river system, and allowed Iraq to construct dams on Turkish territory to manage the flow of the Euphrates.
The river featured on the coat of arms of Iraq from 1932 to 1959.
Turkey and Syria completed their first dams on the Euphrates – the Keban Dam and the Tabqa Dam, respectively – within one year of each other and filling of the reservoirs commenced in 1975. At the same time, the area was hit by severe drought and river flow toward Iraq was reduced from 15.3 cubic kilometres (3.7 cu mi) in 1973 to 9.4 cubic kilometres (2.3 cu mi) in 1975. This led to an international crisis during which Iraq threatened to bomb the Tabqa Dam. An agreement was eventually reached between Syria and Iraq after intervention by Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union. A similar crisis, although not escalating to the point of military threats, occurred in 1981 when the Keban Dam reservoir had to be refilled after it had been almost emptied to temporarily increase Turkey's hydroelectricity production. In 1984, Turkey unilaterally declared that it would ensure a flow of at least 500 cubic metres (18,000 cu ft) per second, or 16 cubic kilometres (3.8 cu mi) per year, into Syria, and in 1987 a bilateral treaty to that effect was signed between the two countries. Another bilateral agreement from 1989 between Syria and Iraq settles the amount of water flowing into Iraq at 60 percent of the amount that Syria receives from Turkey. In 2008, Turkey, Syria and Iraq instigated the Joint Trilateral Committee (JTC) on the management of the water in the Tigris–Euphrates basin and on 3 September 2009 a further agreement was signed to this effect. On 15 April 2014, Turkey began to reduce the flow of the Euphrates into Syria and Iraq. The flow was cut off completely on 16 May 2014 resulting in the Euphrates terminating at the Turkish–Syrian border. This was in violation of an agreement reached in 1987 in which Turkey committed to releasing a minimum of 500 cubic metres (18,000 cu ft) of water per second at the Turkish–Syrian border.
During the Syrian civil war and the Iraqi Civil War, much of the Euphrates was controlled by the Islamic State from 2014 until 2017, when the terrorist group began losing land and was eventually defeated territorially in Syria at the Battle of Baghouz and in Iraq in the Western Iraq offensive respectively.
Throughout history, the Euphrates has been of vital importance to those living along its course. With the construction of large hydropower stations, irrigation schemes, and pipelines capable of transporting water over large distances, many more people now depend on the river for basic amenities such as electricity and drinking water than in the past. Syria's Lake Assad is the most important source of drinking water for the city of Aleppo, 75 kilometres (47 mi) to the west of the river valley. The lake also supports a modest state-operated fishing industry. Through a newly restored power line, the Haditha Dam in Iraq provides electricity to Baghdad. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "The Euphrates (/juːˈfreɪtiːz/ yoo-FRAY-teez; see below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (lit. 'the land between the rivers'). Originating in Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Euphrates is the fifteenth-longest river in Asia and the longest in Western Asia, at about 2,780 km (1,730 mi), and has a drainage area of 440,000 km (170,000 sq mi) that covers six countries.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The term Euphrates derives from the Greek Euphrátēs (Εὐφρᾱ́της), adapted from Old Persian: 𐎢𐎳𐎼𐎠𐎬𐎢, romanized: Ufrātu, itself from Elamite: 𒌑𒅁𒊏𒌅𒅖, romanized: ú-ip-ra-tu-iš. The Elamite name is ultimately derived from a name spelt in cuneiform 𒌓𒄒𒉣 , which read as Sumerian is Buranuna and read as Akkadian is Purattu; many cuneiform signs have a Sumerian pronunciation and an Akkadian pronunciation, taken from a Sumerian word and an Akkadian word that mean the same. The Akkadian Purattu has been perpetuated in Semitic languages (cf. Arabic: الفرات al-Furāt; Syriac: ̇ܦܪܬ Pǝrāṯ, Hebrew: פְּרָת Pǝrāṯ) and in other nearby languages of the time (cf. Hurrian Puranti, Sabarian Uruttu). The Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov suggest the proto-Sumerian *burudu \"copper\" (Sumerian urudu) as an origin, with an explanation that Euphrates was the river by which copper ore was transported in rafts, since Mesopotamia was the center of copper metallurgy during the period.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The Euphrates is called Yeprat in Armenian (Եփրատ), Perat in modern Hebrew (פרת), Fırat in Turkish and Firat in Kurdish. The Mandaic name is Praš (ࡐࡓࡀࡔ), and is often mentioned as Praš Ziwa (pronounced Fraš Ziwa) in Mandaean scriptures such as the Ginza Rabba. In Mandaean scriptures, the Euphrates is considered to be the earthly manifestation of the heavenly yardna or flowing river (similar to the Yazidi concept of Lalish being the earthly manifestation of its heavenly counterpart, or the ‘Sacred House’ Kaaba in Mecca being the earthly manifestation of the heavenly Al-Bayt Al-Mamur).",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The earliest references to the Euphrates come from cuneiform texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq and date to the mid-3rd millennium BCE. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna (logographic: UD.KIB.NUN). The name could also be written KIB.NUN.(NA) or KIB.NUN, with the prefix \"\" indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also written UD.KIB.NUN, indicating a historically strong relationship between the city and the river.",
"title": "Etymology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "The Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates (450 kilometres (280 mi)) and the Murat Su or Eastern Euphrates (650 kilometres (400 mi)) 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) upstream from the town of Keban in southeastern Turkey. Daoudy and Frenken put the length of the Euphrates from the source of the Murat River to the confluence with the Tigris at 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi), of which 1,230 kilometres (760 mi) is in Turkey, 710 kilometres (440 mi) in Syria and 1,060 kilometres (660 mi) in Iraq. The same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates and the Tigris with the Persian Gulf, is given by various sources as 145–195 kilometres (90–121 mi).",
"title": "Course"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3,290 metres (10,790 ft) and 3,520 metres (11,550 ft) amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 metres (2,274 ft) amsl. From Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 metres (1,207 ft) over a distance of less than 600 kilometres (370 mi). Once the Euphrates enters the Upper Mesopotamian plains, its grade drops significantly; within Syria the river falls 163 metres (535 ft) while over the last stretch between Hīt and the Shatt al-Arab the river drops only 55 metres (180 ft).",
"title": "Course"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, resulting in peak volumes during the months April through May. Discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The average natural annual flow of the Euphrates has been determined from early- and mid-twentieth century records as 20.9 cubic kilometres (5.0 cu mi) at Keban, 36.6 cubic kilometres (8.8 cu mi) at Hīt and 21.5 cubic kilometres (5.2 cu mi) at Hindiya. However, these averages mask the high inter-annual variability in discharge; at Birecik, just north of the Syro–Turkish border, annual discharges have been measured that ranged from a low volume of 15.3 cubic kilometres (3.7 cu mi) in 1961 to a high of 42.7 cubic kilometres (10.2 cu mi) in 1963.",
"title": "Course"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s. Data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 cubic metres (12,600 cu ft) per second (11.2 cubic kilometres (2.7 cu mi) per year). The seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7,510 cubic metres (265,000 cu ft) per second, while after 1990 it is only 2,514 cubic metres (88,800 cu ft) per second. The minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 cubic metres (1,900 cu ft) per second before 1990 to 58 cubic metres (2,000 cu ft) per second afterward.",
"title": "Course"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates; the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur. These rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries; emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a karstic spring near 'Ayn al-'Arus and flows due south until it reaches the Euphrates at the city of Raqqa. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three. Its main karstic springs are located around Ra's al-'Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah. Once the Euphrates enters Iraq, there are no more natural tributaries to the Euphrates, although canals connecting the Euphrates basin with the Tigris basin exist.",
"title": "Course"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The drainage basins of the Kara Su and the Murat River cover an area of 22,000 square kilometres (8,500 sq mi) and 40,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi), respectively. Estimates of the area of the Euphrates drainage basin vary widely; from a low 233,000 square kilometres (90,000 sq mi) to a high 766,000 square kilometres (296,000 sq mi). Recent estimates put the basin area at 388,000 square kilometres (150,000 sq mi), 444,000 square kilometres (171,000 sq mi) and 579,314 square kilometres (223,674 sq mi). The greater part of the Euphrates basin is located in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. According to both Daoudy and Frenken, Turkey's share is 28 percent, Syria's is 17 percent and that of Iraq is 40 percent. Isaev and Mikhailova estimate the percentages of the drainage basin lying within Turkey, Syria and Iraq at 33, 20 and 47 percent respectively. Some sources estimate that approximately 15 percent of the drainage basin is located within Saudi Arabia, while a small part falls inside the borders of Kuwait. Finally, some sources also include Jordan in the drainage basin of the Euphrates; a small part of the eastern desert (220 square kilometres (85 sq mi)) drains toward the east rather than to the west.",
"title": "Drainage basin"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In 2021, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources reported that the Euphrates river could dry out by 2040 due to climate change and droughts.",
"title": "Climate change"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "The Euphrates flows through a number of distinct vegetation zones. Although millennia-long human occupation in most parts of the Euphrates basin has significantly degraded the landscape, patches of original vegetation remain. The steady drop in annual rainfall from the sources of the Euphrates toward the Persian Gulf is a strong determinant for the vegetation that can be supported. In its upper reaches the Euphrates flows through the mountains of Southeast Turkey and their southern foothills which support a xeric woodland. Plant species in the moister parts of this zone include various oaks, pistachio trees, and Rosaceae (rose/plum family). The drier parts of the xeric woodland zone supports less dense oak forest and Rosaceae. Here can also be found the wild variants of many cereals, including einkorn wheat, emmer, oat and rye.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "South of this zone lies a zone of mixed woodland-steppe vegetation. Between Raqqa and the Syro–Iraqi border the Euphrates flows through a steppe landscape. This steppe is characterised by white wormwood (Artemisia herba-alba) and Amaranthaceae. Throughout history, this zone has been heavily overgrazed due to the practicing of sheep and goat pastoralism by its inhabitants. Southeast of the border between Syria and Iraq starts true desert. This zone supports either no vegetation at all or small pockets of Chenopodiaceae or Poa sinaica. Although today nothing of it survives due to human interference, research suggests that the Euphrates Valley would have supported a riverine forest. Species characteristic of this type of forest include the Oriental plane, the Euphrates poplar, the tamarisk, the ash and various wetland plants.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Among the fish species in the Tigris–Euphrates basin, the family of the Cyprinidae are the most common, with 34 species out of 52 in total. Among the Cyprinids, the mangar has good recreational fishing qualities, leading the British to nickname it the \"Tigris salmon.\" The Euphrates softshell turtle is an endangered soft-shelled turtle that is limited to the Tigris–Euphrates river system.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "The Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs from the 1st millennium BCE depict lion and bull hunts in fertile landscapes. Sixteenth to nineteenth century European travellers in the Syrian Euphrates basin reported on an abundance of animals living in the area, many of which have become rare or even extinct. Species like gazelle, onager and the now-extinct Arabian ostrich lived in the steppe bordering the Euphrates valley, while the valley itself was home to the wild boar. Carnivorous species include the wolf, the golden jackal, the red fox, the leopard and the lion. The Syrian brown bear can be found in the mountains of Southeast Turkey. The presence of Eurasian beaver has been attested in the bone assemblage of the prehistoric site of Tell Abu Hureyra in Syria, but the beaver has never been sighted in historical times.",
"title": "Natural history"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "The Hindiya Barrage on the Iraqi Euphrates, based on plans by British civil engineer William Willcocks and finished in 1913, was the first modern water diversion structure built in the Tigris–Euphrates river system. The Hindiya Barrage was followed in the 1950s by the Ramadi Barrage and the nearby Abu Dibbis Regulator, which serve to regulate the flow regime of the Euphrates and to discharge excess flood water into the depression that is now Lake Habbaniyah. Iraq's largest dam on the Euphrates is the Haditha Dam; a 9-kilometre-long (5.6 mi) earth-fill dam creating Lake Qadisiyah. Syria and Turkey built their first dams in the Euphrates in the 1970s. The Tabqa Dam in Syria was completed in 1973 while Turkey finished the Keban Dam, a prelude to the immense Southeastern Anatolia Project, in 1974. Since then, Syria has built two more dams in the Euphrates, the Baath Dam and the Tishrin Dam, and plans to build a fourth dam – the Halabiye Dam – between Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The Tabqa Dam is Syria's largest dam and its reservoir (Lake Assad) is an important source of irrigation and drinking water. It was planned that 640,000 hectares (2,500 sq mi) should be irrigated from Lake Assad, but in 2000 only 100,000–124,000 hectares (390–480 sq mi) had been realized. Syria also built three smaller dams on the Khabur and its tributaries.",
"title": "River"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "With the implementation of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (Turkish: Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or GAP) in the 1970s, Turkey launched an ambitious plan to harness the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates for irrigation and hydroelectricity production and provide an economic stimulus to its southeastern provinces. GAP affects a total area of 75,000 square kilometres (29,000 sq mi) and approximately 7 million people; representing about 10 percent of Turkey's total surface area and population, respectively. When completed, GAP will consist of 22 dams – including the Keban Dam – and 19 power plants and provide irrigation water to 1,700,000 hectares (6,600 sq mi) of agricultural land, which is about 20 percent of the irrigable land in Turkey. C. 910,000 hectares (3,500 sq mi) of this irrigated land is located in the Euphrates basin. By far the largest dam in GAP is the Atatürk Dam, located c. 55 kilometres (34 mi) northwest of Şanlıurfa. This 184-metre-high (604 ft) and 1,820-metre-long (5,970 ft) dam was completed in 1992; thereby creating a reservoir that is the third-largest lake in Turkey. With a maximum capacity of 48.7 cubic kilometres (11.7 cu mi), the Atatürk Dam reservoir is large enough to hold the entire annual discharge of the Euphrates. Completion of GAP was scheduled for 2010 but has been delayed because the World Bank has withheld funding due to the lack of an official agreement on water sharing between Turkey and the downstream states on the Euphrates and the Tigris.",
"title": "River"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Apart from barrages and dams, Iraq has also created an intricate network of canals connecting the Euphrates with Lake Habbaniyah, Lake Tharthar, and Abu Dibbis reservoir; all of which can be used to store excess floodwater. Via the Shatt al-Hayy, the Euphrates is connected with the Tigris. The largest canal in this network is the Main Outfall Drain or so-called \"Third River;\" constructed between 1953 and 1992. This 565-kilometre-long (351 mi) canal is intended to drain the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris south of Baghdad to prevent soil salinization from irrigation. It also allows large freight barges to navigate up to Baghdad.",
"title": "River"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The construction of the dams and irrigation schemes on the Euphrates has had a significant impact on the environment and society of each riparian country. The dams constructed as part of GAP – in both the Euphrates and the Tigris basins – have affected 382 villages and almost 200,000 people have been resettled elsewhere. The largest number of people was displaced by the building of the Atatürk Dam, which alone affected 55,300 people. A survey among those who were displaced showed that the majority were unhappy with their new situation and that the compensation they had received was considered insufficient. The flooding of Lake Assad led to the forced displacement of c. 4,000 families, who were resettled in other parts of northern Syria as part of a now abandoned plan to create an \"Arab belt\" along the borders with Turkey and Iraq.",
"title": "River"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "Apart from the changes in the discharge regime of the river, the numerous dams and irrigation projects have also had other effects on the environment. The creation of reservoirs with large surfaces in countries with high average temperatures has led to increased evaporation; thereby reducing the total amount of water that is available for human use. Annual evaporation from reservoirs has been estimated at 2 cubic kilometres (0.48 cu mi) in Turkey, 1 cubic kilometre (0.24 cu mi) in Syria and 5 cubic kilometres (1.2 cu mi) in Iraq. Water quality in the Iraqi Euphrates is low because irrigation water tapped in Turkey and Syria flows back into the river, together with dissolved fertilizer chemicals used on the fields. The salinity of Euphrates water in Iraq has increased as a result of upstream dam construction, leading to lower suitability as drinking water. The many dams and irrigation schemes, and the associated large-scale water abstraction, have also had a detrimental effect on the ecologically already fragile Mesopotamian Marshes and on freshwater fish habitats in Iraq.",
"title": "River"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "The inundation of large parts of the Euphrates valley, especially in Turkey and Syria, has led to the flooding of many archaeological sites and other places of cultural significance. Although concerted efforts have been made to record or save as much of the endangered cultural heritage as possible, many sites are probably lost forever. The combined GAP projects on the Turkish Euphrates have led to major international efforts to document the archaeological and cultural heritage of the endangered parts of the valley. Especially the flooding of Zeugma with its unique Roman mosaics by the reservoir of the Birecik Dam has generated much controversy in both the Turkish and international press. The construction of the Tabqa Dam in Syria led to a large international campaign coordinated by UNESCO to document the heritage that would disappear under the waters of Lake Assad. Archaeologists from numerous countries excavated sites ranging in date from the Natufian to the Abbasid period, and two minarets were dismantled and rebuilt outside the flood zone. Important sites that have been flooded or affected by the rising waters of Lake Assad include Mureybet, Emar and Abu Hureyra. A similar international effort was made when the Tishrin Dam was constructed, which led, among others, to the flooding of the important Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site of Jerf el Ahmar. An archaeological survey and rescue excavations were also carried out in the area flooded by Lake Qadisiya in Iraq. Parts of the flooded area have recently become accessible again due to the drying up of the lake, resulting not only in new possibilities for archaeologists to do more research, but also providing opportunities for looting, which has been rampant elsewhere in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion.",
"title": "River"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In Islam, a hadith is mentioned prophecying about unearthing of a gold mountain beneath the Euphrates river before the apocalypse, with many people dying fighting over it; it is said to be one of the future minor signs of the coming of Judgement Day:",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "\"Sahih Muslim 2894 c Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying:",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The Last Hour would not come unless the Euphrates would uncover a treasure of gold, so he who finds it should not take anything out of that.\"",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In the Christian Bible, the Euphrates River is mentioned in Revelation 16:12, in the final book of the New Testament. Author, John of Patmos writes about the Euphrates river drying up as part of a series of events that foretell the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "The river Phrath mentioned in Genesis 2:14 is also identified as the Euphrates.",
"title": "Religion"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "The early occupation of the Euphrates basin was limited to its upper reaches; that is, the area that is popularly known as the Fertile Crescent. Acheulean stone artifacts have been found in the Sajur basin and in the El Kowm oasis in the central Syrian steppe; the latter together with remains of Homo erectus that were dated to 450,000 years old. In the Taurus Mountains and the upper part of the Syrian Euphrates valley, early permanent villages such as Abu Hureyra – at first occupied by hunter-gatherers but later by some of the earliest farmers, Jerf el Ahmar, Mureybet and Nevalı Çori became established from the eleventh millennium BCE onward. In the absence of irrigation, these early farming communities were limited to areas where rainfed agriculture was possible, that is, the upper parts of the Syrian Euphrates as well as Turkey. Late Neolithic villages, characterized by the introduction of pottery in the early 7th millennium BCE, are known throughout this area. Occupation of lower Mesopotamia started in the 6th millennium and is generally associated with the introduction of irrigation, as rainfall in this area is insufficient for dry agriculture. Evidence for irrigation has been found at several sites dating to this period, including Tell es-Sawwan. During the 5th millennium BCE, or late Ubaid period, northeastern Syria was dotted by small villages, although some of them grew to a size of over 10 hectares (25 acres). In Iraq, sites like Eridu and Ur were already occupied during the Ubaid period. Clay boat models found at Tell Mashnaqa along the Khabur indicate that riverine transport was already practiced during this period. The Uruk period, roughly coinciding with the 4th millennium BCE, saw the emergence of truly urban settlements across Mesopotamia. Cities like Tell Brak and Uruk grew to over 100 hectares (250 acres) in size and displayed monumental architecture. The spread of southern Mesopotamian pottery, architecture and sealings far into Turkey and Iran has generally been interpreted as the material reflection of a widespread trade system aimed at providing the Mesopotamian cities with raw materials. Habuba Kabira on the Syrian Euphrates is a prominent example of a settlement that is interpreted as an Uruk colony.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "During the Jemdet Nasr (3600–3100 BCE) and Early Dynastic periods (3100–2350 BCE), southern Mesopotamia experienced a growth in the number and size of settlements, suggesting strong population growth. These settlements, including Sumero-Akkadian sites like Sippar, Uruk, Adab and Kish, were organized in competing city-states. Many of these cities were located along canals of the Euphrates and the Tigris that have since dried up, but that can still be identified from remote sensing imagery. A similar development took place in Upper Mesopotamia, Subartu and Assyria, although only from the mid 3rd millennium and on a smaller scale than in Lower Mesopotamia. Sites like Ebla, Mari and Tell Leilan grew to prominence for the first time during this period.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "Large parts of the Euphrates basin were for the first time united under a single ruler during the Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC) and Ur III empires, which controlled – either directly or indirectly through vassals – large parts of modern-day Iraq and northeastern Syria. Following their collapse, the Old Assyrian Empire (1975–1750 BCE) and Mari asserted their power over northeast Syria and northern Mesopotamia, while southern Mesopotamia was controlled by city-states like Isin, Kish and Larsa before their territories were absorbed by the newly emerged state of Babylonia under Hammurabi in the early to mid 18th century BCE.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "In the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, the Euphrates basin was divided between Kassite Babylon in the south and Mitanni, Assyria and the Hittite Empire in the north, with the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) eventually eclipsing the Hittites, Mitanni and Kassite Babylonians. Following the end of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the late 11th century BCE, struggles broke out between Babylonia and Assyria over the control of the Iraqi Euphrates basin. The Neo-Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC) eventually emerged victorious out of this conflict and also succeeded in gaining control of the northern Euphrates basin in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "In the centuries to come, control of the wider Euphrates basin shifted from the Neo-Assyrian Empire (which collapsed between 612 and 599 BC) to the short lived Median Empire (612–546 BC) and equally brief Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC) in the last years of the 7th century BC, and eventually to the Achaemenid Empire (539–333 BC). The Achaemenid Empire was in turn overrun by Alexander the Great, who defeated the last king Darius III and died in Babylon in 323 BCE.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "Subsequent to this, the region came under the control of the Seleucid Empire (312–150 BC), Parthian Empire (150–226 AD) (during which several Neo-Assyrian states such as Adiabene came to rule certain regions of the Euphrates), and was fought over by the Roman Empire, its succeeding Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire (226–638 AD), until the Islamic conquest of the mid 7th century AD. The Battle of Karbala took place near the banks of this river in 680 AD.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "In the north, the river served as a border between Greater Armenia (331 BC–428 AD) and Lesser Armenia (the latter became a Roman province in the 1st century BC).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "After World War I, the borders in Southwest Asia were redrawn in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), when the Ottoman Empire was partitioned. Clause 109 of the treaty stipulated that the three riparian states of the Euphrates (at that time Turkey, France for its Syrian mandate and the United Kingdom for its mandate of Iraq) had to reach a mutual agreement on the use of its water and on the construction of any hydraulic installation. An agreement between Turkey and Iraq signed in 1946 required Turkey to report to Iraq on any hydraulic changes it made on the Tigris–Euphrates river system, and allowed Iraq to construct dams on Turkish territory to manage the flow of the Euphrates.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "The river featured on the coat of arms of Iraq from 1932 to 1959.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "Turkey and Syria completed their first dams on the Euphrates – the Keban Dam and the Tabqa Dam, respectively – within one year of each other and filling of the reservoirs commenced in 1975. At the same time, the area was hit by severe drought and river flow toward Iraq was reduced from 15.3 cubic kilometres (3.7 cu mi) in 1973 to 9.4 cubic kilometres (2.3 cu mi) in 1975. This led to an international crisis during which Iraq threatened to bomb the Tabqa Dam. An agreement was eventually reached between Syria and Iraq after intervention by Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union. A similar crisis, although not escalating to the point of military threats, occurred in 1981 when the Keban Dam reservoir had to be refilled after it had been almost emptied to temporarily increase Turkey's hydroelectricity production. In 1984, Turkey unilaterally declared that it would ensure a flow of at least 500 cubic metres (18,000 cu ft) per second, or 16 cubic kilometres (3.8 cu mi) per year, into Syria, and in 1987 a bilateral treaty to that effect was signed between the two countries. Another bilateral agreement from 1989 between Syria and Iraq settles the amount of water flowing into Iraq at 60 percent of the amount that Syria receives from Turkey. In 2008, Turkey, Syria and Iraq instigated the Joint Trilateral Committee (JTC) on the management of the water in the Tigris–Euphrates basin and on 3 September 2009 a further agreement was signed to this effect. On 15 April 2014, Turkey began to reduce the flow of the Euphrates into Syria and Iraq. The flow was cut off completely on 16 May 2014 resulting in the Euphrates terminating at the Turkish–Syrian border. This was in violation of an agreement reached in 1987 in which Turkey committed to releasing a minimum of 500 cubic metres (18,000 cu ft) of water per second at the Turkish–Syrian border.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "During the Syrian civil war and the Iraqi Civil War, much of the Euphrates was controlled by the Islamic State from 2014 until 2017, when the terrorist group began losing land and was eventually defeated territorially in Syria at the Battle of Baghouz and in Iraq in the Western Iraq offensive respectively.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Throughout history, the Euphrates has been of vital importance to those living along its course. With the construction of large hydropower stations, irrigation schemes, and pipelines capable of transporting water over large distances, many more people now depend on the river for basic amenities such as electricity and drinking water than in the past. Syria's Lake Assad is the most important source of drinking water for the city of Aleppo, 75 kilometres (47 mi) to the west of the river valley. The lake also supports a modest state-operated fishing industry. Through a newly restored power line, the Haditha Dam in Iraq provides electricity to Baghdad.",
"title": "Economy"
}
]
| The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia. Originating in Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf. The Euphrates is the fifteenth-longest river in Asia and the longest in Western Asia, at about 2,780 km (1,730 mi), and has a drainage area of 440,000 km2 (170,000 sq mi) that covers six countries. | 2001-12-07T23:15:44Z | 2023-12-21T06:15:03Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphrates |
10,223 | Estonian language | Estonian (eesti keel [ˈeːsʲti ˈkeːl] ) is a Finnic language and the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 elsewhere.
The Estonian language belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian, and Maltese, Estonian is one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not Indo-European languages.
In terms of linguistic morphology, Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language. The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional, especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system.
Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is subject–verb–object.
The speakers of the two major historical dialect groups of the language, North and South Estonian, are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernaculars. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th century on the basis of the dialects of northern Estonia.
During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages, mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, from the Standard German language.
The oldest written records of the Finnic languages of Estonia date from the 13th century. Originates Livoniae in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences.
The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in the Estonian language was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached the reader and was destroyed immediately after publication.
The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S. Wanradt and J. Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into southern Estonian in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle.
Writings in Estonian became more significant in the 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840).
The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student at the then German-language University of Dorpat to acknowledge his Estonian origin, is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered the founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language:
In English:
In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published.
In modern times A. H. Tammsaare, Jaan Kross, and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia's best-known and most translated writers.
Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves, the Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century.
When the independent Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II, in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke the language.
When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of the Estonian language effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of the Estonian language by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence, Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Starting from 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, the Estonian language is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU.
The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at the end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first and second generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted the Estonian language (over 50% as of the 2022 census).
The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in the south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian.
The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County, the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, Muhu and Kihnu, and the idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus.
South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession.
Estonian employs the Latin script as the basis for its alphabet, which adds the letters ä, ö, ü, and õ, plus the later additions š and ž. The letters c, q, w, x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f, z, š, and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä is pronounced [æ], as in English mat. The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/, unrounded /o/, or a close-mid back unrounded vowel. It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/ and the Vietnamese ơ, and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы. Additionally C, Q, W, X, and Y are used in writing foreign proper names. They do not occur in Estonian words, and are not officially part of the alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:
Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme, there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž, they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative, as in Pasha (pas-ha); this also applies to some foreign names.
Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created by Eduard Ahrens in the second half of the 19th century based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17th century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into the 1930s.
There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs, 28 of which are native to Estonian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back, close back, or close-mid central.
Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g: pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [gen sg] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ptv sg]'.
Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž, the sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k, with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology.
Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated.
ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/.
While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony, central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts.
Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language. The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists.
In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative, with the case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to the Proto-Finnic language, elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan.
The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal").
Although the Estonian and Germanic languages are of very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because the Estonian language has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon (Middle Low German) during the period of German rule, and High German (including standard German). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to the wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'.
Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from the 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo (Urschöpfung); i.e. they created new words out of nothing.
The most famous reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921), which lists approximately 4000 words, there are many words that were (allegedly) created ex nihilo, many of which are in common use today. Examples are
Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian, German, French, Finnish, English and Swedish. Aavik had a broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek, Latin and French. Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item.
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English: | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Estonian (eesti keel [ˈeːsʲti ˈkeːl] ) is a Finnic language and the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 elsewhere.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The Estonian language belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian, and Maltese, Estonian is one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not Indo-European languages.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "In terms of linguistic morphology, Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language. The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional, especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is subject–verb–object.",
"title": "Classification"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The speakers of the two major historical dialect groups of the language, North and South Estonian, are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernaculars. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th century on the basis of the dialects of northern Estonia.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages, mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, from the Standard German language.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "The oldest written records of the Finnic languages of Estonia date from the 13th century. Originates Livoniae in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in the Estonian language was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached the reader and was destroyed immediately after publication.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S. Wanradt and J. Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into southern Estonian in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Writings in Estonian became more significant in the 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student at the then German-language University of Dorpat to acknowledge his Estonian origin, is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered the founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem \"Kuu\" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "In English:",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "In modern times A. H. Tammsaare, Jaan Kross, and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia's best-known and most translated writers.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves, the Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "When the independent Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II, in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke the language.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of the Estonian language effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of the Estonian language by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence, Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Starting from 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, the Estonian language is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at the end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first and second generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted the Estonian language (over 50% as of the 2022 census).",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in the south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County, the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, Muhu and Kihnu, and the idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession.",
"title": "Dialects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "Estonian employs the Latin script as the basis for its alphabet, which adds the letters ä, ö, ü, and õ, plus the later additions š and ž. The letters c, q, w, x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f, z, š, and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä is pronounced [æ], as in English mat. The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/, unrounded /o/, or a close-mid back unrounded vowel. It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/ and the Vietnamese ơ, and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы. Additionally C, Q, W, X, and Y are used in writing foreign proper names. They do not occur in Estonian words, and are not officially part of the alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme, there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž, they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative, as in Pasha (pas-ha); this also applies to some foreign names.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "Modern Estonian orthography is based on the \"Newer orthography\" created by Eduard Ahrens in the second half of the 19th century based on Finnish orthography. The \"Older orthography\" it replaced was created in the 17th century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into the 1930s.",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "",
"title": "Writing system"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs, 28 of which are native to Estonian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back, close back, or close-mid central.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g: pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [gen sg] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ptv sg]'.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž, the sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k, with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony, central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts.",
"title": "Phonology"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language. The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative, with the case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja (\"a yellow house\") is kollasesse majja (\"into a yellow house\"), but the terminative is kollase majani (\"as far as a yellow house\"). With respect to the Proto-Finnic language, elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan.",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the \"impersonal\").",
"title": "Grammar"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "Although the Estonian and Germanic languages are of very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because the Estonian language has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon (Middle Low German) during the period of German rule, and High German (including standard German). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to the wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from the 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo (Urschöpfung); i.e. they created new words out of nothing.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "The most famous reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921), which lists approximately 4000 words, there are many words that were (allegedly) created ex nihilo, many of which are in common use today. Examples are",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian, German, French, Finnish, English and Swedish. Aavik had a broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek, Latin and French. Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item.",
"title": "Vocabulary"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English:",
"title": "Example text"
}
]
| Estonian is a Finnic language and the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 elsewhere. | 2001-09-29T16:45:41Z | 2023-12-30T12:51:30Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_language |
10,224 | E-Prime | E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.
E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's.
Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing, while others doubt its utility, such as James D. French.
D. David Bourland Jr., who had studied under Alfred Korzybski, devised E-Prime as an addition to Korzybski's general semantics in the late 1940s. Bourland published the concept in a 1965 essay entitled "A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime" (originally published in General Semantics Bulletin). The essay quickly generated controversy within the general semantics field, partly because practitioners of general semantics sometimes saw Bourland as attacking the verb 'to be' as such, and not just certain usages.
Bourland collected and published three volumes of essays in support of his innovation. The first (1991), co-edited by Paul Dennithorne Johnston, bore the title: To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology. For the second, More E-Prime: To Be or Not II, published in 1994, he added a third editor, Jeremy Klein. Bourland and Johnston then edited a third book, E-Prime III: a third anthology, published in 1997.
In English, the verb 'to be' (also known as the copula) has several distinct functions:
Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as pernicious but advocates the exclusion of all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the "existence" form or the "location" form, terms such as exist, sit or lie could substitute for the copula.
Some ergative verbs may substitute the copula, including taste, feel, smell, sound, grow, hinge, remain, rest, stay, reside, and turn, among others.
One could rewrite the functions of "to be" as follows:
Bourland and other advocates also suggest that use of E-Prime leads to a less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of misunderstanding or conflict.
Kellogg and Bourland describe misuse of the verb to be as creating a "deity mode of speech", allowing "even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god-like pronouncements on the nature of things".
While teaching at the University of Florida, Alfred Korzybski counseled his students to
eliminate the infinitive and verb forms of "to be" from their vocabulary, whereas a second group continued to use "I am," "You are," "They are" statements as usual. For example, instead of saying, "I am depressed," a student was asked to eliminate that emotionally primed verb and to say something else, such as, "I feel depressed when ..." or "I tend to make myself depressed about ..."
Korzybski observed improvement "of one full letter grade" by "students who did not generalize by using that infinitive".
Albert Ellis advocated the use of E-Prime when discussing psychological distress to encourage framing these experiences as temporary (see also Solution focused brief therapy) and to encourage a sense of agency by specifying the subject of statements. According to Ellis, rational emotive behavior therapy "has favored E-Prime more than any other form of psychotherapy and I think it is still the only form of therapy that has some of its main books written in E-Prime". However, Ellis did not always use E-Prime because he believed it interferes with readability.
Many authors have questioned E-Prime's effectiveness at improving readability and reducing prejudice (Lakoff, 1992; Murphy, 1992; Parkinson, 1992; Kenyon, 1992; French, 1992, 1993; Lohrey, 1993). These authors observed that communication under the copula ban can remain obscure and imply prejudice, while losing important speech patterns, such as identities and identification. Further, prejudices and judgments may become more difficult to notice or refute.
Various arguments against E-Prime (in the context of general semantics) have been conjectured:
According to an article (written in E-Prime and advocating a role for E-Prime in ESL and EFL programs) published by the Office of English Language Programs of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the State Department of the United States, "Requiring students to avoid the verb to be on every assignment would deter students from developing other fundamental skills of fluent writing." | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing, while others doubt its utility, such as James D. French.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "D. David Bourland Jr., who had studied under Alfred Korzybski, devised E-Prime as an addition to Korzybski's general semantics in the late 1940s. Bourland published the concept in a 1965 essay entitled \"A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime\" (originally published in General Semantics Bulletin). The essay quickly generated controversy within the general semantics field, partly because practitioners of general semantics sometimes saw Bourland as attacking the verb 'to be' as such, and not just certain usages.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Bourland collected and published three volumes of essays in support of his innovation. The first (1991), co-edited by Paul Dennithorne Johnston, bore the title: To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology. For the second, More E-Prime: To Be or Not II, published in 1994, he added a third editor, Jeremy Klein. Bourland and Johnston then edited a third book, E-Prime III: a third anthology, published in 1997.",
"title": "History"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In English, the verb 'to be' (also known as the copula) has several distinct functions:",
"title": "Functions of \"to be\""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "Bourland sees specifically the \"identity\" and \"predication\" functions as pernicious but advocates the exclusion of all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the \"existence\" form or the \"location\" form, terms such as exist, sit or lie could substitute for the copula.",
"title": "Functions of \"to be\""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Some ergative verbs may substitute the copula, including taste, feel, smell, sound, grow, hinge, remain, rest, stay, reside, and turn, among others.",
"title": "Functions of \"to be\""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "One could rewrite the functions of \"to be\" as follows:",
"title": "Examples"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Bourland and other advocates also suggest that use of E-Prime leads to a less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of misunderstanding or conflict.",
"title": "Rationale"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "Kellogg and Bourland describe misuse of the verb to be as creating a \"deity mode of speech\", allowing \"even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god-like pronouncements on the nature of things\".",
"title": "Rationale"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "While teaching at the University of Florida, Alfred Korzybski counseled his students to",
"title": "Psychological effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "eliminate the infinitive and verb forms of \"to be\" from their vocabulary, whereas a second group continued to use \"I am,\" \"You are,\" \"They are\" statements as usual. For example, instead of saying, \"I am depressed,\" a student was asked to eliminate that emotionally primed verb and to say something else, such as, \"I feel depressed when ...\" or \"I tend to make myself depressed about ...\"",
"title": "Psychological effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "Korzybski observed improvement \"of one full letter grade\" by \"students who did not generalize by using that infinitive\".",
"title": "Psychological effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "Albert Ellis advocated the use of E-Prime when discussing psychological distress to encourage framing these experiences as temporary (see also Solution focused brief therapy) and to encourage a sense of agency by specifying the subject of statements. According to Ellis, rational emotive behavior therapy \"has favored E-Prime more than any other form of psychotherapy and I think it is still the only form of therapy that has some of its main books written in E-Prime\". However, Ellis did not always use E-Prime because he believed it interferes with readability.",
"title": "Psychological effects"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Many authors have questioned E-Prime's effectiveness at improving readability and reducing prejudice (Lakoff, 1992; Murphy, 1992; Parkinson, 1992; Kenyon, 1992; French, 1992, 1993; Lohrey, 1993). These authors observed that communication under the copula ban can remain obscure and imply prejudice, while losing important speech patterns, such as identities and identification. Further, prejudices and judgments may become more difficult to notice or refute.",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "Various arguments against E-Prime (in the context of general semantics) have been conjectured:",
"title": "Criticisms"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "According to an article (written in E-Prime and advocating a role for E-Prime in ESL and EFL programs) published by the Office of English Language Programs of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the State Department of the United States, \"Requiring students to avoid the verb to be on every assignment would deter students from developing other fundamental skills of fluent writing.\"",
"title": "Criticisms"
}
]
| E-Prime denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms, past tense forms along with their negative contractions, and nonstandard contractions such as ain't. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's. Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing, while others doubt its utility, such as James D. French. | 2001-12-08T19:41:25Z | 2023-10-29T17:36:26Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime |
10,225 | Elliptic curve | In mathematics, an elliptic curve is a smooth, projective, algebraic curve of genus one, on which there is a specified point O. An elliptic curve is defined over a field K and describes points in K, the Cartesian product of K with itself. If the field's characteristic is different from 2 and 3, then the curve can be described as a plane algebraic curve which consists of solutions (x, y) for:
for some coefficients a and b in K. The curve is required to be non-singular, which means that the curve has no cusps or self-intersections. (This is equivalent to the condition 4a + 27b ≠ 0, that is, being square-free in x.) It is always understood that the curve is really sitting in the projective plane, with the point O being the unique point at infinity. Many sources define an elliptic curve to be simply a curve given by an equation of this form. (When the coefficient field has characteristic 2 or 3, the above equation is not quite general enough to include all non-singular cubic curves; see § Elliptic curves over a general field below.)
An elliptic curve is an abelian variety – that is, it has a group law defined algebraically, with respect to which it is an abelian group – and O serves as the identity element.
If y = P(x), where P is any polynomial of degree three in x with no repeated roots, the solution set is a nonsingular plane curve of genus one, an elliptic curve. If P has degree four and is square-free this equation again describes a plane curve of genus one; however, it has no natural choice of identity element. More generally, any algebraic curve of genus one, for example the intersection of two quadric surfaces embedded in three-dimensional projective space, is called an elliptic curve, provided that it is equipped with a marked point to act as the identity.
Using the theory of elliptic functions, it can be shown that elliptic curves defined over the complex numbers correspond to embeddings of the torus into the complex projective plane. The torus is also an abelian group, and this correspondence is also a group isomorphism.
Elliptic curves are especially important in number theory, and constitute a major area of current research; for example, they were used in Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. They also find applications in elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and integer factorization.
An elliptic curve is not an ellipse in the sense of a projective conic, which has genus zero: see elliptic integral for the origin of the term. However, there is a natural representation of real elliptic curves with shape invariant j ≥ 1 as ellipses in the hyperbolic plane H 2 {\displaystyle \mathbb {H} ^{2}} . Specifically, the intersections of the Minkowski hyperboloid with quadric surfaces characterized by a certain constant-angle property produce the Steiner ellipses in H 2 {\displaystyle \mathbb {H} ^{2}} (generated by orientation-preserving collineations). Further, the orthogonal trajectories of these ellipses comprise the elliptic curves with j ≤ 1, and any ellipse in H 2 {\displaystyle \mathbb {H} ^{2}} described as a locus relative to two foci is uniquely the elliptic curve sum of two Steiner ellipses, obtained by adding the pairs of intersections on each orthogonal trajectory. Here, the vertex of the hyperboloid serves as the identity on each trajectory curve.
Topologically, a complex elliptic curve is a torus, while a complex ellipse is a sphere.
Although the formal definition of an elliptic curve requires some background in algebraic geometry, it is possible to describe some features of elliptic curves over the real numbers using only introductory algebra and geometry.
In this context, an elliptic curve is a plane curve defined by an equation of the form
after a linear change of variables (a and b are real numbers). This type of equation is called a Weierstrass equation, and said to be in Weierstrass form, or Weierstrass normal form.
The definition of elliptic curve also requires that the curve be non-singular. Geometrically, this means that the graph has no cusps, self-intersections, or isolated points. Algebraically, this holds if and only if the discriminant, Δ {\displaystyle \Delta } , is not equal to zero.
(Although the factor −16 is irrelevant to whether or not the curve is non-singular, this definition of the discriminant is useful in a more advanced study of elliptic curves.)
The real graph of a non-singular curve has two components if its discriminant is positive, and one component if it is negative. For example, in the graphs shown in figure to the right, the discriminant in the first case is 64, and in the second case is −368.
When working in the projective plane, the equation in homogeneous coordinates becomes :
This equation is not defined on the line at infinity, but we can multiply by Z 3 {\displaystyle Z^{3}} to get one that is :
This resulting equation is defined on the whole projective plane, and the curve it defines projects onto the elliptic curve of interest. To find its intersection with the line at infinity, we can just posit Z = 0 {\displaystyle Z=0} . This implies X 3 = 0 {\displaystyle X^{3}=0} , which in a field means X = 0 {\displaystyle X=0} . Y {\displaystyle Y} on the other hand can take any value thus all triplets ( 0 , Y , 0 ) {\displaystyle (0,Y,0)} satisfy the equation. In projective geometry this set is simply the point O = [ 0 : 1 : 0 ] {\displaystyle O=[0:1:0]} , which is thus the unique intersection of the curve with the line at infinity.
Since the curve is smooth, hence continuous, it can be shown that this point at infinity is the identity element of a group structure whose operation is geometrically described thereafter.
Since the curve is symmetrical about the x-axis, given any point P, we can take −P to be the point opposite it. We then have − O = O {\displaystyle -O=O} , as O {\displaystyle O} lies on the XZ-plane, so that − O {\displaystyle -O} is also the symmetrical of O {\displaystyle O} about the origin, and thus represents the same projective point.
If P and Q are two points on the curve, then we can uniquely describe a third point P + Q in the following way. First, draw the line that intersects P and Q. This will generally intersect the cubic at a third point, R. We then take P + Q to be −R, the point opposite R.
This definition for addition works except in a few special cases related to the point at infinity and intersection multiplicity. The first is when one of the points is O. Here, we define P + O = P = O + P, making O the identity of the group. If P = Q we only have one point, thus we cannot define the line between them. In this case, we use the tangent line to the curve at this point as our line. In most cases, the tangent will intersect a second point R and we can take its opposite. If P and Q are opposites of each other, we define P + Q = O. Lastly, If P is an inflection point (a point where the concavity of the curve changes), we take R to be P itself and P + P is simply the point opposite itself, i.e. itself.
Let K be a field over which the curve is defined (that is, the coefficients of the defining equation or equations of the curve are in K) and denote the curve by E. Then the K-rational points of E are the points on E whose coordinates all lie in K, including the point at infinity. The set of K-rational points is denoted by E(K). E(K) is a group, because properties of polynomial equations show that if P is in E(K), then −P is also in E(K), and if two of P, Q, R are in E(K), then so is the third. Additionally, if K is a subfield of L, then E(K) is a subgroup of E(L).
The above groups can be described algebraically as well as geometrically. Given the curve y = x + ax + b over the field K (whose characteristic we assume to be neither 2 nor 3), and points P = (xP, yP) and Q = (xQ, yQ) on the curve, assume first that xP ≠ xQ (case 1). Let y = sx + d be the equation of the line that intersects P and Q, which has the following slope:
The line equation and the curve equation intersect at the points xP, xQ, and xR, so the equations have identical y values at these values.
which is equivalent to
Since xP, xQ, and xR are solutions, this equation has its roots at exactly the same x values as
and because both equations are cubics they must be the same polynomial up to a scalar. Then equating the coefficients of x in both equations
and solving for the unknown xR.
yR follows from the line equation
and this is an element of K, because s is.
If xP = xQ, then there are two options: if yP = −yQ (case 3), including the case where yP = yQ = 0 (case 4), then the sum is defined as 0; thus, the inverse of each point on the curve is found by reflecting it across the x-axis.
If yP = yQ ≠ 0, then Q = P and R = (xR, yR) = −(P + P) = −2P = −2Q (case 2 using P as R). The slope is given by the tangent to the curve at (xP, yP).
For a cubic curve not in Weierstrass normal form, we can still define a group structure by designating one of its nine inflection points as the identity O. In the projective plane, each line will intersect a cubic at three points when accounting for multiplicity. For a point P, −P is defined as the unique third point on the line passing through O and P. Then, for any P and Q, P + Q is defined as −R where R is the unique third point on the line containing P and Q.
For an example of the group law over a non-Weierstrass curve, see Hessian curves.
A curve E defined over the field of rational numbers is also defined over the field of real numbers. Therefore, the law of addition (of points with real coordinates) by the tangent and secant method can be applied to E. The explicit formulae show that the sum of two points P and Q with rational coordinates has again rational coordinates, since the line joining P and Q has rational coefficients. This way, one shows that the set of rational points of E forms a subgroup of the group of real points of E.
This section is concerned with points P = (x, y) of E such that x is an integer.
For example, the equation y = x + 17 has eight integral solutions with y > 0:
As another example, Ljunggren's equation, a curve whose Weierstrass form is y = x − 2x, has only four solutions with y ≥ 0 :
Rational points can be constructed by the method of tangents and secants detailed above, starting with a finite number of rational points. More precisely the Mordell–Weil theorem states that the group E(Q) is a finitely generated (abelian) group. By the fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups it is therefore a finite direct sum of copies of Z and finite cyclic groups.
The proof of the theorem involves two parts. The first part shows that for any integer m > 1, the quotient group E(Q)/mE(Q) is finite (this is the weak Mordell–Weil theorem). Second, introducing a height function h on the rational points E(Q) defined by h(P0) = 0 and h(P) = log max(|p|, |q|) if P (unequal to the point at infinity P0) has as abscissa the rational number x = p/q (with coprime p and q). This height function h has the property that h(mP) grows roughly like the square of m. Moreover, only finitely many rational points with height smaller than any constant exist on E.
The proof of the theorem is thus a variant of the method of infinite descent and relies on the repeated application of Euclidean divisions on E: let P ∈ E(Q) be a rational point on the curve, writing P as the sum 2P1 + Q1 where Q1 is a fixed representant of P in E(Q)/2E(Q), the height of P1 is about 1/4 of the one of P (more generally, replacing 2 by any m > 1, and 1/4 by 1/m). Redoing the same with P1, that is to say P1 = 2P2 + Q2, then P2 = 2P3 + Q3, etc. finally expresses P as an integral linear combination of points Qi and of points whose height is bounded by a fixed constant chosen in advance: by the weak Mordell–Weil theorem and the second property of the height function P is thus expressed as an integral linear combination of a finite number of fixed points.
The theorem however doesn't provide a method to determine any representatives of E(Q)/mE(Q).
The rank of E(Q), that is the number of copies of Z in E(Q) or, equivalently, the number of independent points of infinite order, is called the rank of E. The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture is concerned with determining the rank. One conjectures that it can be arbitrarily large, even if only examples with relatively small rank are known. The elliptic curve with the currently largest exactly-known rank is
It has rank 20, found by Noam Elkies and Zev Klagsbrun in 2020. Curves of rank higher than 20 have been known since 1994, with lower bounds on their ranks ranging from 21 to 28, but their exact ranks are not known and in particular it is not proven which of them have higher rank than the others or which is the true "current champion".
As for the groups constituting the torsion subgroup of E(Q), the following is known: the torsion subgroup of E(Q) is one of the 15 following groups (a theorem due to Barry Mazur): Z/NZ for N = 1, 2, ..., 10, or 12, or Z/2Z × Z/2NZ with N = 1, 2, 3, 4. Examples for every case are known. Moreover, elliptic curves whose Mordell–Weil groups over Q have the same torsion groups belong to a parametrized family.
The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (BSD) is one of the Millennium problems of the Clay Mathematics Institute. The conjecture relies on analytic and arithmetic objects defined by the elliptic curve in question.
At the analytic side, an important ingredient is a function of a complex variable, L, the Hasse–Weil zeta function of E over Q. This function is a variant of the Riemann zeta function and Dirichlet L-functions. It is defined as an Euler product, with one factor for every prime number p.
For a curve E over Q given by a minimal equation
with integral coefficients a i {\displaystyle a_{i}} , reducing the coefficients modulo p defines an elliptic curve over the finite field Fp (except for a finite number of primes p, where the reduced curve has a singularity and thus fails to be elliptic, in which case E is said to be of bad reduction at p).
The zeta function of an elliptic curve over a finite field Fp is, in some sense, a generating function assembling the information of the number of points of E with values in the finite field extensions Fp of Fp. It is given by
The interior sum of the exponential resembles the development of the logarithm and, in fact, the so-defined zeta function is a rational function in T:
where the 'trace of Frobenius' term a p {\displaystyle a_{p}} is defined to be the difference between the 'expected' number p + 1 {\displaystyle p+1} and the number of points on the elliptic curve E {\displaystyle E} over F p {\displaystyle \mathbb {F} _{p}} , viz.
or equivalently,
We may define the same quantities and functions over an arbitrary finite field of characteristic p {\displaystyle p} , with q = p n {\displaystyle q=p^{n}} replacing p {\displaystyle p} everywhere.
The L-function of E over Q is then defined by collecting this information together, for all primes p. It is defined by
where N is the conductor of E, i.e. the product of primes with bad reduction, in which case ap is defined differently from the method above: see Silverman (1986) below.
This product converges for Re(s) > 3/2 only. Hasse's conjecture affirms that the L-function admits an analytic continuation to the whole complex plane and satisfies a functional equation relating, for any s, L(E, s) to L(E, 2 − s). In 1999 this was shown to be a consequence of the proof of the Shimura–Taniyama–Weil conjecture, which asserts that every elliptic curve over Q is a modular curve, which implies that its L-function is the L-function of a modular form whose analytic continuation is known. One can therefore speak about the values of L(E, s) at any complex number s.
At s=1 (the conductor product can be discarded as it is finite), the L-function becomes
The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture relates the arithmetic of the curve to the behaviour of this L-function at s = 1. It affirms that the vanishing order of the L-function at s = 1 equals the rank of E and predicts the leading term of the Laurent series of L(E, s) at that point in terms of several quantities attached to the elliptic curve.
Much like the Riemann hypothesis, the truth of the BSD conjecture would have multiple consequences, including the following two:
Let K = Fq be the finite field with q elements and E an elliptic curve defined over K. While the precise number of rational points of an elliptic curve E over K is in general difficult to compute, Hasse's theorem on elliptic curves gives the following inequality:
In other words, the number of points on the curve grows proportionally to the number of elements in the field. This fact can be understood and proven with the help of some general theory; see local zeta function and étale cohomology for example.
The set of points E(Fq) is a finite abelian group. It is always cyclic or the product of two cyclic groups, depending whether q is even or odd. For example, the curve defined by
over F71 has 72 points (71 affine points including (0,0) and one point at infinity) over this field, whose group structure is given by Z/2Z × Z/36Z. The number of points on a specific curve can be computed with Schoof's algorithm.
Studying the curve over the field extensions of Fq is facilitated by the introduction of the local zeta function of E over Fq, defined by a generating series (also see above)
where the field Kn is the (unique up to isomorphism) extension of K = Fq of degree n (that is, Fq).
The zeta function is a rational function in T. To see this, the integer a n {\displaystyle a_{n}} such that
has an associated complex number α {\displaystyle \alpha } such that
where α ¯ {\displaystyle {\bar {\alpha }}} is the complex conjugate. We choose α {\displaystyle \alpha } so that its absolute value is q {\displaystyle {\sqrt {q}}} , that is α = q 1 2 e i θ , α ¯ = q 1 2 e − i θ {\displaystyle \alpha =q^{\frac {1}{2}}e^{i\theta },{\bar {\alpha }}=q^{\frac {1}{2}}e^{-i\theta }} , and that cos n θ = a n 2 q {\displaystyle \cos n\theta ={\frac {a_{n}}{2{\sqrt {q}}}}} , so that α n α ¯ n = q n {\displaystyle \alpha ^{n}{\bar {\alpha }}^{n}=q^{n}} and α n + α ¯ n = a n {\displaystyle \alpha ^{n}+{\bar {\alpha }}^{n}=a_{n}} , or in other words, ( 1 − α n ) ( 1 − α ¯ n ) = 1 − a n + q n {\displaystyle (1-\alpha ^{n})(1-{\bar {\alpha }}^{n})=1-a_{n}+q^{n}} .
α {\displaystyle \alpha } can then be used in the local zeta function as its values when raised to the various powers of n can be said to reasonably approximate the behaviour of a n {\displaystyle a_{n}} .
Then ( 1 − α T ) ( 1 − α ¯ T ) = 1 − a T + q T 2 {\displaystyle (1-\alpha T)(1-{\bar {\alpha }}T)=1-aT+qT^{2}} , so finally
For example, the zeta function of E : y + y = x over the field F2 is given by
which follows from:
The functional equation is
As we are only interested in the behaviour of a n {\displaystyle a_{n}} , we can use a reduced zeta function
and so
which leads directly to the local L-functions
The Sato–Tate conjecture is a statement about how the error term 2 q {\displaystyle 2{\sqrt {q}}} in Hasse's theorem varies with the different primes q, if an elliptic curve E over Q is reduced modulo q. It was proven (for almost all such curves) in 2006 due to the results of Taylor, Harris and Shepherd-Barron, and says that the error terms are equidistributed.
Elliptic curves over finite fields are notably applied in cryptography and for the factorization of large integers. These algorithms often make use of the group structure on the points of E. Algorithms that are applicable to general groups, for example the group of invertible elements in finite fields, F*q, can thus be applied to the group of points on an elliptic curve. For example, the discrete logarithm is such an algorithm. The interest in this is that choosing an elliptic curve allows for more flexibility than choosing q (and thus the group of units in Fq). Also, the group structure of elliptic curves is generally more complicated.
Elliptic curves can be defined over any field K; the formal definition of an elliptic curve is a non-singular projective algebraic curve over K with genus 1 and endowed with a distinguished point defined over K.
If the characteristic of K is neither 2 nor 3, then every elliptic curve over K can be written in the form
after a linear change of variables. Here p and q are elements of K such that the right hand side polynomial x − px − q does not have any double roots. If the characteristic is 2 or 3, then more terms need to be kept: in characteristic 3, the most general equation is of the form
for arbitrary constants b2, b4, b6 such that the polynomial on the right-hand side has distinct roots (the notation is chosen for historical reasons). In characteristic 2, even this much is not possible, and the most general equation is
provided that the variety it defines is non-singular. If characteristic were not an obstruction, each equation would reduce to the previous ones by a suitable linear change of variables.
One typically takes the curve to be the set of all points (x,y) which satisfy the above equation and such that both x and y are elements of the algebraic closure of K. Points of the curve whose coordinates both belong to K are called K-rational points.
Many of the preceding results remain valid when the field of definition of E is a number field K, that is to say, a finite field extension of Q. In particular, the group E(K) of K-rational points of an elliptic curve E defined over K is finitely generated, which generalizes the Mordell–Weil theorem above. A theorem due to Loïc Merel shows that for a given integer d, there are (up to isomorphism) only finitely many groups that can occur as the torsion groups of E(K) for an elliptic curve defined over a number field K of degree d. More precisely, there is a number B(d) such that for any elliptic curve E defined over a number field K of degree d, any torsion point of E(K) is of order less than B(d). The theorem is effective: for d > 1, if a torsion point is of order p, with p prime, then
As for the integral points, Siegel's theorem generalizes to the following: Let E be an elliptic curve defined over a number field K, x and y the Weierstrass coordinates. Then there are only finitely many points of E(K) whose x-coordinate is in the ring of integers OK.
The properties of the Hasse–Weil zeta function and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture can also be extended to this more general situation.
The formulation of elliptic curves as the embedding of a torus in the complex projective plane follows naturally from a curious property of Weierstrass's elliptic functions. These functions and their first derivative are related by the formula
Here, g2 and g3 are constants; ℘(z) is the Weierstrass elliptic function and ℘′(z) its derivative. It should be clear that this relation is in the form of an elliptic curve (over the complex numbers). The Weierstrass functions are doubly periodic; that is, they are periodic with respect to a lattice Λ; in essence, the Weierstrass functions are naturally defined on a torus T = C/Λ. This torus may be embedded in the complex projective plane by means of the map
This map is a group isomorphism of the torus (considered with its natural group structure) with the chord-and-tangent group law on the cubic curve which is the image of this map. It is also an isomorphism of Riemann surfaces from the torus to the cubic curve, so topologically, an elliptic curve is a torus. If the lattice Λ is related by multiplication by a non-zero complex number c to a lattice cΛ, then the corresponding curves are isomorphic. Isomorphism classes of elliptic curves are specified by the j-invariant.
The isomorphism classes can be understood in a simpler way as well. The constants g2 and g3, called the modular invariants, are uniquely determined by the lattice, that is, by the structure of the torus. However, all real polynomials factorize completely into linear factors over the complex numbers, since the field of complex numbers is the algebraic closure of the reals. So, the elliptic curve may be written as
One finds that
and
with j-invariant j(τ) and λ(τ) is sometimes called the modular lambda function. For example, let τ = 2i, then λ(2i) = (−1 + √2) which implies g′2, g′3, and therefore g′2 − 27g′3 of the formula above are all algebraic numbers if τ involves an imaginary quadratic field. In fact, it yields the integer j(2i) = 66 = 287496.
In contrast, the modular discriminant
is generally a transcendental number. In particular, the value of the Dedekind eta function η(2i) is
Note that the uniformization theorem implies that every compact Riemann surface of genus one can be represented as a torus. This also allows an easy understanding of the torsion points on an elliptic curve: if the lattice Λ is spanned by the fundamental periods ω1 and ω2, then the n-torsion points are the (equivalence classes of) points of the form
for integers a and b in the range 0 ≤ (a, b) < n.
If
is an elliptic curve over the complex numbers and
then a pair of fundamental periods of E can be calculated very rapidly by
M(w, z) is the arithmetic–geometric mean of w and z. At each step of the arithmetic–geometric mean iteration, the signs of zn arising from the ambiguity of geometric mean iterations are chosen such that |wn − zn| ≤ |wn + zn| where wn and zn denote the individual arithmetic mean and geometric mean iterations of w and z, respectively. When |wn − zn| = |wn + zn|, there is an additional condition that Im(zn/wn) > 0.
Over the complex numbers, every elliptic curve has nine inflection points. Every line through two of these points also passes through a third inflection point; the nine points and 12 lines formed in this way form a realization of the Hesse configuration.
Elliptic curves over finite fields are used in some cryptographic applications as well as for integer factorization. Typically, the general idea in these applications is that a known algorithm which makes use of certain finite groups is rewritten to use the groups of rational points of elliptic curves. For more see also:
Serge Lang, in the introduction to the book cited below, stated that "It is possible to write endlessly on elliptic curves. (This is not a threat.)" The following short list is thus at best a guide to the vast expository literature available on the theoretical, algorithmic, and cryptographic aspects of elliptic curves.
This article incorporates material from Isogeny on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "In mathematics, an elliptic curve is a smooth, projective, algebraic curve of genus one, on which there is a specified point O. An elliptic curve is defined over a field K and describes points in K, the Cartesian product of K with itself. If the field's characteristic is different from 2 and 3, then the curve can be described as a plane algebraic curve which consists of solutions (x, y) for:",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "for some coefficients a and b in K. The curve is required to be non-singular, which means that the curve has no cusps or self-intersections. (This is equivalent to the condition 4a + 27b ≠ 0, that is, being square-free in x.) It is always understood that the curve is really sitting in the projective plane, with the point O being the unique point at infinity. Many sources define an elliptic curve to be simply a curve given by an equation of this form. (When the coefficient field has characteristic 2 or 3, the above equation is not quite general enough to include all non-singular cubic curves; see § Elliptic curves over a general field below.)",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "An elliptic curve is an abelian variety – that is, it has a group law defined algebraically, with respect to which it is an abelian group – and O serves as the identity element.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "If y = P(x), where P is any polynomial of degree three in x with no repeated roots, the solution set is a nonsingular plane curve of genus one, an elliptic curve. If P has degree four and is square-free this equation again describes a plane curve of genus one; however, it has no natural choice of identity element. More generally, any algebraic curve of genus one, for example the intersection of two quadric surfaces embedded in three-dimensional projective space, is called an elliptic curve, provided that it is equipped with a marked point to act as the identity.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Using the theory of elliptic functions, it can be shown that elliptic curves defined over the complex numbers correspond to embeddings of the torus into the complex projective plane. The torus is also an abelian group, and this correspondence is also a group isomorphism.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "Elliptic curves are especially important in number theory, and constitute a major area of current research; for example, they were used in Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. They also find applications in elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and integer factorization.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "An elliptic curve is not an ellipse in the sense of a projective conic, which has genus zero: see elliptic integral for the origin of the term. However, there is a natural representation of real elliptic curves with shape invariant j ≥ 1 as ellipses in the hyperbolic plane H 2 {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {H} ^{2}} . Specifically, the intersections of the Minkowski hyperboloid with quadric surfaces characterized by a certain constant-angle property produce the Steiner ellipses in H 2 {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {H} ^{2}} (generated by orientation-preserving collineations). Further, the orthogonal trajectories of these ellipses comprise the elliptic curves with j ≤ 1, and any ellipse in H 2 {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {H} ^{2}} described as a locus relative to two foci is uniquely the elliptic curve sum of two Steiner ellipses, obtained by adding the pairs of intersections on each orthogonal trajectory. Here, the vertex of the hyperboloid serves as the identity on each trajectory curve.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Topologically, a complex elliptic curve is a torus, while a complex ellipse is a sphere.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "Although the formal definition of an elliptic curve requires some background in algebraic geometry, it is possible to describe some features of elliptic curves over the real numbers using only introductory algebra and geometry.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the real numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "In this context, an elliptic curve is a plane curve defined by an equation of the form",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the real numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "after a linear change of variables (a and b are real numbers). This type of equation is called a Weierstrass equation, and said to be in Weierstrass form, or Weierstrass normal form.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the real numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "The definition of elliptic curve also requires that the curve be non-singular. Geometrically, this means that the graph has no cusps, self-intersections, or isolated points. Algebraically, this holds if and only if the discriminant, Δ {\\displaystyle \\Delta } , is not equal to zero.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the real numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "(Although the factor −16 is irrelevant to whether or not the curve is non-singular, this definition of the discriminant is useful in a more advanced study of elliptic curves.)",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the real numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "The real graph of a non-singular curve has two components if its discriminant is positive, and one component if it is negative. For example, in the graphs shown in figure to the right, the discriminant in the first case is 64, and in the second case is −368.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the real numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "When working in the projective plane, the equation in homogeneous coordinates becomes :",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "This equation is not defined on the line at infinity, but we can multiply by Z 3 {\\displaystyle Z^{3}} to get one that is :",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "This resulting equation is defined on the whole projective plane, and the curve it defines projects onto the elliptic curve of interest. To find its intersection with the line at infinity, we can just posit Z = 0 {\\displaystyle Z=0} . This implies X 3 = 0 {\\displaystyle X^{3}=0} , which in a field means X = 0 {\\displaystyle X=0} . Y {\\displaystyle Y} on the other hand can take any value thus all triplets ( 0 , Y , 0 ) {\\displaystyle (0,Y,0)} satisfy the equation. In projective geometry this set is simply the point O = [ 0 : 1 : 0 ] {\\displaystyle O=[0:1:0]} , which is thus the unique intersection of the curve with the line at infinity.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Since the curve is smooth, hence continuous, it can be shown that this point at infinity is the identity element of a group structure whose operation is geometrically described thereafter.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "Since the curve is symmetrical about the x-axis, given any point P, we can take −P to be the point opposite it. We then have − O = O {\\displaystyle -O=O} , as O {\\displaystyle O} lies on the XZ-plane, so that − O {\\displaystyle -O} is also the symmetrical of O {\\displaystyle O} about the origin, and thus represents the same projective point.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "If P and Q are two points on the curve, then we can uniquely describe a third point P + Q in the following way. First, draw the line that intersects P and Q. This will generally intersect the cubic at a third point, R. We then take P + Q to be −R, the point opposite R.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "This definition for addition works except in a few special cases related to the point at infinity and intersection multiplicity. The first is when one of the points is O. Here, we define P + O = P = O + P, making O the identity of the group. If P = Q we only have one point, thus we cannot define the line between them. In this case, we use the tangent line to the curve at this point as our line. In most cases, the tangent will intersect a second point R and we can take its opposite. If P and Q are opposites of each other, we define P + Q = O. Lastly, If P is an inflection point (a point where the concavity of the curve changes), we take R to be P itself and P + P is simply the point opposite itself, i.e. itself.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "Let K be a field over which the curve is defined (that is, the coefficients of the defining equation or equations of the curve are in K) and denote the curve by E. Then the K-rational points of E are the points on E whose coordinates all lie in K, including the point at infinity. The set of K-rational points is denoted by E(K). E(K) is a group, because properties of polynomial equations show that if P is in E(K), then −P is also in E(K), and if two of P, Q, R are in E(K), then so is the third. Additionally, if K is a subfield of L, then E(K) is a subgroup of E(L).",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "The above groups can be described algebraically as well as geometrically. Given the curve y = x + ax + b over the field K (whose characteristic we assume to be neither 2 nor 3), and points P = (xP, yP) and Q = (xQ, yQ) on the curve, assume first that xP ≠ xQ (case 1). Let y = sx + d be the equation of the line that intersects P and Q, which has the following slope:",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The line equation and the curve equation intersect at the points xP, xQ, and xR, so the equations have identical y values at these values.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "which is equivalent to",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "Since xP, xQ, and xR are solutions, this equation has its roots at exactly the same x values as",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "and because both equations are cubics they must be the same polynomial up to a scalar. Then equating the coefficients of x in both equations",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 28,
"text": "and solving for the unknown xR.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 29,
"text": "yR follows from the line equation",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 30,
"text": "and this is an element of K, because s is.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 31,
"text": "If xP = xQ, then there are two options: if yP = −yQ (case 3), including the case where yP = yQ = 0 (case 4), then the sum is defined as 0; thus, the inverse of each point on the curve is found by reflecting it across the x-axis.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 32,
"text": "If yP = yQ ≠ 0, then Q = P and R = (xR, yR) = −(P + P) = −2P = −2Q (case 2 using P as R). The slope is given by the tangent to the curve at (xP, yP).",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 33,
"text": "For a cubic curve not in Weierstrass normal form, we can still define a group structure by designating one of its nine inflection points as the identity O. In the projective plane, each line will intersect a cubic at three points when accounting for multiplicity. For a point P, −P is defined as the unique third point on the line passing through O and P. Then, for any P and Q, P + Q is defined as −R where R is the unique third point on the line containing P and Q.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 34,
"text": "For an example of the group law over a non-Weierstrass curve, see Hessian curves.",
"title": "The group law"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 35,
"text": "A curve E defined over the field of rational numbers is also defined over the field of real numbers. Therefore, the law of addition (of points with real coordinates) by the tangent and secant method can be applied to E. The explicit formulae show that the sum of two points P and Q with rational coordinates has again rational coordinates, since the line joining P and Q has rational coefficients. This way, one shows that the set of rational points of E forms a subgroup of the group of real points of E.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 36,
"text": "This section is concerned with points P = (x, y) of E such that x is an integer.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 37,
"text": "For example, the equation y = x + 17 has eight integral solutions with y > 0:",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 38,
"text": "As another example, Ljunggren's equation, a curve whose Weierstrass form is y = x − 2x, has only four solutions with y ≥ 0 :",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 39,
"text": "Rational points can be constructed by the method of tangents and secants detailed above, starting with a finite number of rational points. More precisely the Mordell–Weil theorem states that the group E(Q) is a finitely generated (abelian) group. By the fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups it is therefore a finite direct sum of copies of Z and finite cyclic groups.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 40,
"text": "The proof of the theorem involves two parts. The first part shows that for any integer m > 1, the quotient group E(Q)/mE(Q) is finite (this is the weak Mordell–Weil theorem). Second, introducing a height function h on the rational points E(Q) defined by h(P0) = 0 and h(P) = log max(|p|, |q|) if P (unequal to the point at infinity P0) has as abscissa the rational number x = p/q (with coprime p and q). This height function h has the property that h(mP) grows roughly like the square of m. Moreover, only finitely many rational points with height smaller than any constant exist on E.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 41,
"text": "The proof of the theorem is thus a variant of the method of infinite descent and relies on the repeated application of Euclidean divisions on E: let P ∈ E(Q) be a rational point on the curve, writing P as the sum 2P1 + Q1 where Q1 is a fixed representant of P in E(Q)/2E(Q), the height of P1 is about 1/4 of the one of P (more generally, replacing 2 by any m > 1, and 1/4 by 1/m). Redoing the same with P1, that is to say P1 = 2P2 + Q2, then P2 = 2P3 + Q3, etc. finally expresses P as an integral linear combination of points Qi and of points whose height is bounded by a fixed constant chosen in advance: by the weak Mordell–Weil theorem and the second property of the height function P is thus expressed as an integral linear combination of a finite number of fixed points.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 42,
"text": "The theorem however doesn't provide a method to determine any representatives of E(Q)/mE(Q).",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 43,
"text": "The rank of E(Q), that is the number of copies of Z in E(Q) or, equivalently, the number of independent points of infinite order, is called the rank of E. The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture is concerned with determining the rank. One conjectures that it can be arbitrarily large, even if only examples with relatively small rank are known. The elliptic curve with the currently largest exactly-known rank is",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 44,
"text": "It has rank 20, found by Noam Elkies and Zev Klagsbrun in 2020. Curves of rank higher than 20 have been known since 1994, with lower bounds on their ranks ranging from 21 to 28, but their exact ranks are not known and in particular it is not proven which of them have higher rank than the others or which is the true \"current champion\".",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 45,
"text": "As for the groups constituting the torsion subgroup of E(Q), the following is known: the torsion subgroup of E(Q) is one of the 15 following groups (a theorem due to Barry Mazur): Z/NZ for N = 1, 2, ..., 10, or 12, or Z/2Z × Z/2NZ with N = 1, 2, 3, 4. Examples for every case are known. Moreover, elliptic curves whose Mordell–Weil groups over Q have the same torsion groups belong to a parametrized family.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 46,
"text": "The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (BSD) is one of the Millennium problems of the Clay Mathematics Institute. The conjecture relies on analytic and arithmetic objects defined by the elliptic curve in question.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 47,
"text": "At the analytic side, an important ingredient is a function of a complex variable, L, the Hasse–Weil zeta function of E over Q. This function is a variant of the Riemann zeta function and Dirichlet L-functions. It is defined as an Euler product, with one factor for every prime number p.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 48,
"text": "For a curve E over Q given by a minimal equation",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 49,
"text": "with integral coefficients a i {\\displaystyle a_{i}} , reducing the coefficients modulo p defines an elliptic curve over the finite field Fp (except for a finite number of primes p, where the reduced curve has a singularity and thus fails to be elliptic, in which case E is said to be of bad reduction at p).",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 50,
"text": "The zeta function of an elliptic curve over a finite field Fp is, in some sense, a generating function assembling the information of the number of points of E with values in the finite field extensions Fp of Fp. It is given by",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 51,
"text": "The interior sum of the exponential resembles the development of the logarithm and, in fact, the so-defined zeta function is a rational function in T:",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 52,
"text": "where the 'trace of Frobenius' term a p {\\displaystyle a_{p}} is defined to be the difference between the 'expected' number p + 1 {\\displaystyle p+1} and the number of points on the elliptic curve E {\\displaystyle E} over F p {\\displaystyle \\mathbb {F} _{p}} , viz.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 53,
"text": "or equivalently,",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 54,
"text": "We may define the same quantities and functions over an arbitrary finite field of characteristic p {\\displaystyle p} , with q = p n {\\displaystyle q=p^{n}} replacing p {\\displaystyle p} everywhere.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 55,
"text": "The L-function of E over Q is then defined by collecting this information together, for all primes p. It is defined by",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 56,
"text": "where N is the conductor of E, i.e. the product of primes with bad reduction, in which case ap is defined differently from the method above: see Silverman (1986) below.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 57,
"text": "This product converges for Re(s) > 3/2 only. Hasse's conjecture affirms that the L-function admits an analytic continuation to the whole complex plane and satisfies a functional equation relating, for any s, L(E, s) to L(E, 2 − s). In 1999 this was shown to be a consequence of the proof of the Shimura–Taniyama–Weil conjecture, which asserts that every elliptic curve over Q is a modular curve, which implies that its L-function is the L-function of a modular form whose analytic continuation is known. One can therefore speak about the values of L(E, s) at any complex number s.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 58,
"text": "At s=1 (the conductor product can be discarded as it is finite), the L-function becomes",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 59,
"text": "The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture relates the arithmetic of the curve to the behaviour of this L-function at s = 1. It affirms that the vanishing order of the L-function at s = 1 equals the rank of E and predicts the leading term of the Laurent series of L(E, s) at that point in terms of several quantities attached to the elliptic curve.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 60,
"text": "Much like the Riemann hypothesis, the truth of the BSD conjecture would have multiple consequences, including the following two:",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the rational numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 61,
"text": "Let K = Fq be the finite field with q elements and E an elliptic curve defined over K. While the precise number of rational points of an elliptic curve E over K is in general difficult to compute, Hasse's theorem on elliptic curves gives the following inequality:",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 62,
"text": "In other words, the number of points on the curve grows proportionally to the number of elements in the field. This fact can be understood and proven with the help of some general theory; see local zeta function and étale cohomology for example.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 63,
"text": "The set of points E(Fq) is a finite abelian group. It is always cyclic or the product of two cyclic groups, depending whether q is even or odd. For example, the curve defined by",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 64,
"text": "over F71 has 72 points (71 affine points including (0,0) and one point at infinity) over this field, whose group structure is given by Z/2Z × Z/36Z. The number of points on a specific curve can be computed with Schoof's algorithm.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 65,
"text": "Studying the curve over the field extensions of Fq is facilitated by the introduction of the local zeta function of E over Fq, defined by a generating series (also see above)",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 66,
"text": "where the field Kn is the (unique up to isomorphism) extension of K = Fq of degree n (that is, Fq).",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 67,
"text": "The zeta function is a rational function in T. To see this, the integer a n {\\displaystyle a_{n}} such that",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 68,
"text": "has an associated complex number α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } such that",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 69,
"text": "where α ¯ {\\displaystyle {\\bar {\\alpha }}} is the complex conjugate. We choose α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } so that its absolute value is q {\\displaystyle {\\sqrt {q}}} , that is α = q 1 2 e i θ , α ¯ = q 1 2 e − i θ {\\displaystyle \\alpha =q^{\\frac {1}{2}}e^{i\\theta },{\\bar {\\alpha }}=q^{\\frac {1}{2}}e^{-i\\theta }} , and that cos n θ = a n 2 q {\\displaystyle \\cos n\\theta ={\\frac {a_{n}}{2{\\sqrt {q}}}}} , so that α n α ¯ n = q n {\\displaystyle \\alpha ^{n}{\\bar {\\alpha }}^{n}=q^{n}} and α n + α ¯ n = a n {\\displaystyle \\alpha ^{n}+{\\bar {\\alpha }}^{n}=a_{n}} , or in other words, ( 1 − α n ) ( 1 − α ¯ n ) = 1 − a n + q n {\\displaystyle (1-\\alpha ^{n})(1-{\\bar {\\alpha }}^{n})=1-a_{n}+q^{n}} .",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 70,
"text": "α {\\displaystyle \\alpha } can then be used in the local zeta function as its values when raised to the various powers of n can be said to reasonably approximate the behaviour of a n {\\displaystyle a_{n}} .",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 71,
"text": "Then ( 1 − α T ) ( 1 − α ¯ T ) = 1 − a T + q T 2 {\\displaystyle (1-\\alpha T)(1-{\\bar {\\alpha }}T)=1-aT+qT^{2}} , so finally",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 72,
"text": "For example, the zeta function of E : y + y = x over the field F2 is given by",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 73,
"text": "which follows from:",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 74,
"text": "The functional equation is",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 75,
"text": "As we are only interested in the behaviour of a n {\\displaystyle a_{n}} , we can use a reduced zeta function",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 76,
"text": "and so",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 77,
"text": "which leads directly to the local L-functions",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 78,
"text": "The Sato–Tate conjecture is a statement about how the error term 2 q {\\displaystyle 2{\\sqrt {q}}} in Hasse's theorem varies with the different primes q, if an elliptic curve E over Q is reduced modulo q. It was proven (for almost all such curves) in 2006 due to the results of Taylor, Harris and Shepherd-Barron, and says that the error terms are equidistributed.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 79,
"text": "Elliptic curves over finite fields are notably applied in cryptography and for the factorization of large integers. These algorithms often make use of the group structure on the points of E. Algorithms that are applicable to general groups, for example the group of invertible elements in finite fields, F*q, can thus be applied to the group of points on an elliptic curve. For example, the discrete logarithm is such an algorithm. The interest in this is that choosing an elliptic curve allows for more flexibility than choosing q (and thus the group of units in Fq). Also, the group structure of elliptic curves is generally more complicated.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over finite fields"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 80,
"text": "Elliptic curves can be defined over any field K; the formal definition of an elliptic curve is a non-singular projective algebraic curve over K with genus 1 and endowed with a distinguished point defined over K.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 81,
"text": "If the characteristic of K is neither 2 nor 3, then every elliptic curve over K can be written in the form",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 82,
"text": "after a linear change of variables. Here p and q are elements of K such that the right hand side polynomial x − px − q does not have any double roots. If the characteristic is 2 or 3, then more terms need to be kept: in characteristic 3, the most general equation is of the form",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 83,
"text": "for arbitrary constants b2, b4, b6 such that the polynomial on the right-hand side has distinct roots (the notation is chosen for historical reasons). In characteristic 2, even this much is not possible, and the most general equation is",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 84,
"text": "provided that the variety it defines is non-singular. If characteristic were not an obstruction, each equation would reduce to the previous ones by a suitable linear change of variables.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 85,
"text": "One typically takes the curve to be the set of all points (x,y) which satisfy the above equation and such that both x and y are elements of the algebraic closure of K. Points of the curve whose coordinates both belong to K are called K-rational points.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 86,
"text": "Many of the preceding results remain valid when the field of definition of E is a number field K, that is to say, a finite field extension of Q. In particular, the group E(K) of K-rational points of an elliptic curve E defined over K is finitely generated, which generalizes the Mordell–Weil theorem above. A theorem due to Loïc Merel shows that for a given integer d, there are (up to isomorphism) only finitely many groups that can occur as the torsion groups of E(K) for an elliptic curve defined over a number field K of degree d. More precisely, there is a number B(d) such that for any elliptic curve E defined over a number field K of degree d, any torsion point of E(K) is of order less than B(d). The theorem is effective: for d > 1, if a torsion point is of order p, with p prime, then",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 87,
"text": "As for the integral points, Siegel's theorem generalizes to the following: Let E be an elliptic curve defined over a number field K, x and y the Weierstrass coordinates. Then there are only finitely many points of E(K) whose x-coordinate is in the ring of integers OK.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 88,
"text": "The properties of the Hasse–Weil zeta function and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture can also be extended to this more general situation.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over a general field"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 89,
"text": "The formulation of elliptic curves as the embedding of a torus in the complex projective plane follows naturally from a curious property of Weierstrass's elliptic functions. These functions and their first derivative are related by the formula",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 90,
"text": "Here, g2 and g3 are constants; ℘(z) is the Weierstrass elliptic function and ℘′(z) its derivative. It should be clear that this relation is in the form of an elliptic curve (over the complex numbers). The Weierstrass functions are doubly periodic; that is, they are periodic with respect to a lattice Λ; in essence, the Weierstrass functions are naturally defined on a torus T = C/Λ. This torus may be embedded in the complex projective plane by means of the map",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 91,
"text": "This map is a group isomorphism of the torus (considered with its natural group structure) with the chord-and-tangent group law on the cubic curve which is the image of this map. It is also an isomorphism of Riemann surfaces from the torus to the cubic curve, so topologically, an elliptic curve is a torus. If the lattice Λ is related by multiplication by a non-zero complex number c to a lattice cΛ, then the corresponding curves are isomorphic. Isomorphism classes of elliptic curves are specified by the j-invariant.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 92,
"text": "The isomorphism classes can be understood in a simpler way as well. The constants g2 and g3, called the modular invariants, are uniquely determined by the lattice, that is, by the structure of the torus. However, all real polynomials factorize completely into linear factors over the complex numbers, since the field of complex numbers is the algebraic closure of the reals. So, the elliptic curve may be written as",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 93,
"text": "One finds that",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 94,
"text": "and",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 95,
"text": "with j-invariant j(τ) and λ(τ) is sometimes called the modular lambda function. For example, let τ = 2i, then λ(2i) = (−1 + √2) which implies g′2, g′3, and therefore g′2 − 27g′3 of the formula above are all algebraic numbers if τ involves an imaginary quadratic field. In fact, it yields the integer j(2i) = 66 = 287496.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 96,
"text": "In contrast, the modular discriminant",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 97,
"text": "is generally a transcendental number. In particular, the value of the Dedekind eta function η(2i) is",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 98,
"text": "Note that the uniformization theorem implies that every compact Riemann surface of genus one can be represented as a torus. This also allows an easy understanding of the torsion points on an elliptic curve: if the lattice Λ is spanned by the fundamental periods ω1 and ω2, then the n-torsion points are the (equivalence classes of) points of the form",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 99,
"text": "for integers a and b in the range 0 ≤ (a, b) < n.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 100,
"text": "If",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 101,
"text": "is an elliptic curve over the complex numbers and",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 102,
"text": "then a pair of fundamental periods of E can be calculated very rapidly by",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 103,
"text": "M(w, z) is the arithmetic–geometric mean of w and z. At each step of the arithmetic–geometric mean iteration, the signs of zn arising from the ambiguity of geometric mean iterations are chosen such that |wn − zn| ≤ |wn + zn| where wn and zn denote the individual arithmetic mean and geometric mean iterations of w and z, respectively. When |wn − zn| = |wn + zn|, there is an additional condition that Im(zn/wn) > 0.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 104,
"text": "Over the complex numbers, every elliptic curve has nine inflection points. Every line through two of these points also passes through a third inflection point; the nine points and 12 lines formed in this way form a realization of the Hesse configuration.",
"title": "Elliptic curves over the complex numbers"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 105,
"text": "Elliptic curves over finite fields are used in some cryptographic applications as well as for integer factorization. Typically, the general idea in these applications is that a known algorithm which makes use of certain finite groups is rewritten to use the groups of rational points of elliptic curves. For more see also:",
"title": "Algorithms that use elliptic curves"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 106,
"text": "Serge Lang, in the introduction to the book cited below, stated that \"It is possible to write endlessly on elliptic curves. (This is not a threat.)\" The following short list is thus at best a guide to the vast expository literature available on the theoretical, algorithmic, and cryptographic aspects of elliptic curves.",
"title": "References"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 107,
"text": "This article incorporates material from Isogeny on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.",
"title": "External links"
}
]
| In mathematics, an elliptic curve is a smooth, projective, algebraic curve of genus one, on which there is a specified point O. An elliptic curve is defined over a field K and describes points in K2, the Cartesian product of K with itself. If the field's characteristic is different from 2 and 3, then the curve can be described as a plane algebraic curve which consists of solutions for: for some coefficients a and b in K. The curve is required to be non-singular, which means that the curve has no cusps or self-intersections. It is always understood that the curve is really sitting in the projective plane, with the point O being the unique point at infinity. Many sources define an elliptic curve to be simply a curve given by an equation of this form. An elliptic curve is an abelian variety – that is, it has a group law defined algebraically, with respect to which it is an abelian group – and O serves as the identity element. If y2 = P(x), where P is any polynomial of degree three in x with no repeated roots, the solution set is a nonsingular plane curve of genus one, an elliptic curve. If P has degree four and is square-free this equation again describes a plane curve of genus one; however, it has no natural choice of identity element. More generally, any algebraic curve of genus one, for example the intersection of two quadric surfaces embedded in three-dimensional projective space, is called an elliptic curve, provided that it is equipped with a marked point to act as the identity. Using the theory of elliptic functions, it can be shown that elliptic curves defined over the complex numbers correspond to embeddings of the torus into the complex projective plane. The torus is also an abelian group, and this correspondence is also a group isomorphism. Elliptic curves are especially important in number theory, and constitute a major area of current research; for example, they were used in Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. They also find applications in elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and integer factorization. An elliptic curve is not an ellipse in the sense of a projective conic, which has genus zero: see elliptic integral for the origin of the term. However, there is a natural representation of real elliptic curves with shape invariant j ≥ 1 as ellipses in the hyperbolic plane H 2 . Specifically, the intersections of the Minkowski hyperboloid with quadric surfaces characterized by a certain constant-angle property produce the Steiner ellipses in H 2 . Further, the orthogonal trajectories of these ellipses comprise the elliptic curves with j ≤ 1, and any ellipse in H 2 described as a locus relative to two foci is uniquely the elliptic curve sum of two Steiner ellipses, obtained by adding the pairs of intersections on each orthogonal trajectory. Here, the vertex of the hyperboloid serves as the identity on each trajectory curve. Topologically, a complex elliptic curve is a torus, while a complex ellipse is a sphere. | 2001-12-08T21:23:48Z | 2023-12-24T04:56:17Z | [
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10,229 | Equidae | Equidae (sometimes known as the horse family) is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including the extant horses, asses, and zebras, and many other species known only from fossils. The family evolved around 50 million years ago from a small, multi-toed ungulate into larger, single-toed animals. All extant species are in the genus Equus, which originated in North America. Equidae belongs to the order Perissodactyla, which includes the extant tapirs and rhinoceros, and several extinct families.
The term equid refers to any member of this family, including any equine.
The oldest known fossils assigned to Equidae were found in North America, and date from the early Eocene epoch, 54 million years ago. They were once assigned to the genus Hyracotherium, but the type species of that genus is now regarded as a palaeothere. The other species have been split off into different genera. These early equids were fox-sized animals with three toes on the hind feet, and four on the front feet. They were herbivorous browsers on relatively soft plants, and already adapted for running. The complexity of their brains suggest that they already were alert and intelligent animals. Later species reduced the number of toes, and developed teeth more suited for grinding up grasses and other tough plant food.
The equids, like other perissodactyls, are hindgut fermenters. They have evolved specialized teeth that cut and shear tough plant matter to accommodate their fibrous diet. Their seemingly inefficient digestion strategy is a result of their size at the time of its evolution, as they would have already had to be relatively large mammals to be supported on such a strategy.
The family became relatively diverse during the Miocene epoch, with many new species appearing. By this time, equids were more truly horse like, having developed the typical body shape of the modern animals. Many of these species bore the main weight of their bodies on their central third toe, with the others becoming reduced and barely touching the ground, if at all. The sole surviving genus, Equus, had evolved by the early Pleistocene epoch, and spread rapidly through the world. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "Equidae (sometimes known as the horse family) is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including the extant horses, asses, and zebras, and many other species known only from fossils. The family evolved around 50 million years ago from a small, multi-toed ungulate into larger, single-toed animals. All extant species are in the genus Equus, which originated in North America. Equidae belongs to the order Perissodactyla, which includes the extant tapirs and rhinoceros, and several extinct families.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "The term equid refers to any member of this family, including any equine.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "The oldest known fossils assigned to Equidae were found in North America, and date from the early Eocene epoch, 54 million years ago. They were once assigned to the genus Hyracotherium, but the type species of that genus is now regarded as a palaeothere. The other species have been split off into different genera. These early equids were fox-sized animals with three toes on the hind feet, and four on the front feet. They were herbivorous browsers on relatively soft plants, and already adapted for running. The complexity of their brains suggest that they already were alert and intelligent animals. Later species reduced the number of toes, and developed teeth more suited for grinding up grasses and other tough plant food.",
"title": "Evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "The equids, like other perissodactyls, are hindgut fermenters. They have evolved specialized teeth that cut and shear tough plant matter to accommodate their fibrous diet. Their seemingly inefficient digestion strategy is a result of their size at the time of its evolution, as they would have already had to be relatively large mammals to be supported on such a strategy.",
"title": "Evolution"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "The family became relatively diverse during the Miocene epoch, with many new species appearing. By this time, equids were more truly horse like, having developed the typical body shape of the modern animals. Many of these species bore the main weight of their bodies on their central third toe, with the others becoming reduced and barely touching the ground, if at all. The sole surviving genus, Equus, had evolved by the early Pleistocene epoch, and spread rapidly through the world.",
"title": "Evolution"
}
]
| Equidae is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including the extant horses, asses, and zebras, and many other species known only from fossils. The family evolved around 50 million years ago from a small, multi-toed ungulate into larger, single-toed animals. All extant species are in the genus Equus, which originated in North America. Equidae belongs to the order Perissodactyla, which includes the extant tapirs and rhinoceros, and several extinct families. The term equid refers to any member of this family, including any equine. | 2001-12-08T22:09:57Z | 2023-12-10T00:38:29Z | [
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equidae |
10,231 | List of economists | This is an incomplete alphabetical list by surname of notable economists, experts in the social science of economics, past and present. For a history of economics, see the article History of economic thought. Only economists with biographical articles in Wikipedia are listed here. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "This is an incomplete alphabetical list by surname of notable economists, experts in the social science of economics, past and present. For a history of economics, see the article History of economic thought. Only economists with biographical articles in Wikipedia are listed here.",
"title": ""
}
]
| This is an incomplete alphabetical list by surname of notable economists, experts in the social science of economics, past and present. For a history of economics, see the article History of economic thought. Only economists with biographical articles in Wikipedia are listed here. | 2001-11-11T09:28:32Z | 2023-12-30T01:20:48Z | [
"Template:Horizontal TOC",
"Template:Columns-list",
"Template:Portal",
"Template:Commons category-inline",
"Template:Short description"
]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economists |
10,235 | ELIZA | ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate "scripts", represented in a lisp-like representation. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school (in which the therapist often reflects back the patient's words to the patient), and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots ("chatbot" modernly) and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test.
ELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum, intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised and shocked that individuals, including Weizenbaum's secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program. Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary. The original ELIZA source-code had been missing since its creation in the 1960s as it was not common to publish articles that included source code at this time. However, more recently the MAD-SLIP source-code has now been discovered in the MIT archives and published on various platforms, such as archive.org. The source-code is of high historical interest as it demonstrates not only the specificity of programming languages and techniques at that time, but also the beginning of software layering and abstraction as a means of achieving sophisticated software programming.
Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, created a conversational interaction somewhat similar to what might take place in the office of "a [non-directive] psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview" and to "demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial". While ELIZA is best known for acting in the manner of a psychotherapist, the speech patterns are due to the data and instructions supplied by the DOCTOR script. ELIZA itself examined the text for keywords, applied values to said keywords, and transformed the input into an output; the script that ELIZA ran determined the keywords, set the values of keywords, and set the rules of transformation for the output. Weizenbaum chose to make the DOCTOR script in the context of psychotherapy to "sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge", allowing it to reflect back the patient's statements in order to carry the conversation forward. The result was a somewhat intelligent-seeming response that reportedly deceived some early users of the program.
Weizenbaum named his program ELIZA after Eliza Doolittle, a working-class character in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. According to Weizenbaum, ELIZA's ability to be "incrementally improved" by various users made it similar to Eliza Doolittle, since Eliza Doolittle was taught to speak with an upper-class accent in Shaw's play. However, unlike the human character in Shaw's play, ELIZA is incapable of learning new patterns of speech or new words through interaction alone. Edits must be made directly to ELIZA's active script in order to change the manner by which the program operates.
Weizenbaum first implemented ELIZA in his own SLIP list-processing language, where, depending upon the initial entries by the user, the illusion of human intelligence could appear, or be dispelled through several interchanges. Some of ELIZA's responses were so convincing that Weizenbaum and several others have anecdotes of users becoming emotionally attached to the program, occasionally forgetting that they were conversing with a computer. Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people."
In 1966, interactive computing (via a teletype) was new. It was 15 years before the personal computer became familiar to the general public, and three decades before most people encountered attempts at natural language processing in Internet services like Ask.com or PC help systems such as Microsoft Office Clippit. Although those programs included years of research and work, ELIZA remains a milestone simply because it was the first time a programmer had attempted such a human-machine interaction with the goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human–human interaction.
At the ICCC 1972 ELIZA was brought together with another early artificial-intelligence program named PARRY for a computer-only conversation. While ELIZA was built to speak as a doctor, PARRY was intended to simulate a patient with schizophrenia.
Weizenbaum originally wrote ELIZA in MAD-SLIP for CTSS on an IBM 7094, as a program to make natural-language conversation possible with a computer. To accomplish this, Weizenbaum identified five "fundamental technical problems" for ELIZA to overcome: the identification of key words, the discovery of a minimal context, the choice of appropriate transformations, the generation of responses in the absence of key words, and the provision of an editing capability for ELIZA scripts. Weizenbaum solved these problems and made ELIZA such that it had no built-in contextual framework or universe of discourse. However, this required ELIZA to have a script of instructions on how to respond to inputs from users.
ELIZA starts its process of responding to an input by a user by first examining the text input for a "keyword". A "keyword" is a word designated as important by the acting ELIZA script, which assigns to each keyword a precedence number, or a RANK, designed by the programmer. If such words are found, they are put into a "keystack", with the keyword of the highest RANK at the top. The input sentence is then manipulated and transformed as the rule associated with the keyword of the highest RANK directs. For example, when the DOCTOR script encounters words such as "alike" or "same", it would output a message pertaining to similarity, in this case "In what way?", as these words had high precedence number. This also demonstrates how certain words, as dictated by the script, can be manipulated regardless of contextual considerations, such as switching first-person pronouns and second-person pronouns and vice versa, as these too had high precedence numbers. Such words with high precedence numbers are deemed superior to conversational patterns and are treated independently of contextual patterns.
Following the first examination, the next step of the process is to apply an appropriate transformation rule, which includes two parts: the "decomposition rule" and the "reassembly rule". First, the input is reviewed for syntactical patterns in order to establish the minimal context necessary to respond. Using the keywords and other nearby words from the input, different disassembly rules are tested until an appropriate pattern is found. Using the script's rules, the sentence is then "dismantled" and arranged into sections of the component parts as the "decomposition rule for the highest-ranking keyword" dictates. The example that Weizenbaum gives is the input "You are very helpful", which is transformed to "I are very helpful". This is then broken into (1) empty (2) "I" (3) "are" (4) "very helpful". The decomposition rule has broken the phrase into four small segments that contain both the keywords and the information in the sentence.
The decomposition rule then designates a particular reassembly rule, or set of reassembly rules, to follow when reconstructing the sentence. The reassembly rule takes the fragments of the input that the decomposition rule had created, rearranges them, and adds in programmed words to create a response. Using Weizenbaum's example previously stated, such a reassembly rule would take the fragments and apply them to the phrase "What makes you think I am (4)", which would result in "What makes you think I am very helpful?". This example is rather simple, since depending upon the disassembly rule, the output could be significantly more complex and use more of the input from the user. However, from this reassembly, ELIZA then sends the constructed sentence to the user in the form of text on the screen.
These steps represent the bulk of the procedures that ELIZA follows in order to create a response from a typical input, though there are several specialized situations that ELIZA/DOCTOR can respond to. One Weizenbaum specifically wrote about was when there is no keyword. One solution was to have ELIZA respond with a remark that lacked content, such as "I see" or "Please go on". The second method was to use a "MEMORY" structure, which recorded prior recent inputs, and would use these inputs to create a response referencing a part of the earlier conversation when encountered with no keywords. This was possible due to Slip's ability to tag words for other usage, which simultaneously allowed ELIZA to examine, store and repurpose words for usage in outputs.
While these functions were all framed in ELIZA's programming, the exact manner by which the program dismantled, examined, and reassembled inputs is determined by the operating script. The script is not static and can be edited, or a new one created, as is necessary for the operation in the context needed. This would allow the program to be applied in multiple situations, including the well-known DOCTOR script, which simulates a Rogerian psychotherapist.
A Lisp version of ELIZA, based on Weizenbaum's CACM paper, was written shortly after that paper's publication, by Bernie Cosell. A BASIC version appeared in Creative Computing in 1977 (although it was written in 1973 by Jeff Shrager). This version, which was ported to many of the earliest personal computers, appears to have been subsequently translated into many other versions in many other languages. Shrager claims not to have seen either Weizenbaum's or Cosell's versions.
In 2021 Jeff Shrager searched MIT's Weizenbaum archives, along with MIT archivist Myles Crowley, and found files labeled Computer Conversations. These included the complete source code listing of ELIZA in MAD-SLIP, with the DOCTOR script attached. The Weizenbaum estate has given permission to open-source this code under a Creative Commons CC0 public domain license. The code and other information can be found on the ELIZAGEN site.
Another version of Eliza popular among software engineers is the version that comes with the default release of GNU Emacs, and which can be accessed by typing M-x doctor from most modern Emacs implementations.
From Figure 15.5, Chapter 15 of Speech and Language Processing (third edition).
Lay responses to ELIZA were disturbing to Weizenbaum and motivated him to write his book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, in which he explains the limits of computers, as he wants to make clear his opinion that the anthropomorphic views of computers are just a reduction of human beings or any life form for that matter. In the independent documentary film Plug & Pray (2010) Weizenbaum said that only people who misunderstood ELIZA called it a sensation.
The Israeli poet David Avidan, who was fascinated with future technologies and their relation to art, desired to explore the use of computers for writing literature. He conducted several conversations with an APL implementation of ELIZA and published them – in English, and in his own translation to Hebrew – under the title My Electronic Psychiatrist – Eight Authentic Talks with a Computer. In the foreword he presented it as a form of constrained writing.
There are many programs based on ELIZA in different programming languages. For MS-DOS computers, some Sound Blaster cards came bundled with Dr. Sbaitso, which functions like the DOCTOR script. Other versions adapted ELIZA around a religious theme, such as ones featuring Jesus (both serious and comedic), and another Apple II variant called I Am Buddha. The 1980 game The Prisoner incorporated ELIZA-style interaction within its gameplay. In 1988 the British artist and friend of Weizenbaum Brian Reffin Smith created two art-oriented ELIZA-style programs written in BASIC, one called "Critic" and the other "Artist", running on two separate Amiga 1000 computers and showed them at the exhibition "Salamandre" in the Musée du Berry, Bourges, France. The visitor was supposed to help them converse by typing in to "Artist" what "Critic" said, and vice versa. The secret was that the two programs were identical. GNU Emacs formerly had a psychoanalyze-pinhead command that simulates a session between ELIZA and Zippy the Pinhead. The Zippyisms were removed due to copyright issues, but the DOCTOR program remains.
ELIZA has been referenced in popular culture and continues to be a source of inspiration for programmers and developers focused on artificial intelligence. It was also featured in a 2012 exhibit at Harvard University titled "Go Ask A.L.I.C.E.", as part of a celebration of mathematician Alan Turing's 100th birthday. The exhibit explores Turing's lifelong fascination with the interaction between humans and computers, pointing to ELIZA as one of the earliest realizations of Turing's ideas.
ELIZA won a 2021 Legacy Peabody Award, and in 2023 it beat OpenAI's GPT-3.5 in a Turing test study.
In 1969, George Lucas and Walter Murch incorporated an Eliza-like dialogue interface in their screenplay for the feature film THX-1138. Inhabitants of the underground future world of THX, when stressed, would retreat to "confession booths" and initiate a one-sided Eliza-formula conversation with a Jesus-faced computer who claimed to be "OMM".
ELIZA influenced a number of early computer games by demonstrating additional kinds of interface designs. Don Daglow wrote an enhanced version of the program called Ecala on a DEC PDP-10 minicomputer at Pomona College in 1973 before writing the computer role-playing game Dungeon (1975).
The 2011 video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the 2016 sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features an artificial-intelligence Picus TV Network newsreader named Eliza Cassan.
In Adam Curtis's 2016 documentary, HyperNormalisation, ELIZA was referenced in relationship to post-truth.
In the twelfth episode of the American sitcom Young Sheldon, aired in January 2018, starred the protagonist "conversing" with ELIZA, hoping to resolve a domestic issue.
On August 12, 2019, independent game developer Zachtronics published a visual novel called Eliza, about an AI-based counseling service inspired by ELIZA. | [
{
"paragraph_id": 0,
"text": "ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate \"scripts\", represented in a lisp-like representation. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school (in which the therapist often reflects back the patient's words to the patient), and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots (\"chatbot\" modernly) and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 1,
"text": "ELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum, intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised and shocked that individuals, including Weizenbaum's secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program. Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary. The original ELIZA source-code had been missing since its creation in the 1960s as it was not common to publish articles that included source code at this time. However, more recently the MAD-SLIP source-code has now been discovered in the MIT archives and published on various platforms, such as archive.org. The source-code is of high historical interest as it demonstrates not only the specificity of programming languages and techniques at that time, but also the beginning of software layering and abstraction as a means of achieving sophisticated software programming.",
"title": ""
},
{
"paragraph_id": 2,
"text": "Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, created a conversational interaction somewhat similar to what might take place in the office of \"a [non-directive] psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview\" and to \"demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial\". While ELIZA is best known for acting in the manner of a psychotherapist, the speech patterns are due to the data and instructions supplied by the DOCTOR script. ELIZA itself examined the text for keywords, applied values to said keywords, and transformed the input into an output; the script that ELIZA ran determined the keywords, set the values of keywords, and set the rules of transformation for the output. Weizenbaum chose to make the DOCTOR script in the context of psychotherapy to \"sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge\", allowing it to reflect back the patient's statements in order to carry the conversation forward. The result was a somewhat intelligent-seeming response that reportedly deceived some early users of the program.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 3,
"text": "Weizenbaum named his program ELIZA after Eliza Doolittle, a working-class character in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. According to Weizenbaum, ELIZA's ability to be \"incrementally improved\" by various users made it similar to Eliza Doolittle, since Eliza Doolittle was taught to speak with an upper-class accent in Shaw's play. However, unlike the human character in Shaw's play, ELIZA is incapable of learning new patterns of speech or new words through interaction alone. Edits must be made directly to ELIZA's active script in order to change the manner by which the program operates.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 4,
"text": "Weizenbaum first implemented ELIZA in his own SLIP list-processing language, where, depending upon the initial entries by the user, the illusion of human intelligence could appear, or be dispelled through several interchanges. Some of ELIZA's responses were so convincing that Weizenbaum and several others have anecdotes of users becoming emotionally attached to the program, occasionally forgetting that they were conversing with a computer. Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: \"I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.\"",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 5,
"text": "In 1966, interactive computing (via a teletype) was new. It was 15 years before the personal computer became familiar to the general public, and three decades before most people encountered attempts at natural language processing in Internet services like Ask.com or PC help systems such as Microsoft Office Clippit. Although those programs included years of research and work, ELIZA remains a milestone simply because it was the first time a programmer had attempted such a human-machine interaction with the goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human–human interaction.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 6,
"text": "At the ICCC 1972 ELIZA was brought together with another early artificial-intelligence program named PARRY for a computer-only conversation. While ELIZA was built to speak as a doctor, PARRY was intended to simulate a patient with schizophrenia.",
"title": "Overview"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 7,
"text": "Weizenbaum originally wrote ELIZA in MAD-SLIP for CTSS on an IBM 7094, as a program to make natural-language conversation possible with a computer. To accomplish this, Weizenbaum identified five \"fundamental technical problems\" for ELIZA to overcome: the identification of key words, the discovery of a minimal context, the choice of appropriate transformations, the generation of responses in the absence of key words, and the provision of an editing capability for ELIZA scripts. Weizenbaum solved these problems and made ELIZA such that it had no built-in contextual framework or universe of discourse. However, this required ELIZA to have a script of instructions on how to respond to inputs from users.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 8,
"text": "ELIZA starts its process of responding to an input by a user by first examining the text input for a \"keyword\". A \"keyword\" is a word designated as important by the acting ELIZA script, which assigns to each keyword a precedence number, or a RANK, designed by the programmer. If such words are found, they are put into a \"keystack\", with the keyword of the highest RANK at the top. The input sentence is then manipulated and transformed as the rule associated with the keyword of the highest RANK directs. For example, when the DOCTOR script encounters words such as \"alike\" or \"same\", it would output a message pertaining to similarity, in this case \"In what way?\", as these words had high precedence number. This also demonstrates how certain words, as dictated by the script, can be manipulated regardless of contextual considerations, such as switching first-person pronouns and second-person pronouns and vice versa, as these too had high precedence numbers. Such words with high precedence numbers are deemed superior to conversational patterns and are treated independently of contextual patterns.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 9,
"text": "Following the first examination, the next step of the process is to apply an appropriate transformation rule, which includes two parts: the \"decomposition rule\" and the \"reassembly rule\". First, the input is reviewed for syntactical patterns in order to establish the minimal context necessary to respond. Using the keywords and other nearby words from the input, different disassembly rules are tested until an appropriate pattern is found. Using the script's rules, the sentence is then \"dismantled\" and arranged into sections of the component parts as the \"decomposition rule for the highest-ranking keyword\" dictates. The example that Weizenbaum gives is the input \"You are very helpful\", which is transformed to \"I are very helpful\". This is then broken into (1) empty (2) \"I\" (3) \"are\" (4) \"very helpful\". The decomposition rule has broken the phrase into four small segments that contain both the keywords and the information in the sentence.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 10,
"text": "The decomposition rule then designates a particular reassembly rule, or set of reassembly rules, to follow when reconstructing the sentence. The reassembly rule takes the fragments of the input that the decomposition rule had created, rearranges them, and adds in programmed words to create a response. Using Weizenbaum's example previously stated, such a reassembly rule would take the fragments and apply them to the phrase \"What makes you think I am (4)\", which would result in \"What makes you think I am very helpful?\". This example is rather simple, since depending upon the disassembly rule, the output could be significantly more complex and use more of the input from the user. However, from this reassembly, ELIZA then sends the constructed sentence to the user in the form of text on the screen.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 11,
"text": "These steps represent the bulk of the procedures that ELIZA follows in order to create a response from a typical input, though there are several specialized situations that ELIZA/DOCTOR can respond to. One Weizenbaum specifically wrote about was when there is no keyword. One solution was to have ELIZA respond with a remark that lacked content, such as \"I see\" or \"Please go on\". The second method was to use a \"MEMORY\" structure, which recorded prior recent inputs, and would use these inputs to create a response referencing a part of the earlier conversation when encountered with no keywords. This was possible due to Slip's ability to tag words for other usage, which simultaneously allowed ELIZA to examine, store and repurpose words for usage in outputs.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 12,
"text": "While these functions were all framed in ELIZA's programming, the exact manner by which the program dismantled, examined, and reassembled inputs is determined by the operating script. The script is not static and can be edited, or a new one created, as is necessary for the operation in the context needed. This would allow the program to be applied in multiple situations, including the well-known DOCTOR script, which simulates a Rogerian psychotherapist.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 13,
"text": "A Lisp version of ELIZA, based on Weizenbaum's CACM paper, was written shortly after that paper's publication, by Bernie Cosell. A BASIC version appeared in Creative Computing in 1977 (although it was written in 1973 by Jeff Shrager). This version, which was ported to many of the earliest personal computers, appears to have been subsequently translated into many other versions in many other languages. Shrager claims not to have seen either Weizenbaum's or Cosell's versions.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 14,
"text": "In 2021 Jeff Shrager searched MIT's Weizenbaum archives, along with MIT archivist Myles Crowley, and found files labeled Computer Conversations. These included the complete source code listing of ELIZA in MAD-SLIP, with the DOCTOR script attached. The Weizenbaum estate has given permission to open-source this code under a Creative Commons CC0 public domain license. The code and other information can be found on the ELIZAGEN site.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 15,
"text": "Another version of Eliza popular among software engineers is the version that comes with the default release of GNU Emacs, and which can be accessed by typing M-x doctor from most modern Emacs implementations.",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 16,
"text": "From Figure 15.5, Chapter 15 of Speech and Language Processing (third edition).",
"title": "Design"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 17,
"text": "Lay responses to ELIZA were disturbing to Weizenbaum and motivated him to write his book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, in which he explains the limits of computers, as he wants to make clear his opinion that the anthropomorphic views of computers are just a reduction of human beings or any life form for that matter. In the independent documentary film Plug & Pray (2010) Weizenbaum said that only people who misunderstood ELIZA called it a sensation.",
"title": "Response and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 18,
"text": "The Israeli poet David Avidan, who was fascinated with future technologies and their relation to art, desired to explore the use of computers for writing literature. He conducted several conversations with an APL implementation of ELIZA and published them – in English, and in his own translation to Hebrew – under the title My Electronic Psychiatrist – Eight Authentic Talks with a Computer. In the foreword he presented it as a form of constrained writing.",
"title": "Response and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 19,
"text": "There are many programs based on ELIZA in different programming languages. For MS-DOS computers, some Sound Blaster cards came bundled with Dr. Sbaitso, which functions like the DOCTOR script. Other versions adapted ELIZA around a religious theme, such as ones featuring Jesus (both serious and comedic), and another Apple II variant called I Am Buddha. The 1980 game The Prisoner incorporated ELIZA-style interaction within its gameplay. In 1988 the British artist and friend of Weizenbaum Brian Reffin Smith created two art-oriented ELIZA-style programs written in BASIC, one called \"Critic\" and the other \"Artist\", running on two separate Amiga 1000 computers and showed them at the exhibition \"Salamandre\" in the Musée du Berry, Bourges, France. The visitor was supposed to help them converse by typing in to \"Artist\" what \"Critic\" said, and vice versa. The secret was that the two programs were identical. GNU Emacs formerly had a psychoanalyze-pinhead command that simulates a session between ELIZA and Zippy the Pinhead. The Zippyisms were removed due to copyright issues, but the DOCTOR program remains.",
"title": "Response and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 20,
"text": "ELIZA has been referenced in popular culture and continues to be a source of inspiration for programmers and developers focused on artificial intelligence. It was also featured in a 2012 exhibit at Harvard University titled \"Go Ask A.L.I.C.E.\", as part of a celebration of mathematician Alan Turing's 100th birthday. The exhibit explores Turing's lifelong fascination with the interaction between humans and computers, pointing to ELIZA as one of the earliest realizations of Turing's ideas.",
"title": "Response and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 21,
"text": "ELIZA won a 2021 Legacy Peabody Award, and in 2023 it beat OpenAI's GPT-3.5 in a Turing test study.",
"title": "Response and legacy"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 22,
"text": "In 1969, George Lucas and Walter Murch incorporated an Eliza-like dialogue interface in their screenplay for the feature film THX-1138. Inhabitants of the underground future world of THX, when stressed, would retreat to \"confession booths\" and initiate a one-sided Eliza-formula conversation with a Jesus-faced computer who claimed to be \"OMM\".",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 23,
"text": "ELIZA influenced a number of early computer games by demonstrating additional kinds of interface designs. Don Daglow wrote an enhanced version of the program called Ecala on a DEC PDP-10 minicomputer at Pomona College in 1973 before writing the computer role-playing game Dungeon (1975).",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 24,
"text": "The 2011 video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the 2016 sequel Deus Ex: Mankind Divided features an artificial-intelligence Picus TV Network newsreader named Eliza Cassan.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 25,
"text": "In Adam Curtis's 2016 documentary, HyperNormalisation, ELIZA was referenced in relationship to post-truth.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 26,
"text": "In the twelfth episode of the American sitcom Young Sheldon, aired in January 2018, starred the protagonist \"conversing\" with ELIZA, hoping to resolve a domestic issue.",
"title": "In popular culture"
},
{
"paragraph_id": 27,
"text": "On August 12, 2019, independent game developer Zachtronics published a visual novel called Eliza, about an AI-based counseling service inspired by ELIZA.",
"title": "In popular culture"
}
]
| ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate "scripts", represented in a lisp-like representation. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school, and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test. ELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum, intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised and shocked that individuals, including Weizenbaum's secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program. Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary. The original ELIZA source-code had been missing since its creation in the 1960s as it was not common to publish articles that included source code at this time. However, more recently the MAD-SLIP source-code has now been discovered in the MIT archives and published on various platforms, such as archive.org. The source-code is of high historical interest as it demonstrates not only the specificity of programming languages and techniques at that time, but also the beginning of software layering and abstraction as a means of achieving sophisticated software programming. | 2001-12-09T16:58:16Z | 2023-12-27T07:52:13Z | [
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]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA |
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